Jascha Franklin-Hodge, CEO of Blue State Digital, gave an interesting presentation at the IAB Canada winter conference about the online tactics the Obama campaign used in their fund raising/canvassing/propaganda campaign (see copy of presentation above).
One point that was not emphasized in the presentation was that the online component of the Obama online campaign was planned/managed by Chris Hughes, better known as Mark Zuckerman's college roommate, a.k.a. the co-founder of facebook.
The Wall Street Journal did an interesting article on Hughes participation in the campaign back in 2007:
"After graduating from college a year ago, Mr. Hughes moved to Palo Alto to work on product development full time at Facebook. During the 2006 campaign, Mr. Obama wasn't running yet, but his staff decided to take advantage of the growing interest in him among young people and wanted to set up a profile for him on Facebook. Mr. Obama's Senate Internet director, Jim Brayton, emailed Facebook's support team for help and Mr. Hughes responded.
Mr. Hughes quickly helped the Obama camp set up an official profile on Facebook. It included photos of Mr. Obama, information about his favorite musicians (John Coltrane, Stevie Wonder) and movies ("The Godfather" I and II, "Casablanca") -- and almost immediately drew messages of support from other Facebook users. "Run for president! Save us!" wrote Alex Sheperd, a University of Missouri student, in the first message on Mr. Obama's page.
Four months later, Mr. Obama announced his candidacy. Mr. Hughes, who had stayed in touch with Mr. Brayton, called to see how he could help.
Mr. Hughes was hired after an interview over coffee at Washington D.C.'s Union Station. "I asked him about some of his ideas," for the Web site, Mr. Brayton says. "He basically went on for an hour." Mr. Hughes won't disclose his salary. He has taken a leave from closely-held Facebook but says he retains an ownership stake and stock options."
From the tone of this article it appears as though Blue State Digital acted as production house under the direction of Chris Hughes, rather than as the strategists behind the campaign. Either way, way to go Chris & Blue State Digital on probably the best executed political campaign to date.
Chris Hughes will also be on the cover of Fast Company magazine next month (April 2009).
Now I'm pretty confident to say it is impossible facebook's current income statement/balance sheet justifies a $10 billion valuation - in other words, big expectations are factored into that number.
This got me thinking: what features could facebook implement to generate more cash? (I know the possibilities are endless, but humor me).
Here are two of my favourite:
#1) Instant messaging software w/ contextual ads embedded. Many people already use the facebook wall/message system as an instant messenger - why not just make it official?
#2) A virtual currency / loyalty points system : I have a soft spot for loyalty point systems - they introduce a whole new form of corporate participation, such as sponsored events, "branded" merchandise or profile pages, etc...
What's your favourite facebook billion dollar addition?
As I have suspected for quite a while, the whole businesses in Second Life thing appears to have been somewhat overexagerated.
Although Second Life's website claims it has over 8,000,000 members, Forrester Research has found that there are only 30,000 to 40,000 users are logged on at peak times.
When compared to other virtual communities (World of Warcraft anyone?), that number is pretty tiny...
I actually wrote a very long post on this topic, and it was just deleted by mistake. Quite frustrating - that's why you don't talk on the phone and blog at the same time.
Long story short, the argument I was going to make is that Second Life is not dying, but rather virtual communities are just maturing, which is a good thing for marketers.
Much like in the real world, where different demographics frequent different locations, different people enjoy different virtual communities online. Although I don't have research to back it up, my gut says Second life users have very different profiles from Counterstrike users, and World of Warcraft and The Sims Online users, and...
Therefore, as a marketer, it is your job to only enter those communities where you have customers, rather than the one that just happens to be on the cover of Wired or Times this month. Second Life likely wasn't appropriate for many businesses, and hence the pullout. That doesn't mean that it isn't appropriate for any businesses, and definitely doesn't mean that business doesn
Searchengineland has an interesting article today about different methods one could hypothetically use to manipulate a wikipedia entry.
Manipulate may actually be too strong a word, as you can't really manipulate a wiki for an extended period of time (as another member of the community will undo your edits). Instead, you can make subtle changes to a wiki entry to influence the readers impression of its content.
1. Add content to the top of the entry, pushing content you don't want people to read below the fold.
2. Change the organization method (i.e. lettering/numbering) to influence what people focus on. If volume numbers are quoted without sources, erase them with an explanation that they have no reference.
3. Manufacture paragraphs which hide negative content. People rarely read full paragraphs - make sure the first and last sentence of each is positive.
4. Super-extend a post: Internet users are lazy - the length of a wikipedia entry is directly proportional to the likeliness it will be read completely.
5. Include pictures to draw attention away from statistics. Use different sized pictures to push negative content in a low visibility area.
Just on a side note, does anyone else find it ironic that searchengineland.com does not have search engine friendly URLs?
Berkley PhD student Danah Boyd decided to spend 6 months researching this concept for her thesis. She discovered:
"Social networks are strongly connected to geography, race, and religion; these are also huge factors in lifestyle divisions and thus 'class'...MySpace has most of the kids who are socially ostracised at school because they are geeks, freaks, or queers"
Am I the only one who thinks it is pretty logical that a college networking site (which was restricted to only college students for a number of years) is more popular with college grads?
As covered in every major tech/business news source over the last week, Facebook recently opened up their user base to external companies via their Facebook platform program.
Enter iLike, a music recommendation engine and one of the first Facebook Platform applications. As of May 31st, 7:56 PM, iLike has 981,222 users on Facebook. The Facebook Platform has been live since May 24th. Therefore, Facebook users became iLike members at the rate of ~122,650 / Day.
The implications of this are significant to say the least, and I'll try not to delve into the obvious ones here.
What I find interesting about this case is it is further proof of the immense power a small number of companies have over North American Internet Users. It almost seems as though as the Internet grows larger and larger, power is consolidating into the hands of a small number of players: Google has search, Facebook has social networking, eBay auctions, craiglist classifieds, etc...
While this shouldn't be surprising, there is no doubt a certain irony in the fact that the Internet was supposed to "democratize" information and business. Instead, it seems a small number of super-organizations have emerged which present greater threats to personal privacy and information security than anything which existed before the 'net.
