And it seems at this point, if you haven't gotten involved you've been living under a rock. While the site always contained the ability to search and discover trends, these features were buried. Today, with the new design, all of those television viewers who refused to give into the peer pressure of Oprah and Ashton Kutcher's hour-long Twitter tutorial will finally understand the value of the service. Twitter isn't just an emotional weather report generator, it's a taste of zeitgeist.

In some cases, the spirit of our times is simply our lust to win an iPhone in a Twitter sweepstakes or our willingness to spam our friends with Spymaster, and in other cases it is breaking news about the events, companies and issues that effect our lives. One of the interesting aspects of the new trends section is that unlike real-time search engine One Riot, Twitter not only offers the list of related-tweets, but it also offers a short rationale for a topic's popularity. This contextualization makes it particularly useful for news discovery.

Those who've abandoned their Twitter accounts might point to the frivolity of some of the home page's current trending topics; however, Twitter's ebb and flow is only as silly or intelligent as our society dictates. When the President of the United States encourages you to tweet your senator to support health insurance reform, you know you should probably continue to keep an eye on this micro blogging superstar.

The goverati includes not only government employees, but also people from think tanks, trade publications, and non-profits. And it includes high-profile thinkers outside of the government who have an interest in a more open, transparent, and efficient government; people such as Joe Trippi, Craig Newmark, and Tim O'Reilly. Using formal and informal social networks, the goverati is networking, sharing information, and changing how parts of the government interact with each other and with citizens.

About a week ago, President Obama issued a memo on this very topic. The memo, which affects all Executive Branch employees, has three main pillars: government should be more transparent, participatory, and collaborative. Social software will be part of an overall strategy to make this happen, spearheaded by the CTO, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), and the General Services Administration (GSA). The naming of a "New Media" czar, Macon Phillips, will no doubt push the process along and keep branches well informed.

There are many barriers to this kind of change, so many they would be overwhelming to list. But the changes that are happenening are being covered by the mainstream press, and they are being enacted mainly by -- you guessed it -- the goverati.

Case in point: webmasters. Numerous policies and customs restrict the government's use of things like commercial websites to host video and cookies to track visitors. Insiders from across the government have written a number of white papers that explain the problems (without using jargon) and outline reasonable solutions (here's one of those white papers).

Former CIO of the Department of Defense, Dr. Linton Wells II, often comments to me that battles in government are often won by the most persistent. And the goverati are certainly persistent. It knows that momentum and timing are on its side, and it is pressing its agenda on Washington.

But changing the government is not like changing Apple Computer. President Obama issuing a directive is not the same as Steve Jobs issuing one. It simply doesn't work that way, for all kinds of reasons. To change government, you must be persistent, have a hook, and know when and how to leverage connections and power to "muscle" change. And there are usually competing factions, outside interests, political seasons, etc.; it's a very delicate business.

But interestingly, just as the goverati is fighting for a more transparent, participatory, and collaborative government, it is also leveraging the social tools it loves so much to become a body more powerful than the sum of its parts. The informal Government 2.0 social network GovLoop was developed by a DHS employee in his spare time; in a few months, it has surged to over 5000 members. Intelink, the intelligence community's internal social network and information hub, is awash in blogs and other communication about the topic. Events are sprouting up everywhere, most notably non-profit ones planned by insiders and advertised primarily by word of mouth.

The Sunlight Foundation, which uses the power of the Internet to shine light on the interplay of money, lobbying, and government, is hosting an unconference in late February called Transparency Camp, in which open-government advocates from all walks of life (tech, policy, non-profit, etc.) can talk across organizational and party lines in a casual atmosphere about new strategies for goverment transparency. It is sold out. This is exactly the kind of event you can expect the goverati in Washington and elsewhere to be holding in the next year as we transform President Obama's memo into a reality within government.

Closer to home, three partners and I have recently established the Government 2.0 Club, modeled on Social Media Club. Government 2.0 Club will bring together thought leaders in government, academia, and industry from across the country to explore how social media and Web 2.0 technologies can create a more transparent, participatory, and collaborative government. Local "Clubs" will hopefully also sprout up to discuss issues specific to them. And the first Government 2.0 Camp is happening in Washingston in late March.

