The Google.com/elections site's navigation allows browsing by candidate or issue. It also features a "Trends" browser, showing how candidates are doing in Google search, Google News mentions and YouTube views, and an 'On the Ground' viewer showing stories overlaid on a map.

Google began a concerted overhaul of its political resources in October. It shut down the previous incarnation, the Public Sector and Elections Lab, and launched the Google Politics and Elections Team. The new team planned to "build tools to connect voters to the electoral process."

In November, Google launched an election hub for Egypt, which held its first elections since longtime dictator Hosni Mubarak was ousted. Today's launch of the U.S. elections page offers a similar set of features to empower voters and enhance campaigns, all built on Google's platform of valuable Web tools.

Where do you get your campaign news?

Led by social media leaders like Chris Hughes of Facebook, Obama managed to run circles around the Republican nominee, Arizona Senator John McCain. Whereas the Internet was only a secondary concern for McCain, Obama made the web a central part of his campaign. As such, it wasn't much of a surprise that Obama had more than 20 times as many Twitter followers than McCain at the time of the election. This helps to at least partially explain the $150 million fundraising advantage that Obama had during the 2008 presidential election.

Twitter has become one of the tools most embraced by the candidates this primary season. Indeed, several of the Republican candidates participated in a debate held on Twitter in July. Through Twitter, candidates have been able to quickly communicate their message to interested parties and rally their base of supporters.

Newt Gingrich

In particular, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich has been very active in cultivating a Twitter following. He even argued at one point earlier this year, when his poll numbers were still in the single digits, that he deserved more attention by the media on account of his numerous Twitter followers. With more than 1.3 million Twitter followers, he had far more followers than the rest of the Republican candidates combined. However, it was later revealed that most of those followers were created with fake accounts. It still showed the importance the Gingrich campaign was placing on social media, even if it meant buying followers for "social proof".

In addition, all of the candidates have been turning to YouTube as an alternative means of advertising their message during the campaign. Many of the campaign videos will see more views on YouTube than on traditional television, and the candidates have looked at YouTube as a low-cost way to spread their message visually, even if it means targeting a younger audience.

Ron Paul

Rick Perry

Of course, the social media blitz can hurt you just as much as it can help you. Texas Governor Rick Perry recently put out a much-pilloried video on YouTube that attempted to appeal to his political base on the religious right, attacking "Obama's war on religion." Although clearly targeted towards a specific audience in Iowa, the first state in the Republican presidential nomination race, the power of YouTube as a means of dissemination meant that the video received more than four million hits, not to mention continual replays on several news channels. However, the dislikes outnumbered the likes 30-to-1.

Mitt Romney

If there has been anyone who has been reluctant to embrace the digital revolution, it has been former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, who has been a consistent top tier candidate. His strategy was recently described in Forbes as having a "quaint, pre-social media, pre-2000 feel to it." Romney has been a front-runner for most of 2011 and this may have led his campaign to believe he didn't need to actively engage with his opponents. Interestingly enough, this strategy has worked out relatively well for him up to this point. Every candidate that has challenged him has quickly faltered. First, it was Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann after her first debate performance. Then, it was Rick Perry when he decided to enter the race. After that, businessman Herman Cain received all the attention.

Social Media Savvy

The use of social media in politics is still in its infancy, but its power is becoming more apparent by the day. Even Sean Parker, the former president of Facebook, declared recently that the 2012 presidential election would be won or lost on the Web. He may be a bit biased, but there should be enough truth there to motivate all Republican campaigns to pay more attention to their social media strategy. And, yes, that means you, too, Mitt Romney.

Gingrich photo by Gage Skidmore]]> Discuss]]> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/will_social_media_dictate_a_tight_republican_race.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/will_social_media_dictate_a_tight_republican_race.php Guest Mon, 19 Dec 2011 10:00:00 -0800 Jeremy Page The New York Times released a new iPhone app this afternoon and it looks great - if you're a Times subscriber at $15 per month. Will a large number of people pay that much to access high quality content about the public interest in a mobile app? I'm not so sure they will. Maybe that doesn't matter though.

The app is nicely designed and integrates a wide variety of features, some of which are available for free. It's both cool and very frustrating. Why aren't more apps like this? Why is the paper of record paywalling its best content about a subject of such great public importance?

I can hear that - but there's something that makes me feel uncomfortable about paywalling information about an election. It feels like something that oil barrons would do with secret dastardly newsletters they trade among themselves.

