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Notes on Obama’s election campaign

18 February 2010 in Internet, Media, Politics by Stilgherrian | 11 comments

[Last week, Australia's Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner wrote about Government 2.0 in The government wants to blog. Later today ABC Radio wants me to talk about how Barack Obama's presidential election campaign used social media and social networking, so I've been reviewing my liveblog of the presentations made by Ben Self at Media 09 and Joe Trippi at the Microsoft Politics and Technology Forum. Trippi has worked on various Democrat campaigns including as campaign manager for Howard Dean's 2004 unsuccessful presidential nomination campaign. Self's company Blue State Digital managed Obama's online fundraising, constituency-building, issue advocacy, and peer-to-peer online networking during the primaries. I figured I might as well share my notes. Enjoy.]

More than two years since Barack Obama’s presidential election campaign, the numbers are still staggering. $770 million was raised, roughly 65% of that online. There were 3.2 million individual donors, with the average donation under $100.

This is completely different from traditional political fundraising, which revolved about dinners and other events costing $2300 a ticket — the maximum unreportable donation donation allowable from a couple at that time under US electoral laws. Obama’s campaign really did reach out and mobilise millions of ordinary Americans.

Yes, millions. The progressive Democratic Party network is now 15 million people online.

Online social networking tools made all this possible, sure, but the success came through the clever application of those tools. The key word here is “personal”.

Read the rest of this entry »

Yes, I wrote about iPad, but not here

01 February 2010 in Blogging, Internet, Personal by Stilgherrian | 5 comments

Not posting here for a week makes it look like I’ve vanished. But increasingly, more of my work is elsewhere. Like my Crikey piece It’s called iPad, and the Kindle is rooted. Like the 2000-word feature I’m slaving to finish today for ZDNet.com.au. Look in the sidebar under “More Stilgherrian”. My online presence is now scattered amongst so many streams of data!

There’s an essay here about the meaning of all this fragmentation. But if I write that essay, I’ll end up having to admit this is precisely why Facebook has been so successful. So much of your life can happen through Facebook and its myriad third-party data-sucking privacy-perverting applications, from organising a BBQ to marketing a business.

The ease with which Facebook can become your all-encompassing social portal means Facebook will win.

That means I’ll probably never write that essay. I don’t want to admit Facebook will win. Because it’s ugly. And because they’re cunts.

Al Jazeera: Email is “old fashioned”

13 January 2010 in Internet, Music by Stilgherrian | 2 comments

I continue to get blown away by the quality of material coming from Middle Eastern media network Al Jazeera.

I’ve just watched the latest Listening Post podcast and have learned more about Yemen in a few minutes than from a lifetime of watching, reading and listening to Australian media.

And fascinatingly, this is how Listening Post presenter Richard Gizbert explained how you can take part in the program.

We are now closing in on four thousand viewers following us on Facebook and Twitter. They check in to find out what stories we’re working on and in case they want to weigh in as one of our Global Village Voices. If you’d like to do the same, just go to either of those sites and search us out. Or you can get in touch with us the old-fashioned way on email. We’re at listeningpost@aljazeera.net.

Yes, that’s right. Email is now “old-fashioned”. Love your work, guys.

ABC Radio Statewide NSW, third spot

03 December 2009 in Human Nature, Internet, Media, Privacy by Stilgherrian | 1 comment

ABC logo

I joined presenter Paul Turton on ABC Radio’s Statewide for our third chat about things Internettish on Tuesday afternoon.

This week, we talked about privacy. What are the real risks online? How easy is it for people to find out about you? What should you tell your kids, and how safe are they?

The program isn’t streamed on the Internet, but I did another cheap-arsed recording using my MacBook Pro’s built-in microphone. The audio is below — and the shit quality is my fault, not the ABC’s.

Statewide is broadcast on ABC Local Radio throughout NSW from 1600 to 1800 weekdays, except in Sydney, Newcastle, Wollongong and wherever else they have their own local drive-time program. I’m joining Paul every Tuesday afternoon at 1615 through until 15 December.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 10:01 — 11.5MB)

[The radio interview is probably Copyright © 2009 Australian Broadcasting Corporation, but since they don't archive them I reckon it's fair enough putting it here provided you just listen to it and I link back to Statewide and encourage you to listen.]

Has Google Trends data made me look a goose?

27 November 2009 in Internet, Media by Stilgherrian | 7 comments

Yesterday I wrote an article for Crikey plus a post here based on Google Trends data which, it now appears, is dodgy.

