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?

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?

A new meme is spreading around the Tubes, and it’s a good one. Clay Shirky, part sociologist and part technologist, has coined the term “Cognitive Surplus”. Shirky, the author of the must-read Here Comes Everybody, gave a talk the other week on the topic, and his own words best explain the concept:

The implications of this idea in the political arena are already becoming apparent. Uber-blogger Chris Bowers has been writing on OpenLeft on this very concept. Recent history proves Shirky’s point: In 2003, Howard Dean supporters who rallied around the candidate’s fierce opposition to the Iraq War used their Cognitive Surplus to organize themselves on Meetup.com, create (along with Clark supporters) the Netroots, and donate an unprecedented amount of dollars and volunteer hours. Between 2004 and 2006, many of those supporters turned to local politics, helping run the campaigns of down-ballot candidates, and in some cases, running for office themselves. And of course in 2007 and 2008, the campaigns of Barack Obama on the left and Ron Paul on the right have harnessed an untapped Cognitive Surplus to awaken the political consciousness of huge swaths of the citizenry.

The pattern is clear: More Americans are taking a proactive role in their politics, and social technologies are helping them do it. As Shirky talks about above, we are producing and sharing, not just consuming.

Since you’re reading this blog, none of this is completely new to you. But the Washington establishment seems clueless to this growing trend. A recent Bloomberg News article, titled Obama’s Gigantic Database May Make Him Party’s Power Broker, illustrates how stuck in the last century the Beltway consulting class appears to be.

The article discusses the massive supporter list the Obama campaign has built for itself. To be sure, the list is unprecedented. The membership of My.BarackObama.com is pegged at an astonishing 800,000, which would translate into a broader email list of at least 8 million. But throughout the article, the Obama list is emphasized to be a mere vehicle for fundraising. An ATM machine.

McIntyre, a Republican and former chief national spokesman for the National Rifle Association, said the data entered by 800,000 names on mybarakobama.com[sic] may be worth as much as $200 million.

[...]

Even as Obama’s interactive databases prove to be efficient ways to energize volunteers, their ability to raise large amounts of money may outlast the current campaign, said Tad Devine, an independent media consultant.

“That’s really what we are talking about here,” said Devine, a former strategist for Democrat John Kerry’s 2004 presidential bid. “We are talking about a fundraising network that will far surpass the dominance that the Republicans held in the ‘80s and even in to the ‘90s.”

No, that’s not what we’re talking about, actually. The citizen is no longer a mere consumer. What we’re talking about is a social network (a real-world one) whose power is rooted in its ability to take action. Obama has built a network that knows how to knock on doors, make phone calls, drive people to the polls, and win elections. Via My.BarackObama.com, the campaign has an even better type of data than consumer data: producer data. The campaign knows who has set up groups and events, who’s been making phone calls, who goes to other states to canvass, who’s signed up for voter registration drives, etc.

Just as a four year old child expects all media to be interactive, the American people are beginning to expect politics to be hands-on. Civic duty is no longer confined to casting a ballot on Election Day, or cutting a check after receiving a piece of direct mail. Political activism is no longer the domain of a few die-hard (and kind of weird) party activists and political junkies. As the Obama campaign has proven, it’s something within the grasp of all Americans, because with the help of social technologies political activism can now be on our own terms. Here comes everybody, indeed.

I think I’ll start writing a weekly link roundup of interesting items I find around the Tubes that don’t merit a blog post of their own. Without further adieu:

Four Days in Denver

In this New York Magazine feature from several weeks ago, ‘West Wing’ writer Lawrence O’Donnell Jr. pens a movie-treatment on what would happen if the Democratic nomination remains deadlocked when we get to the Convention. Even though my favorite Democrats (Howard Dean and Al Gore) aren’t exactly portrayed in the most positive light, it’s a great read. Hat-tip to Patrick Ruffini.

Decision Tree: The Obama-Clinton Divide

This New York Times graphic warmed my heart as a computer programmer. Even a freshman in CS 101 could plop together some if/else statements to accurately portray the decision-making process of the American voter. Hat-tip to Mike Connery.

In the world of small business entrepreneurship, especially technology startups in Silicon Valley, a standard process has evolved dictating how to raise money to start a company. Similarly, in the mass media era of political campaigns, a funding process is also followed, albeit far different from that of Silicon Valley. A national political campaign is expected to raise large amounts of money from a relatively small amount of wealthy donors, and then use that money for large media buys in a relatively small amount of media markets in order to win an election. The Obama campaign has completely dismantled that fundraising equation, and there’s much more to it than just small donations over the Internet. The Obama campaign’s fundraising approach in many ways mirrors the angel funding strategy of a Silicon Valley startup.