The excitement over new social technologies has not abated in Washington. Change is indeed on the way. The intriguing part is the mechanism by which it is happening. By using these social tools to network and share information among themselves, the goverati is helping to spread the use of these very tools throughout the government.

Dr. Mark Drapeau is a biological scientist, government consultant, and author. He has a B.S. and Ph.D. in animal behavior, conducted postdoctoral research on complex genomic and neural systems, and has published writing in Science, Nature, Genome Research, American Scientist, the New York Times, the Washington Times, and other venues.

The particular Creative Commons license chosen by Change.gov, the "By" license (one of many options), means that instead of the default US Copyright of "all rights reserved," visitors are now allowed to reuse any of the content from the site as long as they give attribution back to the original source. Standard Copyright is for protecting scarce content but Creative Commons is a legal framework set up to make sharing and reuse as easy as possible.

Introducing Creative Commons to More People

The license on Change.gov also states that anyone who posts anything to Change.gov (like comments) must accept that their content will be under Creative Commons as well. This could be the first introduction to the CC concept for millions of people. It would have been good to see the CC license listed on the bottom of every page instead of just on a relatively obscure "copyright policy" page. In all likelihood though, the Obama team chose CC because it makes the most sense to use, not to prove a point.

This act of support for progressive intellectual property policy is big news, but it also makes us wonder - what's next? That's exciting to think about.

Check out CreativeCommons.org to learn more about this new publishing paradigm.

The goal behind HeyCosmo Concierge is great: save you time. However, its practicality makes me wonder. The service implements advanced telephony technology to help you complete tasks. The easiest example of this would be making dinner reservations. Instead of you calling restaurants one-by-one in order to find an 8:00 PM seating for a party of five, you could use HeyCosmo Concierge to do the dialing for you. With an automated, but customizable, message, its robo-dialer immediately contacts all the restaurants in your area (and this can be narrowed down by cuisine, too) and asks the recipient of the call to press (1) for yes, we can accommodate you, (2) no, we cannot accommodate you, etc. in response to the initial recorded greeting and question. The particular questions and how they are phrased can be specified by you. You can also record your own voice if desired. At the end of the messages, an ad will play, which is how the service makes money.

After placing the call, you'll see results return immediately, in real-time, and next to each listing you'll see the status of the call and then how the person on the other end responded (1, 2, 3, etc.) or if there was no answer.

HeyCosmo Concierge

The technology behind this is pretty impressive, but my concern is for the people on the other end of the call. Would they think this recording is spam? Would they realize it's just a recording and hang up? Did I just save my time at the expense of theirs? Based on the number of restaurants dialed with no response, I think it's entirely possible that the answer in many cases would be "yes."

The reason? Phone trees. After years of navigating the annoying phone trees in an effort to reach an actual human being when dialing up customer service, there's a profound distaste for automated greetings and messages that's still very prevalent in our culture. And unfortunately, without willing participants on the other end of the line, HeyCosmo Concierge won't be effective.

HeyCosmo Blaster

However, the other app by this company, HeyCosmo Blaster, might have some potential...at least among the mobile-savvy kids, teens, and young adults of Gens X, Y, and Z. Blaster is a simple social planning app. To use, you just enter in a date, time, and place to meet along with the names and numbers of your friends.

Blaster, like Concierge, immediately dials your friends and presents the menu choices you specified. (i.e. "Press (1) from Meet at 1:30 PM at the mall," "Press (2) to meet at Katy's house at 2:00 PM," etc.). Organizers can then see the results in real-time and pick the most popular choice.

HeyCosmo Blaster

Although the technology is essentially the same as that of Concierge, the difference here is that you can have a personal conversation with your friends, family, or other group of message recipients beforehand: "Hey guys, since there's so many of us, I'm going to use this new mobile tool from now on to organize our __________ (Fill in the blank: meetings, study groups, classes, meetups, parties, etc.) Your phone number will also show on their CallerID, so they will know it's you. Since your friends will be expecting the call, the responses are bound to be a notch above those that come from Concierge, which is essentially a recorded message beamed to perfect strangers around your city.