Google Trends shows a steady decline in traffic to various websites since about September 2008, based on the metric “unique daily browsers”. But I was howled down. Everyone else’s metrics were not showing such a decline.

Indeed many, such as this chart of Nielsen NetRatings’ unique dailies, provided by Andrew Hunter (@Huntzie), Head of News, Sport and Finance at ninemsn, showed the exact opposite.

Nielsen NetRatings unique daily browser chart, showing steady rise in audiences: click to embiggen

For example, news.com.au grew from 250,829 average daily unique browsers (UBs) in July 2008 to 346,367 in October 2009, a 38% increase. Not the roughly 50% drop shown by Google Trends.

Google says:

Trends for Websites combines information from a variety of sources, such as aggregated Google search data, aggregated opt-in anonymous Google Analytics data, opt-in consumer panel data, and other third-party market research. The data is aggregated over millions of users, powered by computer algorithms…

In other words, it’s some Google Secret Sauce. But has the sauce gone off?

Photograph of an angry goose

The Google Trends forum is rather quiet. There were only three questions or comments posted for the whole of September, none of which received a reply, and nothing since. I can’t see that anyone from Google has responded to anything for months and months — I gave up looking back any further. Others have noted that Google Trends data differs wildly from Google’s own Analytics product — usually complaining that it shows significantly less traffic.

Google Trends is a Google Labs product, i.e. an experiment, I’m starting to think that it’s been abandoned and we’re just seeing a slow degradation due to lack of maintenance.

Meanwhile, I have changed my Twitter avatar to a goose for the rest of today.

ABC Radio Statewide NSW, second spot

26 November 2009 in Human Nature, Internet, Media by Stilgherrian | 1 comment

ABC logo

I joined presenter Paul Turton on ABC Radio’s Statewide for our second chat about things Internettish on Tuesday afternoon.

This week, we covered how easy it is to post video on the Internet, making it difficult for the police and other authorities to cover up “bad behaviour”, and the strengths and weaknesses of online dating and, um, scoring a quickie.

The program isn’t streamed on the Internet, but I did another cheap-arsed recording using my MacBook Pro’s built-in microphone. The audio is below — and the shit quality is my fault, not the ABC’s.

Statewide is broadcast on ABC Local Radio throughout NSW from 1600 to 1800 weekdays, except in Sydney, Newcastle, Wollongong and wherever else they have their own local drive-time program. I’m joining Paul every Tuesday afternoon at 1615 through until 15 December.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 10:05 — 11.5MB)

[The radio interview is probably ©Copyright © 2009 Australian Broadcasting Corporation, but since they don't archive them I reckon it's fair enough putting it here provided you just listen to it and I link back to Statewide and encourage you to listen.]

Is social media killing the web (as we’ve known it)?

26 November 2009 in Internet, Media by Stilgherrian | 4 comments

Google Trends graph showing traffic drop to major Australian news sites

If Google Trends’ statistics are to be trusted, it looks like there’s been a significant decline in traffic to websites over the last year — not just news, but everywhere. Except social network sites.

Following a blog post by Nicholas Moerman, a planning intern with Proximity in London, I checked out the figures for Australia sites. It does indeed look like there’s been a significant drop in daily unique visitors — which is what Google Trends measures, rather than the more common monthly uniques.

Crikey logo

I’ve written more, and provided more graphs, in a piece for Crikey today, Is social media killing the web as we know it?

Oh, and I was also in Crikey yesterday, Baffled by Murdersoft? Making sense of Murdoch and Microsoft, where I look at some of the numbers behind the rumoured deal between News Corporation and Microsoft’s Bing search engine.

Links for 08 November 2009 through 18 November 2009

18 November 2009 in Daily Links by del.icio.us | 1 comment

Stilgherrian’s links for 08 November 2009 through 18 November 2009:

See what happens when you don’t curate your links for ten days, during which time there’s a conference which generates a bazillion things to link to? Sigh.

This is such a huge batch of links that I’ll start them over the fold. They’re not all about Media140 Sydney, trust me.

Read the rest of this entry »

Weekly radio spot on ABC Statewide NSW

18 November 2009 in Internet, Media, Privacy by Stilgherrian | No comments

ABC logo

Yesterday I joined presenter Paul Turton on ABC Radio’s Statewide for the first of a few regular chats about social networking and social media and things Internettish.

Statewide is broadcast on ABC Local Radio throughout NSW from 1600 to 1800 weekdays, except in Sydney, Newcastle, Wollongong and wherever else they have their own local drive-time program.

