Obama 2012: “Dashboard” App Revealed For Social Media Campaigning

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President Obama Campaigning ToolIn 2008 President Obama launched the most successful online campaign in the history of US politics and now as team Obama gears up for their 2012 re-election challenge they have announced an even more robust campaign that offers its own set of social media campaign tools.

Known as “Dashboard” the new platform offers almost everything a brick-and-mortar campaign office offers but in digital form. For example specialized tools will allow helpers to make calls to recruit other to join the team while organizing campaign events and even communicating with Obama’s leadership team. The platform can be access from desktop, laptop, tablet and smartphone devices which makes grassroots campaigns more mobile than ever.

The Dashboard design is similar to Facebook’s interface and brings with it social media driven metrics reports.

Users will also be able to find Obama supporting groups to join in their area.

The Dashboard app however isn’t just for local users, the staff for Obama’s administration will be able to set specific goals for individual Obama supports while tracking their success rates. Groups will then be able to engage in and compete in a friendly competition with one another.  [Read more…]

British PM’s social media reputation flagging according to new audit

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The Labour Party may lead the way when it comes to British political parties using Twitter and other online tools, but a new audit by Yomego suggests that Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s social media reputation is flagging.

Using various natural language technology algorithms, a social media reputation score is created by measuring not only how much a particular person is mentioned, but also how positive or negative that coverage is.

The PM scored just 42.59 out of 100, putting his ‘sentiment’ score even behind that of British National Party leader Nick Griffin. [Read more…]

White House Goes Transparent, Plans Blog Launch Next Week

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When now President Obama campaigned, he got a lot of cred for being open about using new technologies, and you can definitely say that he spun the social sphere well enough. This continues to come to fruit with the launch of a Transparency Blog next week according to InformationWeek, who also quotes deputy CTO of the open government initiative at the Office of Science and Technology Beth Noveck.

“If we have the platforms, if we have the technology, marry it to a process that allows people to contribute their ideas or expertise, and marry that to laws that say it is OK, the hope is we can actually lead to and create a more open government,” she said.

That sounds good, and this does too, speaking about the Data.gov initiative:

“We don’t have to put everything on our Web sites, but we have to make sure that data is available on our Web sites so people can turn it into something that’s meaningful and useful to them,” Noveck said. For example, she pointed to the endless possibilities of new types of data visualizations.

It is good to see that the transparency urges of the new media sphere is affecting the governments as well.

@AKGovSarahPalin joins Twitter

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Former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin has officially joined the ranks of Twitter addicts. The Alaska governor has so far amassed 12,096 followers (as of this writing).

“This is my official Twitter feed – from here I’ll provide updates on issues concerning Alaskans. Learn more about AK at www.alaska.gov,” the governor said in her first post.

Yesterday, she also posted her take on Swine Flu. “We still have no reported cases of swine flu. Be vigilant, AK! Wash hands & watch for flu-like symptoms. Go to http://tinyurl.com/c2avc4.”

Palin is following, among others, Bill O’reilly, David Gregory, Mike Huckabee, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Karl Rove and of course… John McCain. She is not currently following @BarakObama and me.

Clive Thompson Thinks The White House Is Ready For Trolls

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Whitehouse.gov isn’t the open discussion website that (at least som) Barack Obama supporters from the election would have liked. I can understand why, politics is tricky business and if anyone could post a comment, it could (and would) get nasty really quick.

Enter Wired’s Clive Thompson and his post on how to tame trolls. It’s not news really, rather technologies and ways big sites manage it today, from stripping trolling commentaries of the vowels, to manual comment moderation. [Read more…]