Let’s look at how a Silicon Valley start-up usually raises money. First, the entrepreneurs raise a small amount of seed money from friends and family—something to pay bills for a few months while ideas are made concrete, pitches are honed, and proof of concept demos are built. Since these amount to loans between trusted individuals, the seed money is usually paid back with only small (or no) interest. A startup can also secure loans from banks at this early stage. The loans will usually stay small because the company is unproven at this point.

Once more money is needed, angel investors are courted. Angels are wealthy individuals who provide large amounts of capital and usually ask for some ownership of the company in return. Angel investment will usually get a company through the first year. After the startup matures and needs to expand, it can then seek venture capital. The money raised from venture capital firms is significantly higher than from angel investors, and because the money is pooled and managed by an expert (the VC, or venture capitalist), the firm usually has some sort of say in company decisions and direction, in addition to equity in the company. A major point of comparison is that VCs get their hands dirty in the internal affairs of the company, while angel investors will usually not.

Looking at political fundraising, some interesting comparisons can be made. Venture capital firms can be likened to high-dollar donors, specifically those bundlers of high-dollar donations (Bush’s Rangers are a prime example). They’re able to donate large amounts of money, but they also expect a high and personally beneficial return when the candidate gets into office. Many high-dollar donors also insert themselves into the campaign, either by demanding the attention of the candidate, or more often, demanding the attention of campaign staffers by making special requests.

To be sure, the Obama campaign has raised plenty of money from high-dollar donors. Recently, Obama was in San Francisco at a high-dollar fundraiser and made a little bit of news in the process. But as has already been well-documented, the vast majority of Obama’s money comes from the enormous number of small-dollar donations raised over the Internet. One wonders why he even needs to go to San Francisco to raise high-dollar money these days.

The small-dollar donors that have fueled the Obama campaign throughout this primary season can be thought of as angel investors. Like angel investors to a start-up, they give their money, and what they want in return is a piece of the pie, where that pie is the campaign instead of a company. Most importantly, the piece of the campaign they desire is vastly different from what high-dollar donors demand. Obama’s small-dollar angels seek empowerment. They want to self-organize and own the campaign locally. And, in what is a major untold story of the 2008 cycle, the Obama campaign has been actively cultivating their small-dollar angels from the very beginning.

Back in early 2007, the Obama campaign launched massive rallies in cities across the country. Many observers likened them to rock concerts. What the stories missed was that Obama was doing more than building a list of small-dollar donors. The massive rallies were building a national network of people deeply invested in the campaign. Activists invested with their time and energy, not just their money.

I attended one such rally in Atlanta in April of 2007, along with 20,000 other people. Several things were striking. First, anyone who wanted to reserve a free “ticket” had to sign up on My.BarackObama.com, the campaign’s social activism network (some later rallies would ask for a small donation to reserve a ticket). There was no +1 or +2 option to bring guests. Every individual that wanted a ticket needed to sign up. When we got to the rally, those of us who had signed up and printed out our tickets (really just the confirmation email) were allowed to go into an area of the crowd closer to the stage. Those who had not signed up online were asked to fill out a contact form and were then ushered to an area further away from the stage. We were already seeing a return on our investment: if we had signed up on the website, we were given a better experience at the rally.

Before Obama took the stage, we were asked to do three things by the warm-up speaker:

1. Sign up on My.BarackObama.com if we already hadn’t
2. Sign up to volunteer in nearby South Carolina
3. Tell two friends about Barack Obama

During his 45-minute stump speech, Obama echoed the same points. There was no explicit ask for money at the event. The ask was to become heavily invested in the campaign, with an emphasis on investing time and energy. As 2007 went on, the Obama campaign continued with the massive rallies, and supplemented those with training camps around the country, getting activists even more invested in the campaign. When the voting began, these angel investors were leading the GOTV efforts in primary states and were organizing Obama’s near sweep in the caucus states. Winning, after all, is the best return on investment in electoral politics.

Last month, Wired profiled ObamaCycle, a social network that helps Obama supporters send each other campaign materials like rally signs and bumper stickers. As the primary season progressed from state to state, supporters living in states that had already held contests found themselves with more schwag than they knew what to do with. So, aided by the social network creation service Ning, ObamaCycle was set up as a way to connect the schwag-laden supporters with the schwag-needing supporters in upcoming primary states.

It’s a terrific idea, and it made me wonder why Ning hasn’t been used in politics more this year. From what I can tell, ObamaCycle is the biggest political social network on Ning. There are about a dozen social networks set up for Obama, very few for Ron Paul, and absolutely none for Hillary Clinton. What gives?

As profiled on TechCrunch, Ning is essentially a free white label social networking service. The administrator tools let anyone create their own social network, and customize it with user-friendly tools. Members of a network can connect in a discussion forum, send messages to each other, create groups, embed YouTube videos and external feeds, play with widgets, and publicize the social network externally using badges. And yes, Ning does display those oh-so valuable email addresses to the social network administrator.

It’ll be interesting to see if this incredibly useful tool gets traction in the political world. I’m thinking a smart Congressional campaign might pick up on it.