As for who this service appeals to, my vote goes with the younger crowd. Obviously, anyone could use it, but with this group, mobile devices are glued to their hands, so here it has a better chance of success.

Learn More

You can visit HeyCosmo's web site and check out all their services here: www.heycosmo.com. Concierge and Blaster are both also available as Blackberry apps; an iPhone app will arrive in a few weeks.

Note: HeyCosmo also has another service, HeyCosmo Prankster, which was not demoed today. As a 10-year-old, I would have loved it. As an adult, I have to say that it's just plain wrong.

• Chrome has taken 1-2% share of the global browser market since its launch (NetApp)
• IE has lost 4-5% share so far in 2008 (NetApp)
• Analysts are skeptical of Chrome's adoption by enterprises, given its unproven "beta" status
• IE had 72% share and Firefox had 20% share in August 2008
• Microsoft and Mozilla recently launched browsers (IE 8 & Firefox 3) with similar features as Chrome

Click through to RWW Predictions to login and cast your prediction.

Note: On Monday afternoon the RWW Live crew will be discussing Chrome's impact on the browser market with 2-3 special guests. Be sure to tune in at 3:30 pm PDT Monday.

The site, which says that it wants to give "the Obama grassroots a platform to submit and vote on ideas to better the 2008 primary and general election campaign of Barack Obama," works in generally the same way as the Dell, Starbucks, or Salesforce sites do. Users submit ideas, then vote and comment on their favorites. The top ideas right now are "Make transparency a central issue in the campaign" and "Keep the Obama logo and visual identity for the general [election]."

Josh Levy at TechPresident thinks that the site was "likely borne out of necessity," because the netroots has criticized Obama for not reaching out to online activists. With Obama's embrace of social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter, and his dominance of those online forums (compared to other presidential candidates), it's hard to figure out what else he could be doing to engage the online audience, though.

Ben Smith over at Politico believes that Oh Boy Obama "doesn't quite fit the mold" for the Obama campaign, which he sees as wanting to maintain "tight strategic control" at the expense of "real community engagement." That also seems a little off the mark, though. We wrote in March about the Obama campaign's use of wikis in the Texas and California primaries to organize on the ground campaign efforts. Wikis were specifically appealing to Obama because they allowed volunteers to shape the messaging and quickly collaborate with each other without the need to go through a webmaster. Or in other words: Obama was willing to relinquish control in favor of organizational speed.

Regardless, Oh Boy Obama is making use of a good idea from the corporate world in a way that makes sense in the political world. The Obama campaign will likely be able to cull some good ideas from the site while they shape their general election campaign this fall (assuming Obama gets his party's nomination). Even though Oh Boy Obama users will be the most dedicated campaign supporters -- not representative of the country at large -- the site can be used as an early testing ground to guage reaction to new ideas. And at the very least, getting involved with sites like Oh Boy Obama will help the Obama campaign energize the grassroots.

On the Democratic side, the web looks to have been a little better at predicting the results of the election. Obama, who was far and away the most popular Democratic candidate on the Internet, captured 37% of his party's state delegates, easily beating Edwards and Clinton. So why is it that the web was so reliable at predicting the winner on the Democratic side, but so out of touch with the Republican side? We can piece together the answer from exit polling and other data by figuring out just why each candidate won.

Why Obama Won

We'll tackle Obama first. According to exit polls, most of Obama's support came from the 17-44 age group, which made up 30% of Democratic caucus goers. In the 17-24 age bracket, which made up 17% of the total turnout, Obama won 57% of the vote. It's clear that Obama resonated with young voters in Iowa -- precisely the type of people who would be most likely to follow politics via the Internet. What's more, he (and the Democratic party) were able to motivate young voters to caucus.

Obama also won a plurality of independent and first-time caucus goers. Clearly, the Internet helped Obama a great deal. He was able to mobilize young voters online and actually translate that support into results at the polls. Further, as we noted earlier this year, Obama's online popularity has helped him out-fundraise his rivals.

But Obama also used that money to far outspend other Democrats in Iowa. He reportedly spent $9 million to run nearly 11,000 television ad spots in Iowa -- nearly $2 million more than Hillary Clinton. Obama also made 186 campaign stops in Iowa since July 1, 2007 -- not the most among Democrats, but still indicative of a strong campaign in the state.

The data suggests that though the Internet clearly helped Obama by rallying support among young voters who actually turned up to vote, it was likely traditional offline campaigning that won the state for the Illinois Senator.

Why Huckabee Won

Huckabee's numbers are more curious. He was outspent in Iowa (Mitt Romney -- who finished second -- spent $7 million on TV ads to Huckabee's $1.4 million), and though Huckabee saw a surge of Internet support in the past couple of months, the exit polling showed that young voters made up only a small fraction on the Republican side, where the large majority of caucus participants were over the age of 45.

The exit polls do point to a reason for Huckabee's run away victory, though: 60% of Republican voters identified themselves as "born-again or evangelical Christians," and 46% of those voted for Huckabee. Huckabee, who is an ordained Southern Baptist minister, is generally seen as a champion of the Christian right.

It seems likely, then, that Huckabee owes his Iowa victory to a grassroots support movement among evangelical Christians -- one that likely did not take place on social networking sites and YouTube, but rather in Churches and at small town hall meetings. Huckabee did make 120 visits to the state, the second most of any Republican candidate.

Why Ron Paul Didn't Win

The same exit poll numbers that attribute Huckabee's win to a strong evangelical Christian showing, also demonstrate a poor youth turnout that likely hurt Ron Paul. Most of Paul's votes came from the 17-29 year old crowd, but that only accounted for 11% of the total caucus participants on the Republican side. Where Obama was helped by a strong youth turnout (the 17-29 age group made up 22% of Democratic voters), Paul was hurt by a weak youth turnout for the Republican caucus. It is interesting to note, as well, that Huckabee still crushed Paul in that age group, taking 40% of the under 30 vote, to Paul's 21%.

Paul may also have been hurt by not running a very strong traditional campaign in Iowa. By mid-December, Paul had only bought radio time in Iowa, while his competition was spending up a storm to the tune of 8,500 TV spots for Romney and 1,800 spots for Huckabee. Paul also visited Iowa the least of the top 6 Republican candidates -- only 37 times since July 1. Compared to 144 visits from Romney and 120 visits from Huckabee, Paul was a relative ghost in Iowa.

This could indicate that Paul conceded Iowa to the front-runners and plans to spend his massive war chest elsewhere (perhaps, as many have speculated, to run as an Independent -- note: I am not well versed in campaign finance law, so I am not totally sure if it is legally plausible to spend money donated for a party primary run on a general election as an Independent). Or it could indicate what many of us have suspected, that the Internet can make a vocal minority appear to have much more momentum than they actually do.

The grassroots movement that has sprung up around Paul is spearheaded by a very web-savvy bunch. They have organized around tools like email, message boards, Google News, and Technorati, such that if something is blogged about Ron Paul, or submitted to Digg, or Reddit, they descend on it and make sure their collective voice is heard. But I think poll results -- and I suspect election results as well -- will continue to indicate that Paul's vocal online minority is still just that: a minority.

And as for beating Giuliani? As I mentioned, the traditional polls predicted it would happen, and it's really not a surprise considering Giuliani abandoned Iowa and New Hampshire weeks ago to focus his attention on later primary states, such as Florida (which votes on January 29) or those that vote on so-called Super Tuesday (February 5). Still, 10% of the vote is better than he was polling and is impressive. I don't think it will be enough to carry him to the nomination, but the Internet did make Ron Paul relevant enough to get the mainstream media talking about him, which likely helped him gain some supporters.

I think the most interesting scenario for the future is an Independent run by Ron Paul (let's face it, he's not going to win the Republican nomination, and his politics line up more with the Libertarian party anyway -- whom he represented in the 1988 presidential election). Ron Paul might still not have a realistic shot at winning the general election as an Independent, but with his fundraising prowess, he could make sure he was heard and might draw enough votes away from the major party nominees to have a real impact on the results.