This morning’s news that Barack Obama won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize has been greeted with nearly universal derision among the creative class. “He hasn’t accomplished ANYTHING”, they tweet. Or, “he won it because he’s not George W. Bush”. But lost in the “WTF?” outrage is this fundamental fact:

On November 4, 2008, a black man with a Muslim name was elected president of the United States.

In the intervening months since then, that incredible moment has been forgotten, lost in a sea of angry shouts and cynicism about the political process. But today’s news shines the spotlight right back on that euphoric time, the moment when the nation, and the world, was forever changed.

A black man with a Muslim name would never be elected prime minister of Sweden, the home of the Nobel. Nor would he be elected leader of Britain, France, or Germany. Until 1993, it was unthinkable for a black man to be elected president of South Africa. America proved itself to be a unique exception to an unspoken, and disdainful, rule.

The West has had a long, painful, and brutal history of racism within its borders. That racism has meant that millions of human beings have suffered the evils of slavery, war, and genocide.

But when Obama won on that November night, the way the world looked at itself fundamentally changed. From wide-eyed children in Africa, to cynical adults in Europe, people were forced to re-evaluate their definition of what is and is not possible in our world, in this time.

To be sure, Obama is a symbol. People project onto him their own hopes and desires. But Obama is also a shining example of what’s possible. Because if a black man with a Muslim name can become president of the United States, then yes, peace is achievable in our world, in this time.

Like any worthwhile idea these days, this one started its life as a tweet:

This week, a new site called Twollars hit the scene, a Twitter-based fundraising solution for charities. Upon reading about it, I once again thought about using Twitter as an engine for small dollar donations to political campaigns. Similar services like Tipjoy and Twitpay have sprung up, focused around the idea that Twitter is a natural fit for micropayments.

One of the great things about Twitter, and its API, is that it promotes the rapid development of innovative applications on top of it. For example, Twitpay was created over the course of a weekend. At a recent Ruby on Rails conference, a full-blown Twitter-based application was live-coded over the course of one freakin’ hour.

So Twitter isn’t just a great tool, it’s a great platform to build on. Now, we all know for a fact that conservatives dominate Twitter (and that the Left should be nervous). But so far, all the Right has built on top of Twitter is a lame leaderboard. And attempts to mirror ActBlue have not been successful.

Because I just can’t stand to see a good idea go unimplemented, I’d like to share with you a step-by-step description of how a Twitter political fundraising engine could be built, and how much it would cost. Let’s call it Conservatwiv. SPOILER ALERT: It would be really easy, and relatively inexpensive.

Specs

The first thing to do when building an application is to come up with a list of specifications, or specs. I prefer writing out user stories and mocking up wireframes, but for the sake of brevity, a few bullet points will do:

• Users are split into two camps: Activists and Committees. All users must have a Twitter account and will sign in using Twitter’s OAuth mechanism into Conservatwiv.
• Activists must register their address, employer, occupation, and certify that they meet the FEC requirements for contributing to federal committees.
• Committees (campaigns and PACs) must register their FEC ID, and specify their mailing address for receiving weekly checks from Conservatwiv.
• Activists keep a pool of funds at Conservatwiv, making payments via PayPal, Google Checkout, or Amazon Payments.
• When an activist would like to make a contribution, she tweets a message with the letter “c” (for “contribute”) followed by a dollar amount, like the image below.
• Conservatwiv monitors all registered Twitter accounts, and processes any Tweets that are contributions. Every Friday, contributions for the week are tallied for each committee, and a check is mailed out from Conservatwiv (which would need to register as a federal PAC, like ActBlue).

A true spec document would take hours to produce, and should be done by an experienced web development team that charges no less than $150 per hour. If they’re really good, they will have already built some Twitter apps. Surprised by that hourly rate? You shouldn’t be. If you’re paying significantly less than $150/hr for your custom development needs, you’re doing it wrong.

Time for Specs, User Stories, and Wireframes: 15 hours. Cost: $2,250.

The Backend: Accounts and Payments

Thanks to Twitter’s OAuth API, user accounts can be completely handled through Twitter. This means no password ever has to be stored at Conservatwiv. After we have basic user accounts, the Activist and Committee types can be built out, and the appropriate forms and validations created.

Time for OAuth integration and User accounts: 12 hours. Cost: $1,800.

Then, we need to think about how we get money from the Activists and to the Committees. We should use an existing payment service instead of attempting to charge credit cards ourselves. PayPal, Google Checkout, and Amazon Payments all do this well, and hooking into them is easy.