What's Inside

What's included in the app? Free users can access a selection of top election-related Times stories. "Six news stories for free," is how Raju Narisetti, Managing Editor of the Washington Post, summarizes the whole app on Twitter. Each story is appended by related Twitter messages, which is a unique feature. I'd love to know how they figured out what tweets to put on those pages - it seems to be automated and of moderate relevance.

Free users can also navigate to the election coverage of other publications through the Times app. The Washington Post, WSJ, MSNBC, Politico, Fox News and others all have prominent links in the app. That's a great move, even if it is very simple in execution. How many other major media outlets send their readers pro-actively to the content of competitors?

Unfortunately, that's where the free content ends. Everything else requires that you pay for either a $15 monthly subscription to access the NYTimes.com web content, the basic smartphone apps and presumably this app. Or you can pay an extra $20 each month to access the iPad app too. I like the Times iPad app but I'll read the WSJ or Al Jazeera or the Guardian or Flipboard or watch Newsy or read the Bloomberg app before I'm likely to pay $20 every month for the Times iPad app. Maybe I don't know what I'm missing; I would hate it if the New York Times wasn't around in 100 more years.

For those who do subscribe (and a lot of people do) other parts of the app are then unlocked. They include access to Times political blogs, an opinion section and a big election guide full of resources. Those include a Primary Calendar of the Republican nominating contests, a section of polls, updates on Republican candidates, stats by state and a calendar of debates. Finally, there's a big selection of videos by the Times video crew. These are great videos, I'm sure, and I am a little jealous that I can't watch them here.

So this is cool - and the participation of stats master Nate Silver of political research blog Five Thirty Eight is getting this thing closer to going over the line where I'd pay for it.

"But no interactivity?" asks Richard Robbins VP and Digital Strategist at the giant PR firm MWW Group, on Twitter. "Big miss. Suggestion for v2!!" Brooklyn designer Douglas Back asks on Twitter if there will be a web app version of the Election app content - and he probably wants it all for free, too!

You can't please all of the people all of the time and sometimes you've got to focus on the people who are paying you. Given the topic of this app, I feel a little uncomfortable about it - but maybe I need to get over it.

At the very least, the publishing experiment with high quality coverage of important matters, on mobile, is worthy of commendation.

Google has also launched an extensive Egyptian elections page full of info on candidates, major issues and polling stations. The information is provided by Egypt's Higher Elections Committee, but Google's page enhances the content with Google News, Maps and its other election tools. Google is building tools and programs to improve elections around the world, and this landmark election in Egypt is a storybook example of Web technology as a force for open and accountable government.

The Mubarak regime tried, even as it fell, to restrict access to Web services in Egypt in order to contain the uprising. It first blocked Twitter, then Facebook and Google services, and then it went for a full-on Internet blackout. The Internet struck back, though. Anonymous targeted Mubarak's regime websites, and hackers and bloggers in Egypt and around the world lent their support, even facing arrest.

Google lent its support, too, featuring YouTube videos of the uprisings. The extensive resources Google offers Egyptian voters on its elections page today follow through on that support with an effort to make democracy better through Web technology.

You can read more about Google's celebration of this historic election on the Google blog.

YouTube

The Neda video in Iran was one of the most politically powerful online videos in history. Look for YouTube to play a role in Belarus as well. While the government of Belarus is reported to have blocked all major social media and opposition media outlets like Charter 97, Belarus Partizan, and Solidarity, videos like the one below are likely to keep going online:

Twitter

The Belarus election is the most recent instance of where online new platforms allow new insight into a country's turmoil. While mainstream media outlets are now covering the story, Twitter provides a real-time stream of news, aggregated with the #electby hashtag on Twitter and, notably, curated by the U.S. State Department's eDiplomacy account, @eDipAtState. Along with retweeting many other accounts with relevant reports and information, @eDipState also shared an official statement: "US Embassy Minsk condemns election-day violence, excessive force by authorities."

In 2010, of course, the online audience doesn't have to rely on government accounts or blog posts to track what's happened. Using Twitter's advanced search, anyone can see geolocated #electby tweets with 500 miles of Belarus. Just click "translate" on the right sidebar to read them in English.

Ushahidi

An instance of Ushahidi, the powerful crowdmapping tool that was originally developing to track elections in Kenya, has been deployed at ElectBy.com.

