Jordan Raynor

Direct Media Strategies Now Part of Engage

noreply@blogger.com (Jordan Raynor) — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 11:27:00 +0000

I am thrilled to announce that I am joining the incredibly talented team at Engage. Over the past year, I have had the pleasure of leading the online communications efforts for some amazing clients under the banner of my own consulting firm, Direct Media Strategies. Those clients include Nathan Deal for Governor, BlueAnt Wireless, HCA and University of South Florida Athletics just to name a few. As of today, Direct Media Strategies is now a part of Engage and we could not be more excited.

In 2010, we had the privilege of partnering with Engage on The Voting Information Project and foursquare’s I Voted project, successfully bringing to life the foursquare I Voted badge on Election Day 2010. There is not a more talented, more forward-thinking team at the intersection of politics, media and technology than Engage and we are honored to join them.

Prior to launching my own firm, I had the incredible experience of managing SayfieReview.com – an online news aggregation service that has become a staple in Florida politics thanks to the site’s founder, Justin Sayfie. My time at Sayfie Media gave me invaluable insight into how news is consumed and shared in the new information economy – experience that has served me well in working with political campaigns, advocacy groups and corporate communication teams.

Many communication shops today get hung up on tools and technology, which are changing every day. The firms that are the most successful are the ones that work hand-in-hand with their clients to clearly define communication objectives on the front end, and then find the right mix of tools and technology to achieve those objectives and win. Engage is that firm. If your corporation, campaign or cause is looking for a team of professional, forward-thinking communication strategists who place objectives and strategy before ever-changing tools, look no further than Engage.

Joining me at Engage is Jonathan Morgan, who served a number of non-profit and small business accounts with excellence at Direct Media Strategies. On behalf of Jon and myself, we would like to thank Patrick Ruffini and Mindy Finn for the opportunity to join them and their rock-star team at Engage. We look forward to joining the Engage family and serving Engage’s current and future clients with excellence.

If you are ever in the Sunshine State, be sure to give us a shout. We would love to meet you. You can find my contact information by here.

Did I Just Win the First-Ever Instagram Giveaway?

noreply@blogger.com (Jordan Raynor) — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 18:20:00 +0000

Over the past few weeks, I have become obsessed with Instagram - the "fast, beautiful and fun way to share your life with friends through a series of pictures." Part of my fascination with Instagram stems from how quickly the niche social network has grown. After launching in early October of 2010, Instagram quickly reached 1 million users before the end of the year.

But what makes Instagram so great? After all, we are already able to share photos through Facebook, Twitter and a whole host of other niche photo apps. So why Instagram? Aside from the obvious technology features that make the app a social success (Facebook, Twitter and foursquare integration, photo tagging by hashtag and location, photo news stream, ability to like and comment on photos, etc.), I am convinced that the success behind Instagram is much deeper and lies in the app's ability to make anyone feel like a professional photographer, telling the story of their life through really cool looking photos. There's only so much you can do artistically with a Facebook photo uploaded from your mobile phone, but Instagram gives you the ability to really tell a story through images alone. Another component of the app's success (IMHO) lies in the app's simplicity and limited functionality. Instagram is solely about photos. No video, no links, no games. Just photos. This simplicity is a breath of fresh air from Facebook and other services.

For me, part of the fun of Instagram has also been following news organizations and brands and watching how they tell their stories through pictures alone. Brands on Instagram include The GRAMMYs, NPR, NBC News, Pepsi, CNN, Starbucks, and SnoopDog. I was particularly fascinated by a giveaway campaign that The GRAMMYs ran yesterday in which they gave away a free GRAMMY poster to one randomly selected person who liked or commented on any of The GRAMMYs Instagram photos throughout the day. I didn't care about winning the poster, but I was intrigued about how this brand was using this new platform to drive brand engagement and of course participated. After doing some research, I am fairly confident that The GRAMMYs are the first brand to run a giveaway through the Instagram platform - a sure sign of things to come. And yes, as you can see from the photo above, The GRAMMYs notified their followers this morning (via an Instagram photo of course) that yours truly was the winner of the giveaway!

If you haven't downloaded Instagram yet, click here from your iPhone to do so. Unfortunately, Instagram has yet to come to Android or Blackberry, but I am sure we can expect an Instagram app for those platforms soon.

The New 3M Model: Encore 2012

noreply@blogger.com (Jordan Raynor) — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 12:58:00 +0000

In June 2009, I published a piece on SayfieReview.com which garnered much buzz here in Florida, especially as it related to Marco Rubio's insurgent fight against Charlie Crist for the United States Senate. In the piece, I argued that with the right candidate and the right message, the internet could level the playing field and help reverse the conventional wisdom that you must run a "Traditional 3M" campaign to get elected to office. I argued that the Traditional 3M model was based on big money to launch a campaign, followed by momentum, with the candidate's message being a distant third priority. This model can be diagrammed like this:

MONEY → MOMENTUM → MESSAGE

Using the internet to drive message directly to voters, victory is now possible for candidates who don’t have big money to kick-start their campaigns, by following a “New 3M” model that looks like this:

MESSAGE → MOMENTUM → MONEY

We saw Marco Rubio articulate the New 3M Model time and time again in 2010, and now, it seems Texas Railroad Commissioner Michael Williams is articulating the exact same message in his battle for the United States Senate in 2012. Hear what Williams had to say in an interview with the Texas Tribune yesterday:

The Case for SCVNGR (And How Disney Can Do Better)

noreply@blogger.com (Jordan Raynor) — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 22:02:00 +0000

Aside from screaming children, what’s the worst part of any theme park? Waiting in line.