Yesterday we talked about the etiquette of “friending” on sites like Facebook and whether it’s OK to refuse a friend request, where you draw the line between your personal and professional life, how people spread the news of the September dust storms for themselves and Rickrolling, amongst other things.

The program isn’t streamed on the Internet, alas, but I did a cheap-arsed recording using my MacBook Pro’s built-in speaker microphone [doh!], and I’ve posted the audio below. I’ll see if I can get a proper audio split next week.

I’ll be joining Paul every Tuesday afternoon at 1615 through until 15 December.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 17:27 — 20.0MB)

[The radio interview is probably ©2009 Australian Broadcasting Corporation, but since they don't archive them I reckon it's fair enough putting it here provided you just listen to it and I link back to Statewide and encourage you to listen.]

Virgin Blue’s mistake reveals countless selfish whingers

15 November 2009 in Human Nature, Internet, Marketing by Stilgherrian | 55 comments

Velocity Rewards logo

Thank you, Virgin Blue, for sending your “erroneous” email Friday night. You’ve done us a great public service. You’ve exposed a pack of greedy, selfish, shallow tools who deserve to be ridiculed publicly. Thank you.

On Friday evening, Australian airline Virgin Blue sent an email telling some Velocity Rewards members they’d been upgraded to Gold status. But as documented at mUmBRELLA, the email went not just to those entitled to the upgrade but their entire database — including people who’d opted out of email marketing.

Including me because, yes, I’m a Velocity Rewards member.

“That can’t be right,” I thought. “I haven’t flown with Virgin Blue this year.” Then I saw others saying similar things online and I figured the mistake was more widespread. I chuckled, knowing that someone had a bit of a mess to clear up.

Sure enough, three hours later a second email arrived.

Oops! Due to an error you’ve received our previous email by mistake. Please disregard the free upgrade communication as unfortunately you do not qualify for that upgrade.

We apologise for any inconvenience caused.

Mistake. Correction. Apology. That’s the end of the story, yes? Alas no.

Suddenly a whole bunch of people are demanding their Gold status should stay even though, like, they’re not actually entitled to it. People are “upset”. They’re demanding compensation, some even saying they should be compensated with a free flight voucher.

Compensated? Compensated for fucking what, exactly?

Compensated for being too stupid to realise the email was obviously a mistake? Compensated for having a vastly over-inflated sense of entitlement? Compensated for being so much of a consumer-puppet that you validate yourself by bragging about some confected faux-status symbolised by which colour plastic card sits in your wallet and then being embarrassed because, oh sorry, you’re actually still just another cheap-arsed prole after all?

I don’t think that’s Virgin Blue’s fault.

Losers.

Now of course there’s a metric bazillion blog posts and comments banging on about how this is “epic fail” on Virgin Blue’s part and how they’d have handled it so much better and faster. I won’t link to them because it’s too depressing to realise how many instant fucking experts appear after every little glitch is made public.

However I will link to Darryl King’s excellent piece about what he calls Crowd Spanking.

Why is it that the tools of Social Media make tools out of people?

Yes, companies, people and organisations of any sort can and should be open to criticism and correction of poor behaviour. I agree totally. However I don’t agree that Crowd Spanking of everyone that does something wrong is effective nor necessary …

Add some perspective. This is not a corporation that has exposed their staff and customer to asbestos and are denying compensation. It is an upgrade people! …

Before all the Social Media Gurus come up with the 10 things that Virgin Blue could have done better blog posts think through how businesses and people at work live.

Ex-fucking-zactly.

“Epic fail” on Virgin Blue’s part? Bah! Step back a little and think about the full gamut of things which an airline can get wrong and the potential consequences. Up one end, you’ve got mistakes where hundreds of people die in a ball of flame, traumatising their loved ones. Down the other end you’ve got… gosh! A marketing email that was sent to people by mistake.

To the folks who reckon they’d have handled it better and quicker, well, are you really set up to handle such an unusual situation on a Friday night when people have gone to the pub or gone home for the weekend? Personally, I reckon identifying the problem and getting the second email out in three hours isn’t a bad effort — especially when in the meantime there’s, you know, a fucking airline to run!

Well done, Virgin Blue. Well done.

I reckon — and this is just my opinion here — but I reckon we save the Really Big Stick for mistakes which actually matter. Also, stop being such selfish, judgemental little pricks.

[Update 16 October 2009: To illustrate some points I'll be making in the comments, here's a screenshot of the erroneous Velocity Rewards email.]

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