Global Voices

In 2010, getting the full spectrum of information about international news means going beyond standard online mainstream media outlets or cable news. The Global Voices blogging network is an important collection of views, reports and media from around the world, including a comprehensive review of Belarus presidential Election Day protests and crackdowns.

Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty is also covering the aftermath of the election, including a photo gallery of scenes from the crackdown.

Storify

As Vadim Lavrusik pointed out in his predictions for media in 2011, a new role of journalists in events like the Belarus election is to act as a real-time curator of information, sifting, filtering, vetting and verifying information for a distributed audience. NPR senior social strategist Andy Carvin has been one of the best in the world at this task, as evidenced by his work during the Haitian earthquake. Below, he used Storify to curate images, links, videos and tweets from the Web.

To the south and east, another technological experiment has risen, that one to commemorate the fait accompli of the Rwandan genocide. The Genocide Archive of Rwanda, hosted by the Kigali Genocide Memorial, will document the 100 days and 800,000 lives lost in the brutality of 1994.

Genocide Archive of Rwanda

Today, the Genocide Archive of Rwanda opened at the Kigali Genocide Memorial in that country. A technologically sophisticated collection of the facts and nightmares of that ethnic butchery, the GAR will make the murder of 85% of the Tutsi population the most documented instance of inhumanity in history.

The archive contains video, audio, photos, maps, documents and publications. They can be accessed via a number of different criteria or searched by keyword. (And do be warned. This shit is rugged to look at.) The most important materials are the records of the "gacaca" trials - the "peace and reconciliation" type confrontations of the perpetrators by the victims and the victims' families.

Although it looks like a large sampling of the materials are available online already, the complete archive is accessible on-site only, at the memorial building near which so many victims of the violence are buried. However, all of the materials will eventually be online and available to all.

Sudan Vote Monitor

Built on the Ushahidi platform, the Sudan Vote Monitor is a website to which witnesses can post updates via mobile.

"This technology could be particularly useful in Sudan where long distances and inadequate infrastructure pose a significant challenge. The spread of mobile communications throughout Sudan in recent years offers a unique and feasible opportunity to overcome this challenge. The proposed technology is the closest thing to a real-time observation of what is happening in an election center in a remote part of Sudan."

The SVM was built by Zein, an oil and gas man in Texas who was born in Sudan. In conjunction with his sister, a college professor, he runs the Sudan Institute for Research and Policy. The ability to help monitor the upcoming elections with the use of simple SMS messages may help keep the process honest and violence-free. At least it will document any deviations from that ideal.

Read about the use of mobile and web technologies during the last Kenyan election, the employment of e-readers in Ghana, the use of mapping tech to get inhabitants more services and other ReadWriteWeb coverage of Africa tech.

Other sources: Guardian

Is it doing any good? Do our efforts, symbolic or concrete, have any impact? We don't really know. Critics will point out that, for the most part, people are jumping on a bandwagon. Very few of us have any real grasp of Iran's political or social complexities; we have no idea who the leading opposition candidate is or what kind of record he has (and most of us would recoil if we found out). All true.

What we do have, though, is a shared belief in human dignity, and a shared recognition that this is a chance for that cause to take a big step forward. Green avatars are, in a sense, a way of signaling as much to each other: "Yeah, I care about this, too." Perhaps we do this to show solidarity as much with each other as with the people of Iran.

More Noise to Signal.

Why Shouldn't They Use YouTube?

YouTube is not a public service but a commercial enterprise. Google might, one day, decided to just shut it down, and take its archive with it. One might argue that this is unlikely, but it could happen.

A stronger argument against favoring YouTube, however, is that it does look like preferential treatment of a service that is already close to being a monopoly. Given that services like TubeMogul make it incredibly easy to post videos to a large variety of online video services, there is really no excuse for government officials to only post videos to YouTube except for being ignorant about the alternatives.

As for the new Congress sites, even though this is a bipartisan effort, it would still be in the government's best interest to avoid any appearance of a conflict of interest. Google after all is a major donor to the Obama campaign.

No Ads - But Lots of Status

Also, while Google doesn't directly profit from these government videos (at least we haven't seen any ads on these videos yet), it does turn YouTube into even more of a household name and extends its status as the de-facto video sharing site.

Host Videos In-House?

Congress and the White House probably have enough in-house technical know-how to host their own videos or put their videos on a white-label site. While we commend the members of Congress who put their own videos on YouTube, we would also like to see them use Vimeo, Viddler, blip.tv, and others.