That’s why I was greatly disappointed to find that after all of the hoopla surrounding Disney’s new partnership with Gowalla, the “game” ended as soon as I entered the hour-and-a-half line for Toy Story Mania with my wife over the holiday weekend. Check-in. Get a badge. Game over. Nothing else to keep me entertained or, more importantly for Disney, experience their brand with my friends online. Before I dive into exactly what Disney could be doing to obtain a much better ROI while simultaneously enhancing the consumer experience, let’s first take a look at the state of location-based social networking.

Mashable stole the words right out of my mouth a few weeks ago when they said, “It’s painfully obvious that location is one of the fastest-growing segments of the tech industry.” At Direct Media Strategies, we are always looking to implement tomorrow’s technology today for our clients. We believe location based social networking (LBS) is a huge part of the future of online brand communication and we are doing a lot of work in this space (see our recent case study on our involvement in foursquare's Election Day "I Voted" badge).

Because it is still early in the location game, no one service has emerged as the undisputed winner. Foursquare, Gowalla and SCVNGR are certainly leading the pack by gaining the most users, high-profile partnerships and attention; and Facebook’s recent rollout of Places certainly has added a significant wrinkle to this whole game. And while foursquare is the front-runner in the race for users (excluding Facebook Places), the user gap between foursquare and it’s closest competitors is relatively small. The latest publicly reported numbers show foursquare at 4.5 million users, while SCVNGR is expected to reach 1 million next month and Gowalla is right at 600,000. At this point, it’s anyone’s game.

A recent report by Pew showing that only 7% of mobile-online adults in the U.S. are using these services has raised some legitimate questions regarding usership of these networks. However, I would argue that the reason why more people aren’t using these services is not because they are fundamentally opposed to sharing their location with their friends, they just haven’t found a game compelling enough to keep their attention and make sharing their location worth their while. After all, the reason these networks popped up in the first place was because millions of people were sharing where they were in their Facebook status updates. Services like Facebook Places, Foursquare, Gowalla, and SCVNGR simply geo-coded it and put those shared locations on a map.

If these networks are simply going to be about the check-in, they won’t survive. Facebook Places has filled that void. So what unique value proposition do these networks bring to users? Gowalla is frequently referred to as the “pretty” network for its commitment to beautifully designed badges. But are pretty badges enough to keep people playing? I don’t think so. Foursquare has had the right idea from day one in making their network competitive. Users go places, earn points, unlock rewards and compete for mayorships of locations. Foursquare is on the right track and that’s undoubtedly a big part of why they have been successful thus far. They understand that people love to compete and win. But the thing you hear time and time again from users and opinion leaders is that foursquare is passive. We have noticed with our clients that people check-in on foursquare as they are physically leaving the location. By nature, the foursquare check-in is not engaging, it is passive, making foursquare something you do not something you play.

That leaves us with Google-funded SCVNGR. At its core, SCVNGR is a game. Throughout everything they produce, SCVNGR is very careful in their choice of words, making it clear that their key differentiator in this market is true game-play. SCVNGR goes beyond the check-in, by allowing brands to create custom challenges that users can complete at locations to earn points and unlock real-world rewards. With SCVNGR, users experience brands, not just simply tell their friends where they are. In addition to these custom challenges and rewards, SCVNGR also has many of the same features as foursquare and Gowalla – badges, points, full Facebook and Twitter integration, etc. SCVNGR has got it all.

Going back to the Disney example above, allow me to show you how SCVNGR is different rather than simply tell you. When I checked-in to the Toy Story Mania ride on Gowalla this past weekend, I unlocked a custom Toy Story badge on Gowalla:

After taking that one simple action though, my experience was finished. The only action my Gowalla friends, Facebook friends or Twitter followers could have seen was my passive check-in letting them know I was at the ride. With SCVNGR, the next hour-and-a-half I spent waiting in line could have been filled with opportunities for me to have fun by playing a game, earn real-world rewards, and show all of my online friends all of the fun I was having at Disney.

On SCVNGR, you are greeted with a series of custom challenges at each location:

SCVNGR offers 4 different kinds of challenges: Photo Challenge, Specific Text Response, QR Code and Open Response. Here's an example of each:

Photo Challenge:

Specific Text Response:

The video integration is one of my favorite things about SCVNGR. By pressing play in the clue above, the following video would pop up in the user's phone allowing them to answer the question correctly and complete the challenge.

QR Code:

Open Response:

The one component not shown above is the Rewards component of SCVNGR, very similar to foursquare's Specials and Facebook's Deals. With SCVNGR, users unlock Rewards by accumulating points at a specific location. In the above example, once a user earns a certain number of points, they could be notified that they have unlocked $5 off their meal at Pizza Planet right next to the Toy Story Mania ride.

