F8

First a meta note. Sorry traffic is slow the last day or two. As I mentioned, I've got book deadlines and Yearly Kos this week, so posting will be slow or come in sharp staccato blasts like this and the previous post. Normal blogging will resume on Sunday.

Also, apologies for the comment spam lately. Those crafty spammers have outwitted our filter and I'm trying to keep them off the site as best I can. If you see a comment called "people," stay away. (Unless you are into online gambling and natural male enhancement, in which case, dive in).

Now, onto the real stuff.

Check out this cool little new FaceBook App: Razoo Speed Granting.

From what I can tell, it's sort of Digg.com meets the Causes App. Razoo sets up mini "granting periods." The first (and current) granting period is open, later grants will have themes. Anyone can submit a proposal. Once a certain number of folks vote for, or "validate," a proposal, it becomes visible on the site for public voting. At the end of the granting period, votes are tallied and the winner is awarded the prize.

I can't quite figure out Razoo's angle. They say they are doing this to promote social entrepreneurship, but are they funded by a philanthropic angel? A Foundation? Will they try to make money off this some way, or is it truly altruistic? What counts as a "legitimate" project? Lot's of questions, but potentially a cool little App to help folks bootstrap something small or contribute more money to a cause than you and your social network (coordinating voting) might be able to give out of pocket.

Worth checking out. I just voted for the Youth Policy Action Network.

Just a thought: I was reading through a post about the new Change.org App and Petitions Application on FaceBook and my mind wandered to the questions of effectiveness and impact and youth engagement.

I've read a variety of journalists, pundits and even activists questioning the utility of FaceBook organizing . . . is it effective . . . are young people gaining a false sense of participation, believing they are changing something when all they are doing is building their "friend" list, etc.?

This strikes me as rather the wrong way to think of it. Young people - or really FaceBook users - have shown a willingness to do things online for the issues they believe in. Don't the burdens of effectiveness, utility, and social impact rest with the organizations creating those applications? The growth of the Causes App shows that young people will use these tools, it's up to the organizations to actually put some thought into what functionality will help accomplish their policy goals and then incorporate that FaceBook activism into a larger strategy.

I think I just found my new best friend. I've been playing around with Appaholic, a website that lets you compare usage statistics for all the new FaceBook applications. The site will manufacture three types of comparative graphs and provide embed codes for you to paste into your website. Here's what I've been looking at:

Total Number of Users

This is measuring the total number of users for the Causes application, the Change.org application, and Top Friends - the most popular application on FaceBook. It sort of puts into context just how much political organizing is actually happening on the site. Playful applications that add functionality to member profiles are massively more popular than any kind of organizing.

It also holds true for the candidate applications:

Total Number of Users

It also looks like Obama might be hitting something of a plateau in terms of the use of his application (I removed Change.org because it's explosive growth rate in the last two weeks would obscure the trend). His number of supporters continues to grow at a healthy rate, but those new users aren't using the application, begging the question "how much are they really doing for the candidate online?

Growth Rate

Here's one more comparing the number of users per hour on the Obama, Edwards, and Change.org application (which supports candidates as well):

Number of Users Per Hour

I wonder if it wouldn't benefit the candidates to throw their weight behind Change.org rather than their own applications. In the coming weeks, they will be able to raise money through it, associate themselves with issues, form online communities, link video - functionality well beyond what is currently available in their own applications. Plus, as the numbers show, the community of users is just way way larger.

One caveat about these graphs - the data all lags one week behind actual numbers. Still, a really useful tool and I'm sure I'll be using it in the future to talk about growth and usage rates of Change.org, Causes, Candidate Apps, and any other online organizing tools that employ the F8 platform.

Updates: Two quick updates. First, looks like the Edwards Application is actually a side project of Fred Stutzman of Unit Structures and not an official campaign app. In a very cool note, Fred is open-sourcing his application so anyone can build off of it. Second, I don't mean to imply that the Obama campaign will literally be spamming people with TXT messages, merely that they are using their mobile program as a broadcast tool rather than a targeted, niche tool as I laid out below.
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Obama and Edwards have some new toys for you to play with this week.

OBAMA
Scott Goodstein (who you might remember from such organizations as Punk Voter), writes on the Obama blog to announce the launch of Obama Mobile. My phone is at home (and I'm having lunch in the office), so I tried to sign up via their webpage and got a "service unavailable" message. An inauspicious beginning to a program that I've repeatedly expressed doubts about. Goodstein says:

Millions of Americans relying on cell phones and are cutting the cords to their landlines - so this new service is essential for us to communicate with a growing number of Americans where they’re at.

We will periodically update everyone with campaign updates, local information, public appearances, and other info. We will also use text messaging to ask for your opinions and advice and give you the ability to request information from the campaign.

In addition, I’m excited to announce that our supporters have made a bunch of great free ringtones and wallpaper designs to personalize your mobile phones and show your support.

As you know, I'm skeptical about mobile content in campaigns thus far. The New Politics Institute notes that content is just starting to come into its own, and politics is traditionally far behind the curve, but I just don't see this as the breakout year for mobile organizing in American electoral politics. Maybe in 2012.

