Or at least those willing do some research. Brian Stelter of the New York Times is something of a phenom when it comes to news about the TV industry, having started the influential blog tvnewser.com and subsequently being hired by the New York Times straight out of college, but his article on the “It’s 3 AM and I’m ready to be President” campaign ads of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama (embedded below – hat tip to TechPresident) shows that being an expert on one medium doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re qualified to discuss other types of media.
Mr. Stelter states that “Three days after it made its television debut, the Clinton commercial had registered more than 600,000 views on YouTube, and Mr. Obama’s recorded over 200,000, making the dueling advertisements the first breakout hits of the YouTube campaign. (Some campaign videos are lucky to receive 10,000 views.)”
While it may be true that some campaign videos don’t hit 10,000 views, I’m not sure what metric that Mr. Stelter is using to determine what makes a YouTube video a “breakout hit.” By far, the biggest video of the campaign season is “Yes We Can” by will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas, having received over 12 million views spread across the numerous copies posted to YouTube, but we can look back much farther for breakout hits. Perhaps the first big hit of the 2008 Presidential election was 1984/Vote Different by Phil de Vellis with over 5 million views (again over multiple uploads), and who could forget Obama Girl. None of these are candidate produced videos, but we need only go to Obama’s response to the State of the Union (1.3 million), Obama’s victory speech in Iowa (1 million), and many others to find videos that have been viewed many more times than either of these. In fact, Obama’s SOTU response has been watched more times than both of those ads put together.
I’ll admit that I may be overly defensive of new forms of media, be it blogs, online video, or social networks, but it irks me when someone in the mainstream press makes a blatantly untrue statement that trivializes the revolution that is taking place in the field of communications.
Since this is my blog, I’m also going to take the opportunity to editorialize on the videos just a bit and note that YouTube users have rated Clinton’s “3 AM” video with one star out of a possible five (Obama’s version has four) and that tens of thousands of her views have come from an extremely heavily trafficked DailyKos post slamming the ad.
Hillary’s 3 AM Ad
Obama’s 3 AM Ad
Yes We Can
1984
Obama’s SOTU Response
Obama’s Iowa Speech
Obama’s New Hampshire Speech (Just because I love it and because it’s been viewed more times than Hillary’s 3 AM ad.)
Help Congressional offices deal with increasing volumes of e-mail
Provide a unique identifier for each new mass mail campaign
Would allow offices to aggregate all letters from a specific organization on a specific topic AND view how constituents have customized a form letter so that the office can read what they think
Alternatives forms of communication
Polls
Something like a Digg for Congress
Perhaps something with a Congress-wide account that ensures you contact your own Representatives/Senators
New media methods of communicating with Congress
Blogs
Problems with comments and what can be placed on an official site
No electioneering, vulgarity, slander/libel
Does it need to be on a governmental level?
Should we change the law to allow for more open discussion on forms/blog comments that are run by Congressional offices/government and concern ourselves less if a citizen decides to post a political comment or something that is vulgar? Basically, is open discussion more important than being sure that government resources aren’t being used for electioneering?
Need to update franking regulations to reflect realities of modern Internet
bigthink.com – Video site for larger, more issue based discussion
by Will Johnston at 11:44 PM on February 28th, 2008 in Politics, Tech - Comment
Okay, so “notworking” is far too strong of a term, but I couldn’t resist the catchy title. TechPresident recently did a brief review of Hillary Clinton’s new Facebook app, mentioning that it’s pretty good but that it came around a bit late. This got me thinking about Obama’s Facebook app and the my.barackobama.com social network. Obama’s new media staff has done an excellent job of leveraging the Internet (or the Interwebs as some of us prefer), making it one of the driving forces behind the Obama campaign. However, the excitement over this new type of campaigning aside, I have two critiques of areas that I think could be improved upon.
The Obama Facebook application is very robust… once you actually go to the application’s canvass page. However, I would bet that the most important part of most applications, this one included, is the profile box. It is what my friends see when they come to my profile, and this is the part of the application that I deal with most often. I’ve only visited the canvass page a handful of times. When I want to interact with Obama content, I go to the Obama website or to Digg. When I’m on Facebook, I go to my profile, my friends’ profiles, and my feed.
Unfortunately, the profile box for the application is very limited. Currently, all it has is a thumbnail from a video about Obama’s win in the Maine caucuses. That happened over two weeks ago (an eternity on the Interwebs), and four states plus DC have held primaries since then. This space might be better used by feeding it content from a variety of sources like the Obama Digg account (get me to vote for stuff), the campaign blog (keep me up to date with what’s going on), or YouTube (show me one of those amazing speeches). This could be done automatically through a simple RSS aggregator like SimplePie. Alternatively, it could show me the latest actions that my friends have taken in the Obama application, like which stories they’ve voted for or commented on.
My point is that even though I am an avid Facebooker, I rarely get beyond an app’s profile box, and I’m guessing the same is true for many others.
As for the my.barackobama.com social network, my only suggestion is that they make it easier to find friends. Right now you can search by zip code, common groups, and name, but these are only helpful for finding Obama supporters near me (want to guess how many there are in Washington DC) or if I take the time to enter each of my friend’s names (not going to happen, too many friends). Consequently, I only have one friend on my Obama account, even though I live and work in the most politically active city in the U.S. In short, they need to implement a friend finder that searches e-mail contacts, much like Facebook, LinkedIn, Plaxo, et cetera all have.
Again, these are relatively minor critiques, but I think they are important ones (especially the friend finder). On the whole, the Obama new media team has done an amazing job. I don’t think anyone predicted that online politics would be at this stage at this point in time.
On January 22, 2012, MiddleTree Church will start services near the intersection of Delmar and Union in Saint Louis at the crossroads of two communities divided by race, culture, and income.
The "vision" is to bridge the "division". What would communicate the love of God louder to a racially, socio-economically divided city than a church that truly unites the community that surrounds it? MiddleTree is a display of life among the division.
This is a multicultural and multigenerational church that hopes to change lives through increasing devotion to Jesus.
MiddleTree needs to raise $30k. With these funds, they will have all the their needs met to prepare service, childrens ministry, and invest back into the community center where they meet.
If you buy a book or other item through a link on this site, I probably make a few bucks (or more likely, a few cents) from it. I hope we can still be friends :)