As you can see by the examples above, SCVNGR goes far beyond the check-in. SCVNGR is about experiencing brands and having users promote those brands in a fun way to their social-graphs. It's not just about telling your friends where you are or earning a virtual badge, it's about a fully customized experience with your favorite brand - something much more valuable to the user and the brand.

Disney, like other big brands, is making a gamble in the location-based space. Big brands like Coca-Cola, Conan O'Brien and the New England Patriots are making similar gambles. While custom foursquare and Gowalla badges are cool and pretty, they don't go nearly as far as SCVNGR can go for these big brands. With SCVNGR, Disney could take the most dreaded theme park experience (waiting in line) and transform it into an interactive experience for the user, earning them rewards, causing them to spend more money in the park and spreading more content to their social-graphs. As I stood in line for Toy Story Mania this weekend, I noticed countless adults and teens playing on their smart phones while in line. They were bored and they were looking for something - anything - to keep them entertained while they stared at the backs of people's heads. SCVNGR could have filled that void.

Don't hear me wrong - I am not saying that brands should choose not to play on other location-based platforms. Every brand should be doing the basics on each network (secure ownership of venues, setting up foursquare specials, creating tips, etc.) but as more and more brands look to invest money in this space, I am confident that SCVNGR will give brands both the greatest ROI and the greatest experience for users.

Announcing the Official FourSquare "I Voted" Badge

noreply@blogger.com (Jordan Raynor) — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 13:18:00 +0000

On June 17, 2010, I started a petition on Twitter calling for foursquare to create an "I Voted" badge for voters who check-in to their polling place locations on Election Day. On November 2, 2010, that dream will become a reality. Today, The I Voted Project is thrilled to announce that foursquare will be awarding an official "I Voted" badge to voters who check-in to their polling place location and "shout" #ivoted on November 2.

This project was designed with three purposes in mind:

Encourage civic participation through the distribution of the “I Voted” foursquare badge;
Increase transparency by visualizing how many voters are checking-in, and at which polling locations; and
Develop a replicable and scalable system to use for the 2012 Presidential Elections and beyond.

The official I Voted Project site, located at elections.foursquare.com, will go live on November 2nd and display “I Voted” check-ins throughout the country as they are happening. The site will allow users to explore check-ins by city and state, while also providing data about the volume, time of day and gender that each polling location is experiencing. The interactive map of check-ins will also be available for embed on any website. Here's a taste of what you will see on Election Day:

So how did this whole project come about? Shortly after our petition caught fire, Leslie Bradshaw of JESS3 (the brilliant design and data-visualization team behind this project) reached out to me and a handful of others about creating a coalition of passionate and experienced political digital strategists to make this idea a reality. We knew right off the bat that the biggest challenge to making this project happen would be uploading more than 108,000 accurate polling place locations across the country for a one-day affair. Fortunately, Direct Media Strategies had been working on producing that list since June when we joined the Voting Information Project with our good friends Patrick Ruffini and Mindy Finn at Engage. The data we were able to share with foursquare via the Voting Information Project proved to be a critical cornerstone to this project's launch.

When I first started the Twitter petition in June, I blogged that, "Someday soon, you will show up to your office with an “I Voted” sticker and your friends and colleagues will have already seen your “I Voted” foursquare badge on Facebook or Twitter." I am excited to say that that day will be November 2, 2010. To all of you who signed the petition that helped fuel this project, THANK YOU! I am honored to have been a part of this I Voted Project with the rest of this talented team:

Eric Friedman
Director of Client Services at foursquare

Leslie Bradshaw
Former Community Manager for C-SPAN's 2008 Convention and Debate Hubs (Webby Nominated) and current President & Chief Operating Officer at JESS3

Jesse Thomas
Chief Executive Officer of JESS3 and Creative Mastermind

Patrick Ruffini
Partner, Engage & former eCampaign Director, Republican National Committee

Mindy Finn
Partner, Engage & former Internet Director for Romney for President 2008

Jordan Raynor
President, Direct Media Strategies & Founder of the "I Voted" Act.ly Petition

Patrick Ottenhoff

Founder of The Electoral Map & Correspondent at the Atlantic

Tracy Viselli
Member of the Twitter Vote Report team & Community Manager at ACTion Alexandria

David Almacy
Former Internet & E_Communications for the White House & current SVP at Edelman Digital.

Grab Your Own Polling Place Locator Tool

noreply@blogger.com (Jordan Raynor) — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 12:23:00 +0000

Since June, me and my team at Direct Media Strategies have been working with the very talented teams at Engage, NOI, Pew and Google on The Voting Information Project - an effort to, for the first time in history, make every single polling place location in America publicly accessible in one single location online. I am thrilled to share that with one week to go before Election Day, you and your campaigns can directly benefit from the fruits of our labor by embedding your own customizable polling place locator tool on the website of your choice. With the VIP Google Gadget (example below), you have the ability to provide your website visitors with official polling place location data from Secretary of State and local election offices across the country. So go ahead - embed it on your own site now and help get out the vote!