Regardless, my take on what Goodstein describes is this: It sounds like the campaign is getting ready to spam news to their supporters. Obama Mobile (like most campaign mobile programs) is a sort of forced RSS straight to your cell phone and you can't avoid the call. This is good for GOTV purposes, but really misses the boat I think for the other 14 months we have left in the campaign cycle.

I can't remember where I read about this, but I heard about a mobile service that you can text in (at anytime) to receive immediate information about local weather. Rather than spam supporters, it would make much more sense to offer services like this through TXT/SMS. For instance, being able to text "obama" to get updates on when he will next be in your area. Or to get 3 short sentences about his position on an issue for those late-night bar debates (Drinking Liberally?) when you can't quite remember what the Senator said about an issue. Haven't we learned any lessons about content distribution from the decline of network television and rise of cable that could be transposed to the mobile market? isn't "niche" the buzz-word du-jour? Campaigns should find a way to make mobile information immediately useful, personally specific, and by request (not forced as part of a mass TXT). This should be a service for supporters, not just a marketing vehicle.

More on Edwards after the jump.

A mish-mash of items to highlight today:

• Drunk America sounded really interesting when my intern at work introduced me to it. Basically, a guy goes around outside nightclubs interviewing drunk folks about politics. It could have been funny and enlightening. Instead, it's condescending and depressing. Still, I think there's a good idea in here if it was done right . . .
• Gov. Deval Patrick has a plan to make community college free in Massachusetts. If his plan is enacted, Mass. will be the first state to offer free post-high school education.
• TorrentFreak digs into which candidates/congress critters are getting money from the RIAA and MPAA, and what they're doing/saying in return for that cash.
• Yet another FaceBook application wanting to know who you will vote for in 2008. As Tech President notes, this one bizarrely states that it will donate to the candidate you pick, but neglects to say where that money is coming from. Is it backed by an advertiser looking to fill in data about FaceBook users in their marketing file . . . ? Who knows.

My most recent MyDD posting.

Reading Jared's post about Mitt Romney's latest fundraising gimmick and this post about how the campaign finance system is bad for young people has got me thinking broadly about the role of young voters as donors in our political system.

I don't have a grand thesis, but there are a couple of dynamics that are in play that are worth exploring, I think, as well as some long-term questions that should be posed.  This is especially relevant with the 2nd Quarter fundraising deadline being just around the corner, and in light of new FaceBook applications capable of raising cash for 501 organizations (and soon PACS and Campaigns) presumably from young people.  Here it goes.

Conventional wisdom says that young people don't have a lot of scratch to throw at political campaigns, yet I expect that when all is said and done, young people will have donated quite a bit of money to the efforts of our top candidates.  All though they have not yet released figures, the Obama campaign has already suggested that one of the largest donor blocks to the campaign (online) is students.  I know that in 2004 Dean was the first candidate I ever gave to ($50), and Obama seems to have that magic and more with young voters.  I'm guessing that by November 2008, young people will have donated at least in the high millions to low tens of millions to the Democratic presidential candidates. I hope (and encourage) the Obama campaign to release some data on this so we can start to get a baseline about just how much young people are donating this cycle.

Conventional wisdom also states that young people do not financially support the organizations that are dedicated to engaging them in politics.   Speaking from personal experience, and after talking to the Executive Directors of a number of youth organizations, this is a true statement that presents a rather large problem for the long-term sustainability of the infrastructure built by the [dot]org Boom that has revitalized progressive youth politics.  

Thus far, the new progressive youth movement has been funded by a cadre of mega-donors like the Rapaports and Lewis family and a few foundations like OSI.  In many instances though, this funding is contingent on these organizations progressing along a path to sustainability.  In order to do that, they need to build membership and expand their donor base.  At some point, that will require that young people contribute directly (donations, membership) or indirectly (purchasing some sort of fundraising premium, special event attendance) to the organizations in which they participate.

Recently, there are new developments that may point towards a solution to that problem.  

I've been playing around some more with the FaceBook Causes application. Pretty cool, but not really maximizing the social features.

I joined a cause called Progressive Pipeline. It's a group started by Adam Green of MoveOn for the purpose of linking up "tech savvy college activists and progressive organizations."

I have no idea how this cause purports to achieve that goal. There are no links to relevant outside websites where I can inquire further. The administrator is not my "friend," so I've got to try to add him before we can have a conversation about it. There is no wall or other social area on the cause home page where I can talk to others in the group about the cause. And the 501c3 through which donations are funneled is basically a blank web page.

If I didn't know who Adam Green was, this would scream scam, and even as is, there's not a whole lot to make me feel part of a "cause." It makes me feel like at ATM.

In terms of virally spreading among my network, I invited a bunch of folks to join, sure (and maybe a few will), but it wasn't announced in my NewsFeed that I joined this cause or supported it . . .

I still hold out a lot of hope that this App can help a lot of youth organizers perform their work more efficiently and sustainably, and in part the problems I mention here are the fault of the group creator, so what we're really talking about here is best practices. But there's still work to do before this App reaches its full potential.