The Obama Campaign’s Levels of Engagement

Patrick Ruffini has a good post up on Next Right about the Obama campaign’s online engagement strategy (use of email, social networks, etc. to get volunteers to support the campaign).  In the article, he points to a quote from Chip Saltsman, who is running for the Chairmanship of the Republican National Committee,...

Techmeme: News Automation Doesn’t Work

<Cross post from our ImpactWatch blog>

I am a big fan of the tech news aggregator Techmeme as well as its politically focused sister site Memeorandum (not so much the gossip focused WeSmirch).   Both sites use complex algorithms to discover and group new content in real time.  I read both sites on a daily basis as a way of getting a sort of Cliffs Notes summary of what is going on in the tech and political blogosphere on a given day. ...

The Stalking of Barack Obama

Dan Farber of CNet has a good blog post up on what he calls the “lifestreaming” of Barack Obama.  He writes:

Barack Obama will be the most shadowed president in history, and it won’t be just the Secret Service and press corps surrounding him.  Citizens and paparazzi armed with camera phones and a variety of other multimedia devices will chronicle every movement he makes in public and post it online....

Papa Johns Brings Couponing to Facebook

Papa Johns Pizza is currently running one of the cleverest Facebook promotions I’ve seen.  Between now and December 1, if you sign up to be a fan of of Papa Johns on Facebook you will receive a coupon for a free medium pizza (fineprint: you must first purchase a pizza online,...

Time’s Person of the Year Poll Has Been Hacked

Time Magazine is running a poll on their website in conjunction with their annual naming of the Time Person of the Year.  Twenty five finalists are presented, and  users are encouraged to rank each person on a ten point scale.  Following in a time honored tradition, supporters of scientist Douglas Melton have apparently hacked the poll,...