The 5 Habits of Highly Accessible Online Politicians

noreply@blogger.com (Jordan Raynor) — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 11:17:00 +0000

Last week, I had the honor of addressing the Florida Association of Counties' Annual Convention in Tampa, FL. I was asked to give a "Social Media 101" presentation, but took my speaker's prerogative to deliver a message I felt was much more critical for my audience of County Commissioners to hear. I charged the room to think less about the question "How can I use the internet to get myself elected?" and ask the more important question of "How can we use technology to make government more accessible, efficient and transparent?"

Here is my full presentation, broken into three parts:

How FourSquare Could GOTV With The "I Voted" Badge

noreply@blogger.com (Jordan Raynor) — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 16:01:00 +0000

Yesterday, a petition I started on Twitter urging FourSquare to create an "I Voted" badge for voters who check-in at polling places on Election Day, caught fire and has yet to show signs of letting up. At the time this post was published, 191 Twitter users have signed the petition, making FourSquare the most petitioned Twitter account through act.ly this week (surpassing Lady Gaga, BP and President Obama) and the second most this month (only behind Bieber).

Obviously the rightroots and the netroots are both pretty fired up about this idea which has the potential to be a massive GOTV effort, but if FourSquare agrees to commit to creating the badge, how exactly would it work? After an email exchange with a FourSquare contact, I am confident this is the question we need to answer in order for FourSquare to pull the trigger. That's why I am soliciting your input. Our ideas combined will be much more powerful than mine alone.

Here's the dilemma: How can FourSquare verify polling places in order to give out "I Voted" badges? First, Supervisor of Elections offices would need to add their polling places to FourSquare (work an intern can easily do). Then, FourSquare would need to authenticate the Supervisors' offices as the rightful "owner" of the polling places on FourSquare. This could be a massive amount of work. How could we simplify the process? Maybe the solution is getting one state to commit to the project for a primary election, map out all the precincts, and present it to FourSquare as a pilot program.

As you can tell, I am thinking out loud here. Let's put our heads together to find a way to make this work to increase turnout in November. Imagine thousands of Americans checking into their polling places while posting links to their Facebook friends with a map of their polling place, reminding them and encouraging them to vote. Pretty cool stuff if you ask me. Let's find a way to make it work. Please leave your ideas in the comment section below. Go!

Reviewing #PdF10

noreply@blogger.com (Jordan Raynor) — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 12:37:00 +0000

Last week, I had the great honor of attending my third Personal Democracy Forum in New York City. This year was even more special than years past, as I was selected as a Google Fellow for the conference. The work the 19 other Google Fellows are doing at the intersection of politics and technology all around the world is truly amazing, and I was honored to have the opportunity to learn from them at the conference. Check out these amazing individuals and the work they are doing by clicking here.

This year's #PdF10 focused on answering this question: Can the internet fix politics? The overwhelming consensus of the conference can be summed up by this: No. But we can change politics using the internet as a tool. As promised, I hyper-tweeted the entire conference, attempting to provide you all who couldn't make it to New York with the best tips and tricks I learned at the conference. An archive of my tweets can be found here courtesy of one of my favorite Twitter apps, SnapBird.org. The total count of my tweeting frenzy from #pdf10 was 283 tweets, but more importantly (keeping quality v. quantity in mind), I was mentioned on Twitter 452 times at the conference - more than anyone else using the #pdf10 hashtag (though @cshirky and @craignewmark came close). Thank you as always to everyone who followed along with my barrage of tweets and constantly retweeted my content!

As always, #PdF10 was an amazing two days of learning and sharing with the smartest and most talented people at the intersection of politics and technology. I can't wait for #PdF11! Until then, I will leave you with three of my favorite presentations from this year's Personal Democracy Forum:

Closing Plenary with Saul Anuzis, Nick Bilton, Cory Booker, Arianna Huffington, Tim O’Reilly, Andrew Rasiej and Micah Sifry

"Rethinking Leadership" by Clay Shirky

"Rethinking Media" by Markos Moulitsas of the Daily Kos

A Preview of the 2010 Personal Democracy Forum

noreply@blogger.com (Jordan Raynor) — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 13:19:00 +0000

Every summer, the world's smartest and most talented professionals in the field of online politics descend upon New York City for a two-day gathering known as the Personal Democracy Forum. In the words of PDF's 2009 incredible keynote speaker, Michael Wesch, "The gathering may have been the highest concentration of amazingly creative and concerned global citizens I have ever been around."

This year, I have the honor and privilege of attending the conference as one of twenty Google Fellows. My fellow Fellows are doing some amazing work at the intersection of politics and technology and I am thrilled to have the opportunity to learn from them at PDF. Thank you Google!

This will be my third time attending the Personal Democracy Forum, and according to the speaker line-up, this year's PDF could be the best yet. For those of you attending PDF, I would love to know which presentations you are most excited to see. Feel free to leave your favorites in the comment section below. Here are the five presentations I am most excited to hear:

How Republicans are Innovating in Online Campaigning: Mindy Finn, Rob Willington, Ryan Gravatt, David All (moderator)
Debate: Should Government 'Save' Journalism? Andrew Keen, Marc Cooper, Josh Silver, Jan Schaffer, Jeff Jarvis (moderator)
Can the internet Fix Politics?: Newt Gingrich
Refining Your Social Media Smarts: Campaign Successes From YouTube to Facebook to Twitter: Jonah Sieger, Barnet Zitron, JD Lasica, Michael Bassik (moderator)
Campaign Grid: Best Practices in Online Fundraising and List-Building Steve Moore, Julie Germany, Michael Palmer, Richard Masterson (moderator)

If you can not make it to New York for this year's Personal Democracy Forum, there are still ways for you to follow the conference from home.

