During the election season, Barack Obama's campaign got a lot of kudos for its use of social media tools. As we noted in our post entitled Obama's Social Media Advantage, both Presidential candidates used the web and social media tools to connect to their followers and organize their campaigns - but Obama got much more mileage out of it. Furthermore, after the election result Obama's team immediately launched change.gov. It's a new site for the President-Elect that appears to be crowdsourcing the political agenda, for example by asking the American people to share their stories and their goals.
Not to be outdone, or left behind, this week the Republican party launched a new website that makes use of social media tools. Let's take a look...
Described as a "grassroots Web site", RepublicanForAReason.com was developed by the Republican National Committee (RNC). It has similar aims to Obama's change.gov, in that it's a platform for supporters to share their opinions about the future direction of the party. As RNC Chairman Robert M. "Mike" Duncan said in a press release, "we need to hear what our volunteers, activists, elected leaders, and party members think about the Republican Party as we rebuild, re-focus, and renew our bond with the American people."
The homepage features a video (the first half of which is all Ronald Reagan), options to upload video or text to the site, a bright red 'Donate' button, a link to the party's Facebook group, and more. It even features an AddThis.com bookmarking pop-up widget.
Judging by the text and video entries uploaded so far, the site hasn't gotten major traction yet. There are 325 text entries and just 17 video entries. The site has a useful search filter and community ratings - although there's no apparent way to comment on individual submissions. The video section needs work; the screens are tiny and users need to click through to YouTube to view full-screen. And again there is no way to comment.
One noticeable difference between RepublicanForAReason.com and Obama's change.gov is that the content submissions for change.gov don't currently display on the public website. In fact there's no indication where those messages go and if they will be published at all. The change.gov blog asks readers to "keep sending your stories and we'll keep learning from them." But it'd be great if everything was published on the site. RepublicanForAReason.com appears to have no filter, which means it's open to be mocked by The Daily Show - but good on them for publishing the public's submissions.
Overall, RepublicanForAReason.com feels a little underdone - possibly rushed in response to the Obama campaign's dominating presence in social media. However we do give RepublicanForAReason.com points for being more open than change.gov in publishing public submissions.
Back in June, ReadWriteWeb reviewed the websites of Obama and McCain - and we came away impressed with both. We wrote that Obama's website was a tour de force of web magic, with seemingly every social networking base covered. McCain's website was impressive too - donations, calls to get involved, and social networking were features to the fore. So both parties have effectively used the Web this year - check out this article by Adult ADD Strengths for detailed stats - and are continuing to tap the Internet with new sites post-election.
Whatever your political persuasion, it's great to see politicians opening up for public stories and opinions using the Web. There's improvement needed on both RepublicanForAReason.com and change.gov, but soliciting the thoughts of citizens via the Web is a good start. Let's hope the politicians on both sides actually listen and respond to them.
Comments
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I'm a Republican and damn proud of it. Why should sandal wearing hippy demon-cats corner the market on this inter-web thingy!!
Posted by: tony dee | November 12, 2008 6:43 PM
Oddly this same website that the RNC launched looks very similar to the one launched already (and gaining better traction) by the Young Republicans called ThisIsMyParty.org
The RNC is IMHO is out of touch completely with the younger voters they are trying to appeal to with that website.
Posted by: Jeff Vreeland | November 12, 2008 8:55 PM
Hi Richard,
thanks for the link.
Agreed it looks rushed, they should have spent more time doing some public post mortems on their web and social media activities before building it. There should be a way to comment on their site, even if it means registering and logging in. Also there are no communities or groups to join on the site.
Actually I'd argue that the Republicans didn't use the web very effectively at all. Here are some reason why that I mentioned in my Obama vs McCain social media seo comparison post
John McCain:
- didn't bother to sent out a get out the vote message to his 4911 followers on twitter, while Obama did sent out a tweet to his 115,623 twitter followers. John McCain’s last tweet was October 24th. Some power twitter users have 20k followers, and some of those retweet, so depending on who follows you, that one tweet can have a big impact.
- had no youtube subscribers listed on his website vs Obama's 117,873
- had no Myspace comments on his profile page vs Obama's 147,630
- had no flickr account vs Obama who had 50,218 photo's in his Photosteam and 7,148 friends
McCain’s social network page has only 3 suggested sites, Obama’s suggests 16.
McCain's website was kind of clueless about SEO, he had the same title tag for every page, which besides keyword permalinks is the #1 SEO thing you should do. Republicans for an Issue still have the same title tags for every single post.
Of the 29 metrics I used they tied on one, McCain won one, and Obama won 27, some by 30%, some by several hundred percent, some by several thousand percent. Frankly they got beat quite badly by Obama from a web and social media wise. Plus it's not just a technology issue, Obama had more of an open source campaign, McCain's was more command and control, an approach that doesn't work that well in social media.
Should be some interesting times ahead in US politics.
Posted by: Pete Quily | November 13, 2008 1:25 AM
I can't believe you didn't mention the most evident feature of this website: its buttons and color palette are an unabashed copy of those used by barackobama.com, from the pale blue hues to the fonts used in the headings to the red fading in the "donate" button.
Posted by: Carlos Arturo Serrano | November 13, 2008 6:10 AM
Maybe you all can figure out how they did it.....
The other day I followed someone's recommendation over to change.gov, having no clue what it was until I got there.. Purely trusting, unfortunately, because it was a .gov domain..
*SOMEHOW*, two or three fresh reboots later, change.gov was asking to set a cookie..
*NO* webpages had been clicked yet, meaning none "live", connected to the Internet, *NONE*, as I had *JUST* signed on to the Internet..
And change.gov was *NOT* one of the open tabs waiting to be reloaded so I could continue surfing.. The tab it occupied had been closed some, again, two or three full computer reboots previous.. The first thing I did was double-check if I had somehow forgotten its status of opened or closed.. I hadn't..
That it occurred was..... troubling.. Have *never* had a website do that.. Have had them ask permission to set cookies when I first open the browser offline with the domain set to "allow for session" so, yes, I am aware that particular circumstance can happen..
The change.gov thing has not recurred since that day so, you know, who knows, but, still.....
Fact remains that it did.
Because of the fairness that came across in your post, just thought maybe you all could see if it duplicates at all for you under any unusual setups..
Compromised Trust and Privacy these Fingertips do not take lightly..
Peace and best wishes from North Georgia.. :wink:
Posted by: Cindy Sue Causey | November 13, 2008 6:50 AM
@Pete Quily
"...Republicans didn't use the web very effectively at all.."
And they never will since the Web's 30 year old function is to facilitate frictionless, open communication for everyone, equally, without restriction...
...that being the absolute polar opposite of the Republican party's mandate of secrecy, collusion and deceit. If one's goal is to compartmentalize the populous, give political influence to the highest bidder and pass only legislation that financially beenfit the private corporations that contribute to the Republican cause, things like Net Neutrality must never be allowed to pass.
Posted by: Todd | November 13, 2008 9:19 AM
RE: "good on them for publishing the public's submissions." I agree -- change.gov could do more with that.
Both sites need to understand that it's got to be a two-way conversation. Accepting ideas and feedback is NOT a two-way conversation unless someone is actually responding (and preferably with a public response). Likewise, putting up blog posts is not a two-way conversation, especially when you don't accept comments (Change.gov doesn't have commenting either). They need to have someone doing real interaction (hm, maybe I should apply for the job...).
Posted by: Kathleen McDade | November 13, 2008 12:20 PM