First there was linking President Bush with the words "miserable failure" on Google. Then last year Rick Santorum fell victim to another Google hack. This week it is Mitt Romney and the escapades of his long-distance car journey with his dog strapped on his car's roof that has gotten the Internets in a twist. Try Googling (or Binging) just Romney and look carefully at the results, you will see one link that is out of place. Sorry, we aren't going to show it here.
The Obama administration plans to renew its #40dollars campaign today, complete with a White House event this morning involving some of the people who posted Twitter messages about what $40 meant to them.
Launched in December, the White House used Twitter to let ordinary people sound off about the value of $40, which is the amount that would have been cut from the average American's weekly paycheck under a Republican tax proposal. The campaign was an instant success, as it transcended partisan lines and put complex tax policy into simple language.
Politics is partisan and objective, but Web design is often much more subjective: you know good Web design when you see it.
Unless, of course, you're a presidential candidate and his campaign staff. We asked expert Web designers to evaluate the major presidential candidates' campaign Web sites. The candidates got okay, but not great, marks. And in a year when social media and mobile technology could play a role in the election, okay may not be good enough.
Fewer people are relying on the Internet in general and social media specifically for election news and information than some social media "experts" would have us believe, according to a new poll by the Pew Research Center.
"We're always looking to get as close to one touch donations as we can," Romney Campaign's Digital Director Zac Moffat told the LATimes.
Politico reports that both the Romney and Obama campaigns have started using Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey's "magical" dongle, Square. Of course, you can't pay by saying your name as you now can at select merchants, but Square still makes campaign donations much faster and easier. Staff, field organizers and campaign volunteers hook up Square to their mobile phones and accept campaign donations on the spot.
Soldiers stationed overseas have been able to cast absentee votes in 13 Florida counties since December using a Web portal developed by Democracy Live using Microsoft's Azure platform. Similar programs will be used for primaries in Virginia and California as a result of funding the three states received under the Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment (MOVE) Act.
Which begs the question: How long before all of us can vote from the comfort of our laptop or smartphone?
Last month the White House struck upon a particularly effective idea: using the #40dollars hash tag on Twitter, they asked voters what $40 meant to them. That, the Obama administration said, was the amount of money that would have disappeared from an average middle class paycheck if Republicans allowed a tax cut to expire.
The move was so popular, Republicans are trying it for their election-year digital strategy. Ahead of last night's State of the Union address, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney and other Republicans started tweeting using the hashtag #1000days to accent the amount of time since Senate Democrats passed a federal budget.
So far I have been skeptical about how much of a role social media buzz has been playing in the presidential primaries, particularly when it comes to "predicting" winners. But of the three primaries to date, Saturday's race in South Carolina may have been the one that was most influenced by Twitter.
Traditional polls still did a better job of predicting the outcome of Saturday's South Carolina primary, but a backwards look at Twitter may show why and how Newt Gingrich scored such a decisive, 12-point victory over national front runner Mitt Romney. And in some regards, social media was able to tell a story in South Carolina that polls could not.
The four leading presidential candidates voiced opposition to the Stop Online Piracy and Protect IP Acts in a televised debate Thursday. The most forceful stance may have come from frontrunner Mitt Romney, who called the bill written by one of his key backers a threat to freedom of speech.
"The truth of the matter is the law as written is far too intrusive, far too expansive," Romney said. "It would have a depressing impact on one of the fastest growing industries... I'm standing for freedom."
Wikipedia blacked out its English-language site yesterday along with other major websites. It was a protest against Web censorship and a demonstration of its effects. Wikipedia's participation was a big win for the movement opposing SOPA/PIPA, the twin anti-piracy bills in Congress. Wikipedia is a resource millions use every day and most take for granted. It's the fifth most popular website in the world.
Wikimedia Foundation says the blackout reached 162 million people. Of those, 8 million used Wikipedia's tool to look up their congressional representatives. The blackout generated three trending Twitter topics when it started at midnight Eastern Time on Wednesday. Twitter also revealed frustration and lack of understanding of the blackout. But this was all by design. Censorship is frustrating. Wikipedians wanted a campaign that was both symbolic and effective, and that's what its staff delivered.