Follow the #pdf10 or #pdf2010 hashtags on Twitter
Like last year, I will be "hyper-tweeting" the event, providing you with the latest tips and best-practices discussed at the conference. You can follow me @JordanRaynor for the latest from #pdf10.
Check the PDF Video Archives throughout the weekend for video of conference presentations.

Twitter Mentions Accurately Predict Winners in UK Elections

noreply@blogger.com (Jordan Raynor) — Fri, 14 May 2010 12:59:00 +0000

Can the amount of times your candidate is mentioned on Twitter actually predict their fate on Election Day? A new report released by Tweetminister on Twitter and the UK elections says yes!

For the UK's recent elections, Tweetminister set out to discover if there was any sort of correlation between the number of times a particular candidate or party was mentioned on Twitter and how that candidate or party performed on Election Day. The results are astounding.

Tweetminister found that their individual seat predictions based on Twitter mention volume were 69% accurate while regional party performance predictions were 87.5% accurate and national predictions were 90.5% accurate.

The full report is available below for your downloading and highly recommended sharing pleasure:
Tweetminster Predicts: Findings

Endorsements Don't Matter, Unless They Come From You

noreply@blogger.com (Jordan Raynor) — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 23:37:00 +0000

"My coffee cup endorses Rubio. The lint I just brushed off my suit has endorsed Rubio. 97.9% of the objects in the known universe mass endorse Rubio.”

Those statements, tweeted today by leading GOP strategist Patrick Ruffini, are just as insightful as they are humorous. The political collapse of Charlie Crist's Republican candidacy for the U.S. Senate has brought on an avalanche of endorsements over the past week for Crist's GOP rival, Marco Rubio. As each endorsement has been rolled out by Rubio's supporters, I have found myself re-declaring this statement – Endorsements don’t matter to voters anymore!

Now more than ever, the power of the press and the political establishment over public opinion is waning and the power vacuum is being filled by our social-graphs – our Facebook friends, the people we follow on Twitter and the numerous un-traditional information outlets we now turn to for news and opinion. As I have said before, our friends are killing the newspaper editors, and for that matter, the power of political endorsements. It is more important than ever for candidates to develop meaningful relationships with influential individuals who will become their campaign's ambassadors online. If these relationships are genuine and extend beyond asking for money, individuals will buy into campaigns and will recruit their online "friends" for your cause.

Six months ago, I was asked to advise a candidate on how they could mount a formidable challenge to an established political titan. The opponent of the candidate I was advising had locked up all of the early establishment endorsements and money and was undoubtedly running a Traditional 3M campaign (Money ---> Momentum ---> Message). My advice was simple, but difficult to achieve – do everything in your power to appear to be publicly shunning the political establishment. Instead of going after high-profile endorsements, ask regular Joe and Jane Shmos to look into a camera and tell the world why they “endorse” you. Make the campaign about why establishment endorsements are the problem and not the solution and communicate directly with voters via the web to earn their “endorsements” instead. Crazy? Maybe. But I still think it could have worked.

All of the endorsements in the world didn’t help Charlie Crist defeat his primary challenger. In fact, Crist’s endorsements ended up hurting him more than they helped as grassroots conservatives rose up against what they perceived as a candidate being forced down their throats by the Party establishment.

Voters are no longer making decisions primarily based on what political endorsements, press releases or advertisements tell them – they are making decisions based on the opinions of the most important people in their online and offline lives – their friends.

Cross-posted to TechRepublican.com

TIEA Passes House Unanimously

noreply@blogger.com (Jordan Raynor) — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 20:17:00 +0000

Great news for those of us who have been following Florida's Technology in Elections Act - the bill passed the Florida House of Representatives today by a unanimous vote of 114-0. Here is the full release from State Representative Eric Eisnaugle (R-FL), the bill's sponsor:

Today, Representative Eric Eisnaugle’s (R-Orlando) Technology in Elections Act (HB 869) passed the House unanimously 114-0. The legislation modernizes rules governing the use of technology in political campaigns. Current law does not contemplate the use of many new technologies or websites like Twitter, Facebook, and Google by voters and campaigns. Large portions of campaign budgets are currently spent on expensive traditional media like radio and television advertisements. However, voters increasingly report a preference to learn about candidates and issues on the internet.

“It’s vital to ensure that voters and candidates can hold a dialogue on the internet on the sites voters use,” said Eisnaugle. “If we want to lower the cost of elections, we must ensure that free, public websites are available for official candidate use.”

The Technology in Elections Act provides safe harbors on disclaimer requirements for candidates using text messaging, social networking sites, downloadable applications, blogs, message board postings and text link advertisements. A fall legal challenge in a St. Petersburg mayoral race raised questions regarding the use of Google ad links and therefore other media and technologies by candidates. Representative Darryl Rouson (D–St. Petersburg) co-prime sponsored the bill.