On the other hand, though, YouTube is where the audience is, so putting videos on there makes perfect sense, but we would argue that it shouldn't be the only place to find videos of our elected officials.

Many Senators and Representatives already have their own YouTube channels, and these two new sites aggregate the content from these. Over time, we hope to see more elected officials on YouTube, though we also hope to see more than just clips from local TV news shows.

One trend we noticed on a lot of these pages, however, was that quite a few Senators and Representatives decided not to allow comments on their videos. We would hope that more of our elected officials would value comments from their constituents.

Senate and House in HD

We do, however, commend Congress for using YouTube's new HD capabilities (even though some of the material in the intro video looks like it was shot with substandard cameras).

House vs. Househub

On a lighter note, the announcement on YouTube's blog links to this page, instead of the new page for the U.S. House of Representatives. You decide which one you find more interesting.

OpenCongress

If you don't want video, but hard facts about Congress, we recommend OpenCongress, which aggregates information about the details of business on Capitol Hills.

According to a new study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, this is also what Obama's supporters expect from their candidate. 46% of Obama voters expect the newly elected President to reach out to them directly through email, social networks, and text messages.

Looking back at the election campaign, the Pew survey also found that 59% voters flocked to the net for campaign activities before the general election.

Can the Administration Sustain this Enthusiasm?

Sustaining this enthusiasm among voters will be a challenge for the new administration, however. The Pew study rightly asks if these voters will remain politically engaged once the excitement of the election has worn off. At the same time, the administration itself will have to work hard to fulfill these expectations and to sustain its own enthusiasm for these new technologies. After all, it has now been almost 56 days since Obama last used Twitter.

It will also be interesting to see if the Republican party will now turn to the net to mobilize its supporters in preparation for the next election cycle.

• Martin Atkins
• John Bradley
• Johannes Ernst
• Snorri Giorgetti
• Eran Hammer-Lahav
• Dick Hardt
• Mike Kirkwood
• Brian Kissel
• Scott Kveton
• Chris Messina
• Peter Nixey
• David Recordon
• Eric Sachs
• Nat Sakimura
• Luke Shepard
• Joseph Smarr
• Allen Tom

Current members of the OpenID Foundation are encouraged to visit the OpenID Foundation, log in with their respective OpenIDs, and cast votes for up to seven candidates. For those who have not yet joined the Foundation, registration is open, starting at $25 for an individual account.

The elections will remain open until December 24, 2008. The new Board will be announced before December 31, 2008. Board members begin their term on January 1, 2009.

That's only going to be more true in the future, so if you'd like to have a say in how it all goes down - now's the time to get involved. The OpenID Foundation is one of the leading organizations in the new standards world and it's having its first ever election of community board members this month. Nominations close Monday and the voting begins on Wednesday.

Individuals will have to pay a $25 Foundation membership fee in order to vote, but this author just paid his and is looking forward to pulling the virtual voter's lever. Nominees so far are listed below.

What Are the Issues?

OpenID usability, getting major players to respect incoming OpenID and not just authenticate their own users elsewhere with OpenID, the personal data payload that travels with OpenID and many other difficult questions remain unanswered, despite all the progress the Foundation and other organizations have made in the last year.

A year ago this week we wrote a post saying that OpenID was in serious trouble. One year later, the situation seems to have improved quite a lot. That's thanks not just to the work of the OpenID Foundation, but they deserve a large part of the credit.

The protocol is far from out of the woods, though, and so this election is going to be an important one.

Who's Been Nominated?

So far twelve people have been nominated. Once you register as a Foundation member, you can see the nominees and their position statements. More nominations will likely occur before this weekend is over. Seven of the following twelve total number of people nominated by Monday will get positions on the board. Here's who's been nominated so far.

Johannes Ernst - founder and CEO of startup Netmesh
David Recordon - is from SixApart and is one of the most publicly visible members of the OpenID community
Mike Kirkwood - CEO of iPhone-centric medical patient data service Polka
Eric Sachs - Product Manager at Google
Snorri Giorgetti - OpenID Foundation's European Representative
Eran Hammer-Lahav - Open Web Evangelist at Yahoo! and OAuth lover
Allen Tom - Architect, Yahoo! Membership
Scott Kveton - Current OpenID Foundation Chair and VP Open Platforms at Vidoop
Nat Sakimura - Identity tech wonk from Japan
Brian Kissel - CEO of JanRain, makers of MyOpenID.com
John Bradley - OpenID security wonk
Martin Atkins - an OpenSocial and identity developer

Which seven of those people do you want driving the future of the OpenID Foundation? Register as a member, read their policy statements and you can have your hopes for this important technology paradigm recognized.