Time for third-party payment service integration: 12 hours. Cost: $1,800.

Lastly for the backend, we need to create the weekly reporting mechanism that tallies the amounts and tells us how much money to write on each check at the end of the week. Time: 5 hours. Cost: $750.

The Frontend: Tweet Parser

Because Conservatwiv’s main user interface consists a properly formatted tweet, this part is incredibly simple. Simply watch the all the user tweets coming in and create contribution records as needed.

Time for Tweet Parser: 5 hours. Cost: $750.

Design

Design isn’t my specialty, so I won’t be sharing much in the way of concrete examples. I did spend about 10 minutes whipping up a sufficiently friendly logo:

Credit to Chris Wallace for the bird icon.

A designer should also cost $150/hr, and should deliver full mocks of the home page, setup screens for the Activist and Committee user types, and the payment administration interface. Bonus points go to a designer who can package up clean HTML+CSS for the site. Total design time: 15 hours. Cost: $2,250

An App to Compete with ActBlue for under $10,000!

There you have it. With a competent development shop, this can be built right now for under $10,000 within two weeks. Will the tech-savvy Right finally make the investments they need to truly innovate? Or have they drowned underneath the constant stream of #TCOT, suffocated by the weight of a million teabags? If Twitter truly is a revolutionary tool for the Right, a $10K investment today should yield a massive return on investment in the 2010 cycle.

Disclaimer: I am not an attorney, nor do I specialize in FEC law. Do not start a fundraising operation without legal counsel!

With a Democrat back in the White House, conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh has rekindled that fire in his belly, and his listeners are already beginning to dream about 2012. Over the past month, several possible domain names for a hypothetical Rush Limbaugh 2012 presidential bid have been snatched up by forward-looking dittoheads.

ProTip: All domain name registrations can be searched using the aptly titled Domain Tools.

Capitalizing on his unique first name, Rush2012.com was purchased on February 3, and RushForPresident.com was purchased just last Friday, February 27. Of course, Rush’s last name is just as recognizable, and so LimbaughForPresident.com was snatched up this past Saturday, February 28, and Limbaugh2012.com two days earlier, on February 26.

Of course, RushLimbaugh.com is already the man’s official site, and would surely be used for any presidential bid, just as Barack Obama, John McCain, John Kerry, and George W. Bush all had for their runs.

And wouldntcha know, LimbaughPalin.com is still free for the squattin’!

Much has been written about what’s next for the national movement that sprung up around the Obama campaign. The fruit of the Obama campaign’s organizational prowess is a multi-million member supporter list, probably the most powerful political list ever amassed in American history. As someone who has extensively worked with the lists built by the campaigns of Howard Dean (as an employee of Democracy for America from 2005-2006) and John Kerry (as a consultant for Friends of John Kerry from 2007-2008), I may have some unique insight into what exactly is going to happen next.

The list the Obama campaign has built is truly unprecedented. Some educated guesses as to the numbers:

• 10-12 million email addresses
• 3-5 million mobile numbers
• 3-4 million donors
• 1-2 million registered users on My.BarackObama.com

There is certainly overlap in these guesstimates. Many supporters will fall into two, three, or all four of those categories. For simplicity’s sake, all these supporters will be considered “the list”.

One rather major (and obvious) caveat: The Dean and Kerry campaigns lost, and they lost in a manner that was quite heartbreaking to their supporters. The Obama campaign won, and in a big way. That’s new for Democrats with national lists. These are truly uncharted waters.

That being said, some predictions:

• The list will atrophy fast. Shockingly fast. Without exercising it, a list after the end of a political campaign tends to waste away. Win or lose, the vast majority of supporters will simply not want to be bothered with communications after a campaign. They’ll unsubscribe, or hit the “Spam” button above their inbox. While committed and vocal activists will remain, and will certainly remain in a higher percentage due to Obama’s victory, the fact remains that the horse race of a campaign brings people in, not the sausage-making of governing.
• The Obama team has no choice but to actively nurture the list. Much like publicly-held corporations must always look to increase shareholder value, the Obama list is similarly duty-bound to keep their list from stagnating. Usually, organic list-building is issue-based, and most effective for those out of power. How list-building will be done while Obama is sitting as president remains to be seen. But it’s vital, as not only does he have a re-election campaign in four years, but the entirety of the Democratic Party will be dependent on a strong Obama list for 2010.
• A fundraising email from President Obama to his list will be the most coveted asset to Democratic campaigns in 2010. The Dean and Kerry lists greatly contributed to the Democratic landslide of 2006 by providing an influx of online fundraising for congressional campaigns across the country. The Obama list dwarfs that of the 2004 campaigns, and will leave Democratic campaign managers across the country salivating with dollar signs in their eyes. While midterm elections are usually bad for the sitting president’s party, it would appear that Democrats have a very realistic shot at achieving a filibuster-proof Senate majority in 2010. A few fundraising emails from the sitting president makes that goal much easier.
• List ownership will be transferred to a leadership PAC. Departing from Micah’s prediction for My.BarackObama.com, it’s highly unlikely that the Obama list will become property of the Democratic National Committee. More likely, Obama will resurrect his pre-campaign Hopefund PAC, possibly renaming it to something like the “Changing America Fund”. In addition to keeping a bank account for 2012 and raising money for down-ballot campaigns until then, the PAC could also be used to:
  • Raise awareness about specific issues and bits of legislation President Obama is championing through petitions and other online actions, which helps keep the list fresh and active. Imagine President Obama, giving a prime time television address, sitting in the Oval Office with a stack of 10 million signatures next to him (although that would be a waste of printing paper).
  • Fund organizers to help in down-ballot campaigns from 2009-2011. That includes not only federal Senate and House campaigns, but state-level campaigns and even ballot initiatives.
  • Support organizers and supporters in their own efforts for change. Some Howard Dean supporters were inspired to run for office themselves in 2004 and 2006, propelled by Dean’s slogan of “You Have the Power”. Will “Yes We Can” lead to a mass movement of civic engagement never before seen in America?
  • Most importantly, keep the Obama network intact by promoting on-the-ground, grassroots activism through 2012, when it’ll need to be activated again.

An interesting thing to consider about a possible “Changing America Fund” is who would serve as the public face of such an organization. President Obama being deeply involved in a PAC’s activities would seem overtly political. It may be possible to go the MoveOn.org route, and have no public spokesperson, and instead focus on the membership. Or Obama campaign manager David Plouffe can act as the Chair or Director.

The possibilities described above are roughly the paths the Dean and Kerry organizations took after 2004, with a bit of 20/20 hindsight thrown in. While the Obama team has proven they can do everything bigger and better than what was done in 2004, they’ve also shown a penchant for breaking entirely new ground. It’ll be fun to watch what they do next.

One of the more fascinating aspects of the presidential campaign has been the proliferation of email smears against Barack Obama, and his campaign’s efforts to fight back. Back in July, such an email dropped into my inbox, which claimed to be a reprint of a New York Times column by Maureen Dowd. A complete fabrication quickly debunked, the column claimed that contributions to the Obama campaign originated illegally from the Middle East and China:

[They] were able to collate the number of contributions that were coming in seemingly from individuals but the funds were from only a few credit card accounts and bank electronic funds transfers. The internet service providers (ISP) they were able to trace were from Saudi Arabia, Iran, and other Middle Eastern countries. One of the banks used for fund transfers was also located in Saudi Arabia. Another concentrated group of donations was traced to a Chinese ISP with a similar pattern of limited credit card charges. It became clear that these donations were very likely coming from sources other than American voters. This was discussed at length within the campaign and the decision was made that none of these donations violated campaign financing laws.

Now comes the news that the Republican National Committee will file an FEC complaint on the Obama campaign’s fundraising practices:

The RNC is alleging that the Obama campaign was so hungry for donations it “looked the other way” as contributions piled up from suspicious, and possibly even illegal foreign donors. “We believe that the American people should know first and foremost if foreign money is pouring into a presidential election,” said RNC Chief Counsel Sean Cairncross.

Interestingly, the RNC admits to having no evidence that the Obama campaign has knowingly accepted but not returned foreign donations. It would appear that the RNC has taken a rumor started by a chain email and run with it as a legitimate angle of attack.

What’s next? Will Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson claim that a Nigerian Prince has enough money to bail out the American economy, but that we first need to wire over a $700 billion advance?

On September 10, the progressive state blog MN Publius broke a story about Republican Senator Norm Coleman failing to comply fully with the Stand By Your Ad provision of the McCain-Feingold Act. In an attack ad against challenger Al Franken, Coleman’s media team had failed to include his image for the requisite four seconds to denote that Coleman was responsible for the ad. By September 14, the Washington Post reported that three more Republican Senate candidates were being challenged for similar infractions.

Now, in a Leftmost Bit exclusive, it appears that the McCain campaign has also failed to comply:

U.S. Code Title 47,315, which describes how a federal campaign qualifies for lower TV advertising rates, states the following:

(C) Television broadcasts

A candidate meets the requirements of this subparagraph if, in the case of a television broadcast, at the end of such broadcast there appears simultaneously, for a period no less than 4 seconds –

(i) a clearly identifiable photographic or similar image of the candidate; and

(ii) a clearly readable printed statement, identifying the candidate and stating that the candidate has approved the broadcast and that the candidate’s authorized committee paid for the broadcast.

While the “Paid for by… Approved by…” language is on screen for four seconds, McCain’s image is only on screen for about 2 and a half. It’s the same mistake the Coleman campaign made. Interestingly, the Obama campaign complies with the four second requirement by putting a thumbnail image of Obama next to the “Approved by” disclaimer as it runs at the end of a spot:

Now here’s where it gets murky: The original text of McCain-Feingold only required the printed disclaimer to appear for four seconds, but not the candidate’s image:

a statement that identifies the candidate and states that the candidate has approved the communication. Such statement—

(i) shall be conveyed by—

(I) an unobscured, full-screen view of the candidate making the statement, or
(II) the candidate in voice-over, accompanied by a clearly identifiable photographic or similar image of the candidate; and

(ii) shall also appear in writing at the end of the communication in a clearly readable manner with a reasonable degree of color contrast between the background and the printed statement, for a period of at least 4 seconds.

I’m no lawyer, but I believe that in cases where one wording is more precise than the other, the more precise wording is what counts. So while the McCain campaign may not have directly violated the original wording, they did violate the requirements necessary to the receive the discounted TV ad rate (four seconds of both the text and the candidate’s picture).

Is any of this a big deal? No, not really. The spirit of the law was followed, even if the execution was careless. But this incident does reinforce the notion that in today’s YouTube era of politics, every word a candidate speaks and every second of video a campaign puts out can be scrutinized endlessly by the masses. Everyone’s watching all the time. Let’s just hope we don’t come across any wardrobe malfunctions.

Sen. John McCain’s Friday announcement of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate has made waves throughout the country, and particularly on the left and right blogospheres. Because Sarah Palin is such an unknown, and because the Republican Party will attempt to use this week to introduce Sarah Palin to the country, I think right now is the perfect opportunity to define her in the minds of Democrats and independents, those who may be swayed by the presence of a woman and a second so-called “maverick” on the Republican ticket.

And so, I’m announcing the launch of the tiniest of nanosites in Defining Sarah Palin.

I quickly threw the site together in about three hours over Labor Day weekend, using it as an excuse to learn jQuery, a Javascript framework. Granted, on a technical level, the use of jQuery isn’t all that impressive. The name and design of the site were inspired by the recent movie Forgetting Sarah Marshall.

If you’re on my side ideologically, I encourage you to spread the word, and maybe even contribute some of your own definitions in the comments or on Twitter.

In the wacky world of online politics, especially presidential politics, domain squatting is prevalent. Often, squatters try to forecast campaigns far into the future. ObamaClinton.com was registered in November 2004. Gore08.com was registered in December 2003! Right now, as VP speculation runs wild throughout the Tubes, it’s easy to become overly excited upon hearing news of which domains exist and where they point to.

As noted on this Orlando Sentinel Blog, the domain of ObamaNelson.com actually points to the official Barack Obama campaign site. Whoa! Actually, this means nothing. Any URL (whether a domain or a page) can redirect to any other URL. Redirects are done all the time, and all they mean is that the person controlling the URL wants it to point to somewhere else.

It’s also incredibly easy to find out who actually owns a given domain. Like everything, you can just Google it. But you need to know a special keyword to use, and that’s “WHOIS”. So you can Google whois obamanelson.com, and you’ll have an answer.

Click on the top result, and scroll down to the “Whois Record”. The international body that regulates domain names (ICANN) mandates that real names and addresses be used when registering domains, and the truth often reveals itself. It does in the case of ObamaNelson.com.

Sometimes though, the registration will be by proxy, meaning the real owner pays for a service (by GoDaddy or a similar domain registrar) that protects their true identity. When you see this, then it’s really time for some wild speculation!

Looking back at the past 18 months, what’s remarkable about the 2008 campaign is how unremarkable it’s actually been when it comes to the use of the Internet. While Patrick Ruffini earlier argued that Barack Obama’s website is boring, it’s been stewing in my mind for months that the entire cycle has been rather ho-hum.

All campaigns, from the presidential level on down, have seemed to be unwilling, or unable, to rewrite the rules of the game when it comes to how technology is used in electoral politics. They have (pardon the word play) been shiftless in producing a paradigm shift. And maybe, after the upheavals of 2004 and 2006, that should be expected.

Looking Back to 2004 & 2006

Thomas Kuhn’s 1962 book titled “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” first coined the term paradigm shift to describe the manner in which scientific theory progresses. Kuhn contended that instead of small, incremental advances made at a steady pace, science actually moves forward in big, groundbreaking bursts of progress. Copernicus theorizing that the Earth was in fact not the center of the Universe. Mendel’s beans and the subsequent foundation of the field of genetics. Quantum mechanics, which drastically altered our understanding of Newtonian mechanics (now considered Classical mechanics).

All these revolutions of science brought with them a drastically different way of thinking that helped create a completely new worldview. After the initial period of rapid innovation, that worldview would then stay relatively static for a long period of time until the next disruptive paradigm shift came along. While Kuhn’s theory had its holes, the basic concept proves applicable to areas other than science.

Politics experiences paradigm shifts coupled closely to revolutions in communications technology. The printing press, radio, television, and most recently the Internet, have all dramatically altered the political landscape of their day. The 2004 and 2006 cycles were full of such examples:

• The Dean campaign’s use of an online tool (Meetup.com) to empower supporters to self-organize offline. Meetup.com forced organizers into setting up regularly scheduled monthly meetings, which quickly built a national field program that couldn’t otherwise have been created. While that field program crashed and burned in the snowy fields of Iowa, this first foray into social activism networking set the model for future campaigns in 2006 and 2008.
• Microtargeting and online GOTV tools built by the GOP. Campaigns are about winning more votes than your opponents, and the GOP masterfully used microtargeting, which had previously been limited to the private sector, to target voters likely to vote Republican. The RNC also built the first online phonebanking tools during the 2004 cycle, beating MoveOn.org’s Call for Change program by two years. An activist could get out the vote by staying at home, much like consumers could go shopping online while still in their pajamas.
• Online donations as the main funding engine of a campaign. While the influx of cash into the McCain website after his New Hampshire primary victory in 2000 was a welcome surprise, it wasn’t until Howard Dean in 2003 that campaigns realized they could build their strategy around the expectation of raking in huge amounts of money via small dollar donations through the Web. John Kerry’s general election campaign took Dean’s efforts a step further, and nearly matched the Bush/RNC fundraising machine.
• The rise of the Left’s activist blogosphere. The power of blogging to connect people to each other and affect campaigns drastically altered the political landscape from 2003 to 2006. The Netroots became a thriving community that today holds a news-making annual conference attended by top Democratic leaders. The national blogging infrastructure the Left set up for itself paid off particularly well in 2006, when state-based activist blogs were able to contribute to the Congressional landslide the Democrats experienced that year.
• YouTube and user-generated video. In 2006, George Allen’s Macaca moment changed how candidates behave on the trail, and today even the sitting President is wary of YouTube. That cycle, congressional candidates ventured onto a pre-Google-owned YouTube to speak directly to their supporters, a practice that seems quite normal today.

2008: Honing What Works

The examples above all dramatically changed the nature of how campaigns are waged. Looking to the 2008 cycle, it’s hard to find anything that sticks out as a game changer. When campaigns gear up for the midterms later in 2009, campaigning will most likely look much similar to 2007.

Instead, campaigns this cycle have taken lessons from 2004 and 2006 and built on them. If waging electoral politics is a craft, the staffers of these campaigns have used this cycle to hone their skills. Some examples of the biggest successes:

• MyBarackObama.com: Yes it’s boring, but it’s incredibly effective. Chris Hughes, former Facebooker and current manager of MyBO, has conceded that it’s not much more technically impressive than Facebook was in 2004 (when it was called TheFacebook because the company didn’t yet have the money to purchase the better facebook.com domain). Its strength is based on the fact that the campaign uses it to organize everything. It’s essential to the workings of the campaign and has full buy-in at all levels and from all departments.
• Ron Paul’s Moneybombs: While there will be arguments that these were in fact paradigm shifting events, I’ll point out that since they didn’t even shift the race for the GOP nomination, they can’t be considered as changing the rules of electoral politics. But the Paul campaign should be commended for opening up their contribution data in real-time, which gave their donors more of a feeling of ownership of the campaign. It also helped create the interesting RonPaulGraphs.com.
• Mitt Romney’s Supporter-Created TV Ad: Producing video is incredibly difficult for the average person, so when the Romney campaign put out a call to supporters asking them to create a TV spot for the campaign, the campaign wisely partnered with Yahoo to supply a video editing tool and provided supporters with video clips, audio files, and photos to use for the spot. The winning video was very well done, which would not have been the case if the campaign had not given their supporters a good starting point.
• The Social Network Badge Bar: I first noticed this on the John Edwards site when he announced after Christmas of 2006, and it has since been emulated by seemingly every campaign at every level. Social networks are often misunderstood as tools for organizing. But because a campaign has little control over the application or the data being gathered, social networks are more suited for outreach: reaching supporters who are otherwise unreachable.
• Online Advertising: It’s estimated that the Obama campaign spent nearly $3 million on online search advertising during the first part of this year, and the campaigns of Hillary Clinton and John McCain have also made significant ad buys this cycle. Because online advertising is so metrics-driven, it’s easy for campaigns to calculate ROI on their ad buys. Since they seem to be happy to continue with the ad campaigns, it must be incredibly effective at driving traffic and donations.

Prime Opportunities

The innovations this cycle were extensions of the progress made in the previous two cycles, but they didn’t rock the boat. The question then is: Well, why not? Why wasn’t there that big, monumental change this time around?

The answer to that question could be the subject of another blog post, but for the time being, there are two possible explanations: (1) The 2008 campaigns employed the same staffers who used the 2004 and 2006 campaigns as their proving grounds. They executed what they knew worked and improve upon it, but didn’t look to break the mold. (2) The Internet industry just hasn’t produced a killer technology in recent years that could be used for electoral politics.

The second argument is convenient, but a bit lazy. There are plenty of technologies to leverage:

• APIs: Application programming interfaces allow developers to programatically access site data we access through the web browser. Flickr, Delicious, Facebook, Twitter, and Google (for several of their properties) all offer open APIs for accessing data beyond their websites. APIs build community and act as an empowering force: something that campaigns and committees should seek to leverage.
• The Open Web: OpenID, OAuth, Microformats, AtomPub, and other open standards all solve one major problem: Social applications behaving as walled gardens. Web 2.0 is focused on services, but the very presence of competing services means that there isn’t enough open flow of data between web apps. While a single campaign adopting Open Web standards doesn’t make much sense (they’ll have few others to interoperate with), a political party or coalition within a party deciding to embrace open standards over closed services would make a huge difference in the way online activism occurs.
• RSS and Atom Feeds: While feedreaders like Google Reader and Bloglines are not yet used by mainstream web users, a campaign which promotes feed technology by creating exclusive feed-only content or valuable issue-based feeds can find a devoted audience, and maybe help propel feedreading to the masses.
• Twitter: Barack Obama may have 50,000 followers, and Bob Barr may tweet for himself, but no campaign has used Twitter to really engage supporters like Web 2.0 celebrities do. Of course, elected members of Congress like John Culberson and Tim Ryan have taken to tweeting from the House floor, and Rep. Culberson set off a mini-scandal in the process. But it seems like Twitter hasn’t really reached its full potential as of yet.

I’m not completely sure that adopting any of these technologies will actually change the way electioneering is waged, but they would open up the doors to some new ways of thinking.

Conclusion

The 2008 cycle, when viewed from a geeky prism, is much like the iPhone 3G. Better, faster, stronger, to be sure. More people will own an iPhone 3G than its predecessor. But the original iPhone is what changed the game. A real web browser, a multi-touch interface, gorgeous graphics. It was a true paradigm shift, and it forced all the other players in the mobile phone industry to follow suit.

In the same vein, the 2008 cycle involves bigger email lists, more online fundraising, better activists, and stronger staffs who really get how to use the Internet effectively. But the paradigm shift happened one and two cycles ago, and that just might be the natural order of things.

I covered The Anatomy of a Perfect Email last month, so now is a good time for a quick follow-up:

Campaign Monitor, the best damn email marketing company out there, released a set of Email Design Guidelines, a technical guide that everyone should keep handy. Even more technical is their Guide to CSS Support in Email, which takes some of the guesswork out of what styling you should and shouldn’t use in your emails.

Over at ONE/Northwest, former Moveon.org Advocacy Director Ben Brandzel goes over Four Rules for Effective Email Alerts. Covering both structure and content, it’s a good, quick read from someone who pioneered email advocacy.

Last but not least, Colin Delaney over at e.politics has just put out a new version of his Online Politics 101 Ebook. The whole thing is great, and there are quite a few pages devoted to email strategy.

The Obama campaign has launched a microsite at FightTheSmears.com, debunking the attacks du jour against him (and his wife): No video exists of Michelle Obama using the word “whitey”, Barack isn’t a Muslim, and he actually does put his hand over his heart when saying the Pledge of Allegiance. But why exactly did the campaign feel compelled to do this, and why won’t we be seeing a similar site from the McCain campaign? A quick visit to Snopes.com may offer an explanation.

The spread of email hoaxes has been around since the beginning of the Tubes, and Snopes.com, a site dedicated to debunking or confirming urban legends, has been around for nearly as long. Because of email’s ubiquitous presence in our lives, it’s unsurprising that the most popular urban legends viewed on the site originate from email chain letters.

Most urban legends in Snopes.com’s Hot 25 list deal with computer viruses, cell phones, missing children, and things related to consumerism. But the decidedly political items all have an overt ideological and rightward bent to them:

• 2. is dedicated to all things Obama.
• 4. is a pro-Bush, but fake, essay by Jay Leno.
• 9. is a false rumor that Speaker Pelosi plans to implement a 100% tax on “stock market windfall profits”.
• 19. details various email chains about Hugo Chavez, his remarks about President Bush, and Citgo, Venezuela’s state-controlled oil company. While the first email detailed actually seems to be anti-Bush, it is so over the top that it appears to be an effort to link liberals in America with Chavez. Other emails speak of boycotting Citgo as a countermeasure against ‘American haters”.
• 20. is a false rumor about the “In God We Trust” motto being removed from US coins.
• 25. is a compilation of emails circulating about Social Security. All false items are uniformly anti-Social Security.

To be sure, there have been many hoax chain letters spread with left-leaning or anti-Bush slants to them. But the popular ones today all seem to be conservative in nature. And they’re quite effective, as evidenced by the Obama campaign’s new microsite.

Why are conservatives more apt to spread these emails around? The most reasonable explanation is that it’s a natural extension to talk radio, which has been dominated by the right for decades. But that’s just my conjecture, and as a partisan Democrat, I certainly don’t claim to understand the conservative mind. What do you think?

A quick note about the Law of Unintended Consequences in action: A post on Crooks and Liars earlier this afternoon reported:

It appears that the RNC is pretty happy with the number of “friends” it has on Facebook. Their thinking apparently is that it bodes well for the November election, as they for the first time have more than the DNC. I’ve heard rumors they’re shopping that story to some friendly reporters. If you’d like to make them look ridiculous, you can join the Democratic Party’s Facebook group here.

Apparently, the RNC Facebook group, in the midst of a membership drive according the graphic on their page, had passed the DNC Facebook group at somewhere around the 11,000 member mark. A few hours later, Markos posted the news on a Daily Kos Open Thread, and the lead the RNC group had quickly vanished.

To pour salt on their Republican wounds, within two and a half hours of the Daily Kos post, the DNC Facebook group reached 15,000 members, the original goal of the RNC (which remains well under 12,000 at the time of this writing). A few lessons out of this, in no particular order:

• Daily Kos has a huge readership. A front-page post is seen by more eyeballs than most national organizations get when they send out email blasts.
• Don’t brag about social media numbers. They’re a fickle beast.
• Republicans can’t copy Democratic strategies and expect to win. Democrats own Facebook. Deal with it and move on to another battleground.

And so it goes, in the wacky intersection of politics and technology…

There’s no better conference on the intersection of technology and politics than the annual Personal Democracy Forum. This year looks to be the best yet as the conference expands to two days, and I’m psyched to see these leaders in politics and technology:

• Clay Shirky, author of the excellent book “Here Comes Everybody” and thought leader on social technology
• Vint Cert, the father of the Internet and Chief Internet Evangelist at Google
• Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist
• Larry Lessig, free culture champion and Change Congress founder
• Bloggers like Robert Scoble and Michael Arrington on the tech side, with Arianna Huffington, Ana Marie “Wonkette” Cox, Josh Marshall, Jane Hamsher, and Matt Stoller on the political side
• Current and former staffers and figures from 2008 presidential campaigns: Elizabeth Edwards, Joe Trippi (Edwards), Joe Rospars (Obama), Scott Goodstein (Obama), and many more

So plan on getting to NYC on June 23-24 and join me there. The early registration rate of $595 has been extended through June 4.

We’ve all seen microsites used in politics, from ImpeachGonzales.org last year to the recently launched CanWeAsk.com. Common to microsites are a clear message and clear call to action. ImpeachGonzales.org was a video and a petition to, well, impeach former AG Alberto Gonzalez, while CanWeAsk.com, an RNC effort playing off the “Yes We Can” slogan, is an effort to collect non-friendly user-generated questions for presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama.

But as I read Micah Sifry’s post from earlier today, I wondered how the virally-spreading rumor of Barack Obama’s Muslim roots could be countered. I then remembered something I saw over two years ago:

Is Lost a Repeat?

Lost fans were frustrated by the unpredictable schedule of repeat episodes airing during the regular TV season, and an inventive fan came up with this solution. Really simple, and really to the point. Even smaller than a microsite: a nanosite.

I thought the same concept can be applied to the Obama/Muslim issue. Alas, I’ve already been beaten to the punch by two anonymous domain purchasers. IsBarackObamaAMuslim.com was purchased in February, and IsBarackObamaMuslim.com was purchased several days ago. I prefer the latter, as the footnotes provide some… what’s the right word?... facts.

But there’s a change of medium to note here. The Obama/Muslim rumors are being spread by chain email, so a website isn’t the same turf. And boring truths are not nearly as viral as salacious rumors.

Back in 2004, the country was treated to the glorious JohnKerryIsADouchebagButImVotingForHimAnyway.com, a site which is sadly no longer active and not archived. I have a personal project at TheHug.com, but I wouldn’t consider it a success (yet).

Are there any other notable nanosites out there being used in politics?

The John McCain campaign has been pilloried time and time again when it comes to their email strategy. The emails are overly long, unclear, and designed as if they were a piece of direct mail. But, as a public service to all campaigns and organizations looking to execute solid online organzing, I thought it would be illustrative to point out exactly what makes an email successful.

Here’s an email sent on Monday from the Clinton campaign:

This email, my dear friends, is the work of a fine craftsman at the top of his/her game. The execution is flawless, and I let it sit in my inbox for several days just so that I could quickly come back to it and admire its brilliance. Advocacy emails simply don’t get better than this.

A Clear Ask For Action

Within three seconds of opening this email, it’s clear why you have received this email, and it’s clear what you’re being asked to do: The primaries in Oregon and Kentucky are tomorrow and you need to help the campaign by making calls. Simple and clear.

Structurally, there are six areas that catch the eye, and they all help hammer the message home:

1. The clickable graphic on the right
2. The three bolded lines, sprinkled evenly throughout the text
3. The two lines of links, each standing by itself in its own paragraph

All six areas emphasize calling Oregon and Kentucky. They ask nothing more, nothing less. If a person reading this was ever going to make calls for Clinton, this email would have gotten them to do so.

Full Use of Screen Real Estate

The software, devices, and websites we use to read our email come in all shapes and sizes. And because of that, considerations have to be made for viewing window size when formatting an email. While many tech-savvy users have adopted Gmail as the tool of their choice, which provides plenty of vertical screen real estate, the reality is that most email gets read in the smaller “preview” windows found in Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express, and the like.

The email as formatted above, with the clickable graphic on top and the links at the middle and bottom, guarantee that the readers will always have a target to click on, no matter how small their reading window is and no matter what part of the email they’re reading. And clicks are good, because they translate into action.

Simple Guidelines Backed by Empirical Data

So some simple rules to live by:

• Choose a clear message and a clear action. If you can’t keep it simple, don’t send the email.
• Limit messages to 5 to 7 paragraphs.
• A clickable rectangular graphic aligned to the right of the opening paragraphs will always get the most clicks.
• Do not embed links in a larger paragraph. Allow them to stand alone with whitespace above and below.
• Use formatting like bold, underline, and italics sparingly, and only to drive the main point.

These best practices weren’t pulled from the sky. They weren’t determined by gut instincts, and certainly not by direct mail specialists. Instead, they were culled from years of empirical testing and hard data.

For example in the technique known as A/B testing, one batch of email would be sent without a top right graphic, and another batch would be sent with it included. When the batch with the graphic was clicked on more often, the best practice was established.

The funny thing is, none of this is particularly new. The Left had established these practices by 2004, from the combined experiences of MoveOn.org, the Dean campaign, and the Kerry campaign. Campaigns and organizations on both sides should be actively testing all their messages even today, gathering more data that should continue to refine and maybe even redefine best practices. Please don’t send emails that look like this.