The legislation also included language to bring transparency to opaque Electioneering Communications Organizations (ECOs). The ECO language requires timely reporting on where and how these organizations raise and expend their funds.

Create Your Own Google 'Search Story'

noreply@blogger.com (Jordan Raynor) — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 17:47:00 +0000

Following Google's phenomenally successful Super Bowl ad (which has garnered 4.75 million YouTube views at the time of this blog post), Google has launched a super-cool "Create Your Own" Search Story feature on YouTube. The easy-to-use interface allows users to create their own Google-centric "Search Story" and then upload the video to YouTube. Here's my experiment with the feature which I used to create my own Search Story video business card:

Create your own Search Story at http://www.youtube.com/SearchStories

Help Write Florida's 'Technology In Elections Act'

noreply@blogger.com (Jordan Raynor) — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 14:52:00 +0000

In response to the pay-per-click advertising debacle that arose in Florida last Fall, State Representatives Eric Eisnaugle (R-Orlando) and Darryl Rouson (D-St. Petersburg) have introduced Florida HB 869 to modernize Florida's election laws to account for new forms of technology and social media. The bi-partisan bill, deemed the 'Technology In Elections Act' (TIEA), is likely the most effective and rapid way to modernize Florida election law to account for online advertising and politicians' presence on social networks.

Both Reps. Eisnaugle and Rouson have reached out to online politicos (including myself) for input on this piece of legislation. As I got to thinking about this bill and what it could do for political campaigns in Florida, I began to imagine what debate and discussion over this bill online could do for government. By leveraging the power of the internet that TIEA is fighting to protect, we can make the crafting of this bill the most open and transparent in Florida history. That is why I am asking you - my online readers, followers and friends - to take this bill into your own hands and help modernize Florida election law.

I have embedded the latest version of the bill below. I invite all of you to read the bill thoroughly and make any recommendations you see fit in the comment section below. All recommendations will be passed on directly to Reps. Eisnaugle and Rouson. I have also invited Reps. Eisnaugle and Rouson to participate in a live online video conference - open to the public - to discuss the recommendations set forth by you on this blog. Stay tuned!

TIEA will usher Florida's election laws into the 21st century, but perhaps more importantly, with your hard work and effort, we can make the exercise of crafting this bill a model for government openness and transparency through the web.

CLICK HERE to tweet the following: Join me in helping the Florida Legislature modernize FL election law - http://bit.ly/cfWpZP

Tweeting Through @KarlRove's 'Courage and Consequence'

noreply@blogger.com (Jordan Raynor) — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 12:15:00 +0000

This weekend, I "live-tweeted" my way through Karl Rove's recently released book, Courage and Consequence: My Life as a Conservative in the Fight. In case you missed my live-tweeting of the book, here are my Twitter notes in their entirety:

Rove’s mother killed herself on September 11, 1981. #meetkarl
Rove had breakfast with a lingerie-clad Elizabeth Taylor while she was married to Sen. John Warner (R-Va.) #meetkarl
Rove: “If you didn’t measure an activity, it tended to remain undone.” #meetkarl
Rove: “I was counting on technology to carve out my niche in the direct mail business.” #meetkarl
Lance Armstrong lived next door to Rove’s direct mail firm in the early 80s. #meetkarl
Rove: “The Bush campaign was not worthy of the 41st President.” #meetkarl
This surprises me - Rove only recalls GWB dropping the f-bomb once. #meetkarl
Rove in 2000: “The establishment is not what it used to be.” Even truer in 2010. #meetkarl
Rove cites Tallahassee veteran Randy Enwright as the Florida “quarterback” for Bush/Cheney 2000. #meetkarl
After realizing how close FL would be Jeb told GWB that Broward and Dade would be “good for us.” Randy Enwright disagreed. #meetkarl
Rove’s Secret Service code name was ‘Pilgrim’. #meetkarl
Rove says that he was first to tell GWB of plane crashing into WTC. I always thought it was Card - http://bit.ly/cMU201
Rove was the only one in the White House with a Blackberry on 9/11. #meetkarl
Rove thought Bush 2004 would be much like Lincoln 1864 when Lincoln was re-elected in the midst of the Civil War #meetkarl
Rove: Bush/Cheney ’04 acquired 8.5 million e-mail addresses (nice work @PatrickRuffini) #meetkarl
Rove: “Senator Bob Graham of Florida was just plain weird…We just couldn’t be that lucky to get him as our opponent.”
Rove knew ’04 exit polls were crap when he saw (R) POTUS candidate losing white men in FL which hadn’t happened since 1964
Rove: Fmr. POTUS Clinton told him that his 72 hour strategy in ’06 was “genius” as GOP should have lost way more seats.
Rove: Obama '08 focus on the internet was a page stolen from Bush ’04. #meetkarl

Don’t Buy, Sell or Steal Email Lists

noreply@blogger.com (Jordan Raynor) — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 12:12:00 +0000

13 million e-mail addresses acquired by a single political campaign is astonishing. But what if Obama for America had purchased that e-mail list instead of growing it organically? Would it have been nearly as effective in GOTV or raising 2/3 of Obama's half-a-billion dollars raised online? No way.