The votes have been tallied and the results are in. OpenSocial Foundation members have selected Jay Parikh of Ning and Joseph Smarr of Plaxo as their community representatives.

Sixty-eight percent of the OpenSocial Foundation membership voted in the election. Parikh and Smarr were selected by members from 13 nominees. Each will serve a one-year term on the OpenSocial Foundation Board.

Starbucks, Chikfila and Ben and Jerry's are all doing election-day giveaways and apparently those are among Americans' top priorities. Let's keep that in mind when the press reports on record turnout!

Last month during the Presidential debates we wrote about the way that Google is changing political elections unlike anything else ever has. The ability to fact check, research in depth and learn more quickly about topics on the fly, during Presidential debates, is really world-changing.

Sometimes it's good to zoom out a bit, though, and remind ourselves on this huge day in history: what the people want is chicken, ice cream and coffee. You can see the full list of today's fastest rising search queries here.

Generation Y, also known as the millennials, are the young adults composed of the children of Boomers, Generation Jones, and some Gen X'ers. They're the biggest generation since the Boomers now and will eventually outpace them in numbers.

There has been much scrutiny over this generation over the past couple of years as the first set of Gen Y'ers began to enter the business world. The tech-savviness of these "digital natives," as they're called, has some corporations scrambling to adapt their systems to the incoming masses of these plugged in, always-on multitaskers. Consultants who specialize in Gen Y are being brought in to teach the older execs what to expect from the new hires, how to motivate them, how to retain them, etc. It's almost as if the Gen Y'ers were some sort of alien creature that business world was completely unprepared for.

We recently ran down a list of reasons why Gen Y is different from the rest of us. Besides the obvious connection to technology, they also have unique perspectives on marketing, media, the workplace, and society...at least, that's what the pundits tell us.

On paper, the millennials sound like a revolutionary generation dead set on changing the status quo. Their insubordination at work is only due to their lack of buy in - "Generation Why" always need to know "why" something's being done. Their brand loyalty is completely up for sale - they're quick to move to the next big thing. They've cut back on TV viewing so they can listen to music or play video games. They're socially conscious and think they're a force to be reckoned with in politics. Oh yes, surely these kids are different.   

...Or Are They?

But unbeknownst to them, Gen Y is about to be put to the test. Simply put, they're going to be watched closely to see if they show up at the polls. Will they turn out in record numbers? Will the pundits be proven right? Will Gen Y change the world?

The truth is...well, we hope so. But let's be honest here - while the youth turnout will likely be higher than in 2004's election thanks to some savvy web policking and the clear differences between the candidates making the choice easier, we're probably not going to see record numbers. The highest youth turnout ever was 55%, recorded in 1972. If we match that number or go higher, then we know we have a true force of change on our hands. If we don't, then we're going to have to face facts: it may be back to business as usual.

If the pundits have, in fact, hyped Gen Y a bit beyond what they deserve, then this young generation may be less-ground shaking when it comes to the other aspects of their personalities and behaviors, too. People could start to think, "hmmm, maybe they aren't that different after all."

The Future Web Will Be Built By Us...All Of Us

If big business takes a step back and realizes that Gen Y isn't this devastatingly different type of employee, if marketers realize they can catch their attention using more standard methods, if media companies think that Gen Y will happily buy music wrapped in DRM, then the tech world could feel the impacts.

Here in the the tech industry, a lot of folks have been counting on Gen Y to lead the way when it comes to change. Concepts like Enterprise 2.0, social media marketing, Twitter for customer service...these are all movements that have been, at least in part, designed to address the needs of these new, young digital natives.

If this "record-breaking" generation doesn't vote (read: doesn't care), then we may have to face the truth: the kids are alright, but they're still just kids...and maybe they're not as different as we once thought. Maybe they aren't going to guide us to the new world of web 3.0 and cloud computing all on their own. Maybe we'll find the way ourselves...all of us, together.

We may have to realize that the true force of change that's happening both online and off is the same as it ever was: early adopters enthusiastically adopt a product or service and, over time, it trickles down to the rest of the mainstream. This isn't a revolution, it's just par for the course, and it's nowhere near as exciting as a brigade of digitally adept youth who stormed the polls iPhones in hand ready to change the world.

Image credits: miss karen