Blue State Digital (Obama's digital strategy team) spells out why in a recent blog post. Instead of trying to reinvent the wheel, I figured I would share their thoughts with you on why your campaign should avoid buying, selling or stealing e-mail lists:

These people didn’t ask to hear from you. Nobody – not even you -- likes to receive emails from organizations that they didn’t ask to hear from. Sure, your list might suddenly double in size, but do those names care about your cause? Are they going to take action on your behalf? Probably not.
You’re killing your statistics. Everybody who runs an email campaign is obsessed with metrics. What’s a good open rate? What’s a good click-through rate? What’s a good action rate? What’s a low unsubscribe rate? If you dilute your email list with purchased names, you’re immediately dropping those statistics.
It’s disingenuous. One of the key components of a really successful online campaign is authenticity. People organize online because they want to be a part of a grassroots movement bigger than themselves; they don’t want to feel like they’re a pawn of a purchased PR stunt.
Your own email service provider won’t let you upload the list. Nearly every company in the political/nonprofit technology industry has a policy against purchased email lists.

Click here to read the entire post from BSD

Sayfie Review iPhone App

noreply@blogger.com (Jordan Raynor) — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 13:54:00 +0000

My last few months serving as Executive Editor of Sayfie Media were largely spent focused on designing and managing the development of the Sayfie Review iPhone app, which was finally released last month. I could not be prouder of the final product and the team who built this incredible app. Justin Sayfie has always thought three steps ahead of political news outlets in Florida and this iPhone app is proof that he's not done yet.

The app brings an elegant design to every Florida politico's favorite political news service - making SayfieReview.com content easy to digest and, more importantly, easy to share from any iPhone or iPod Touch.

SayfieReview.com's 5 most essential services are elegantly displayed in the app's 5 menu options - Today's News, Blog Ticker, Videos, Most Read Stories and Links. What makes the app so valuable to me though is it's seamless integration of sharing functionality via Facebook, Twitter and e-mail. By connecting your Facebook or Twitter account with the app, you can easily share your favorite links from the Sayfie Review app with your various networks. As these networks continue to serve as primary sources of news aggregation for consumers, this feature will only grow in it's significance and value.

The release of the Sayfie Review iPhone app adds yet another mobile option for SayfieReview.com readers. In July of 2008, the Sayfie Review became one of the first news organizations in Florida to launch a Blackberry app.

Although the Sayfie Review iPhone app has only been heavily promoted since this past Tuesday, the app already boasts a 4 star rating on iTunes. If you haven't already downloaded the app on your iPhone or iPod Touch, you can do so by clicking here.

My Friends Killed the Newspaper Editor

noreply@blogger.com (Jordan Raynor) — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 13:58:00 +0000

The latest report from Pew Internet confirms what many of us have known for a while now – our friends and socialgraphs are slowly diminishing the influence of the once all-powerful newspaper editors. In the study, Pew found that 75% of Americans who consume news online discover their news through social networking sites or through forwarded e-mail, and 52% of them share news with others through these channels.

This study confirms suspicions we have had for some time – our Facebook news streams and Twitter feeds are becoming our “homepage” for news consumption. NYTimes.com or CNN.com are no longer our browser’s homepage; and if they are, they are not likely the central hub for where we consume our news. The same Pew study found that only 7% of those surveyed are receiving information and news from a single media platform. Our news sources are more diversified than ever, but what’s more important is how we are being driven to this news content.

Before mass online news consumption, we were forced to consume whatever newspaper editors and TV producers decided we should read and watch. In the early years of online news consumption, news aggregation was not a necessity, as our sources for quality online news were slim. In these days, we could set our browser’s homepage to NYTimes.com and be satisfied with the flow of information we were receiving from the newspaper’s site editors. Today, we have the ability to create our own personalized news aggregation services from the news sources we trust most – our ‘friends’ and socialgraphs.

Gone are the days when a single newspaper’s website was the hub for all of one person’s news consumption, linking to various stories within that single hub of news. Today’s news consumption follows a hub-n-spoke model in which social networks are the hub that direct us out to the spokes of various news sources linked to by our friends and trusted news aggregation ‘editors’.

As more Americans rely on social networks as their primary source of news consumption, it will be increasingly important for news organizations, political campaigns and brands to find creative ways to convince individuals to spread news on their behalf. Newspaper editors will continue to have nearly exclusive influence over what is printed by their publications, but their power over driving eyeballs to this content is now in the hands of the masses. Every one of our friends is now a news aggregation ‘editor’ with the power to drive us from our social news hub to the various spokes of trusted news content.

Why @JebBush Joining Twitter Matters

noreply@blogger.com (Jordan Raynor) — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 13:00:00 +0000

If you have ever e-mailed former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, you know exactly why his joining Twitter yesterday is significant. During his time as Governor, Bush was notorious for personally responding to all e-mails sent to him within 24 hours. Bush understood and embraced a concept that few politicians of his time understood – direct media (a term coined by TechRepublican founder, David All). Before Twitter and Facebook became widely adopted platforms for politicians to directly communicate with voters and vice-versa, Bush understood the essential concept of direct access and transparency.

Even with the boom of politicians setting up Twitter accounts and Facebook pages, few are using these social platforms to personally engage directly with voters and constituents. If Jeb Bush’s previous history with e-mail is any indication of how he may use Twitter, he could serve as a standard-bearer amongst politicians using the platform effectively.

Bush has had a Twitter account (@cgables43) set up since March 11, 2009, but had never tweeted until yesterday when he announced that he would be moving to a new Twitter handle - @JebBush. As word leaked out of Bush’s new account and the legitimacy of the account was confirmed by Bush’s staff, @JebBush’s following exploded to 1,000 followers in one hour. As of 7:30 a.m. this morning, 15 hours after launching the new account, Bush has surpassed the 2,000 follower mark.

As with any move Jeb Bush makes, politicos inside and outside of Florida can add this latest Twitter maneuver to the growing list of more public appearances the former Governor has made in the past few months - moves sure to create buzz for a Bush 2012 candidacy.

Bush has yet to tweet from the new @JebBush account, but hopefully the move to the new Twitter handle is a sign that Bush is ready to embrace Twitter. Jeb Bush has seemingly always been a tech-geek of sorts, whether it is sporting off his new Kindle to Tucker Carlson in an Esquire interview, or featuring his beloved Blackberry in his official portrait which hangs in the state Capitol. If Bush applies the same discipline he applies to other forms of electronic communication, I am confident that @JebBush will quickly become one of the most effective and popular tweeting politicians.

Cross-posted from TechRepublican.com

@JebBush Joins Twitter

noreply@blogger.com (Jordan Raynor) — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 21:57:00 +0000

On March 11, 2009, the Twitter account @cgables43 was created with the name "Jeb Bush". For nearly a year, I have waited to see if the former Florida Governor would indeed tweet. Today, @cgables43 issued their first tweet saying:

As @JebBush's following skyrocketed, so did speculation as to whether or not this actually was Jeb Bush. Minutes after the tweet from @cgables43, I was able to independently confirm with Bush's Foundation for Excellence in Education that the account is indeed former Florida Governor Bush.

Bush's move onto Twitter is a significant one. Jeb Bush has seemingly always been a tech-geek of sorts, whether it is sporting off his new Kindle to Tucker Carlson in an Esquire interview or featuring his beloved Blackberry in his official Governor's portrait which hangs in the state Capitol.

Bush's Twitter maneuver brings many questions with it - How active of a Twitter user will Bush be? Will the tech-savvy former Governor personally tweet? Does the Governor's Twitter-move accompanied by a more public schedule in recent months signal that he is gearing up for another run at public office, possibly the White House in 2012?

Facebook on Capitol Hill

noreply@blogger.com (Jordan Raynor) — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 13:13:00 +0000

Politico has a great profile piece out this morning on the three-man team at the helm of Facebook's D.C. bureau whose job it is to expand Facebook's presence in Washington D.C. This includes working with candidates and elected officials on setting up Facebook pages and profiles while ensuring that they are complying with election laws. Click here to read the full article and also be sure to check out Politico's video below:

Rubio Articulates New 3M

noreply@blogger.com (Jordan Raynor) — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 23:53:00 +0000

This video explains precisely how Marco Rubio has been able to successfully implement a New 3M campaign (MESSAGE → MOMENTUM → MONEY). Absolutely one of the best articulations of the concepts behind New 3M that I have heard from any politician:

FlaDems Take Over Putnam's Wikipedia Page

noreply@blogger.com (Jordan Raynor) — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 16:04:00 +0000

I rarely point out what Democrats are doing well online, especially in Florida. But when lessons can be learned from the opposition, I find it necessary to share. The Florida Democratic Party ran a very creative attack on Republican Congressman Adam Putnam today on Wikipedia. Putnam, running for Commissioner of Agriculture, had his Wikipedia page as well as a page title "Hypocrisy" hijacked by the Party calling him a hypocrite (see screenshots below). The Party then distributed these screenshots to traditional reporters, bloggers and other Democratic "talkers" in the State.

Wikipedia is a web-based, free-content encyclopedia project based on an openly-editable model, meaning that anyone can edit anything about anybody on the site. Over the years, Wikipedia's credibility has increased as more people have begun to use the open-platform and post accurate information. What could be damaging for Putnam and other candidates (who all could fall victim of this sort of attack), is the effect Wikipedia pages have on search engines. Wikipedia pages frequently rank towards the top of Google search result pages and if a candidate is not watching closely, their Wikipedia pages can be hijacked with very unfavorable information from their opposition (see screenshot of Putnam's Google search results below):

To avoid this from happening to your campaign, you can "watch" Wikipedia pages of your choosing and receive updates any time they are edited.

Facebook Outlines Mobile Strategy

noreply@blogger.com (Jordan Raynor) — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 13:50:00 +0000

As Facebook continues to grow at an alarming rate of 1 million new users every other day, it's future will likely rest largely on it's success and adoption on mobile devices. Currently, there are more than 100 million active users accessing Facebook through their mobile device and according to Facebook, these mobile users are twice more active on Facebook than non-mobile users. So what does the future of Facebook on mobile devices look like? Facebook's Vice President of User Growth, Mobile and International Expansion, Chamath Palihapitiya, gave some insight during this recent session on Mobile Communications 2.0 at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona: