We’ve been slowly rolling out Progressive Congress News over the last month or so. General availability began 11/16/2010 and now we’re ready to start talking about some of the other projects we’re doing.
The main news feeds are tightly tuned to serve the needs of Congressional staff and our various channels back into the field. The PCN Special Reports are based on Twitter lists and they serve to concentrate different sorts of news.
Today I’ll provide a bit of advice for those new to Twitter who want to become quickly and deeply involved in monitoring and influencing the legislative process. TweetDeck is the premier tool for adept Twitter users and the information provided here will get you off to a running start and in touch with the movers and shakers among the Progressive Twitterati.
When I joined Twitter in July 2006 I was the 3,365th person to sign up for the 140-character message streaming social network. Now, with more than 190 million users having taken the plunge, I guess you could call me an early adopter of sorts.
See, I’ve always believed that the Internet — and by extension new online tools like Twitter — have the ability to create change because it levels the political playing field tearing down walls that have traditionally separated the powerless and the powerful.
It turns out I may have been wrong — at least when it comes to a certain half-termer from Alaska.
There is a strong and growing Progressive presence on Twitter. I am aware of two other leaders besides myself who are subject to harassment and intimidation from the right. The timing of this makes it appear that this is another centrally initiated effort similar to the flood of female conservatives who arrived concurrent with Sarah Palin’s “grizzly mom” prattle.
My response to the threatening conduct has been to basically dare the person behind it to actually step up and do something. I am far more aggressive than most and would not expect the rest to follow my lead. An organized community response will be the best approach to beheading this nuisance before it gets any momentum.
I have a service work opportunity for those who are more interested in policy more than in politics. We’ve been building things in social media for the last year or so, mostly on Twitter, and we have a major project that is getting off the ground.
If you’re an intent watcher of any of: energy, economy, environment, education, immigration, LGBT issues, labor, healthcare, or national security and if you can spare an hour or so a day you can make a difference.
I write very much about technology and methods, but not so often about the people behind them. I have a set of skills all my own, to be sure, but fully two thirds of the things I do are things I learned from really perceptive people from the twitterverse.
We’ve been busy defining what Open Source Intelligence means for the Progressive community for the last few months. We’ve talked about collection, which we’re doing by taking up the advanced operator’s viewpoint. We’ve talked about distillation, which we accomplish by sharing the advanced operator’s view with a public web based tool, used to draw in other editors, subject matter experts, and activists. The dissemination of such information in a familiar, broadsheet format began the of August 1st with paper.li based output for the Energy and Environment policy domains going live.
The cross disciplinary approach used means that the operation of some components are obvious to those with expertise in the given area. Developers and tool makers see the system one way, information analysts including Congressional staff another, and activists, excited by the potential for better integration between policy makers and their ability to influence public views see much more.
This paper is an attempt to provide an English language exposition on the overall layout and long term directions for what is tentatively named the Progressive Congress News Feeds.
We’ve been doing a variety of things with Twitter for the last year, supporting Democratic campaigns and Progressive causes. I’ve been writing in the background about Open Source Intelligence, the principles of which we’re apply to these campaigns and causes.
We’ve recently revealed work that’s been done on news rooms built with NetVibes. Today I’m pleased to report that paper.li based daily papers are running for two of the nine policy areas we track.
I read with great interest the recent spate of reporting regarding the conservative hit squad operating on Digg. There is a similar Progressive effort, although it focuses on promoting quality stories rather than the negative manipulation being seen from the right.
Having been up to my eyeballs in Twitter for the last eighteen months the same effect is clearly at work – a vigorous, albeit monotonous false front – the appearance of a populist movement, but with little substance behind it …
Some months ago Progressive Congress director Darcy Burner gave me a document outlining a strategic vision for message management in the online discussion space. The steps required to reach this lofty goal of an integrated, partisan Democratic social media operation require a specific set of actions that will happen across multiple platforms.
Today we’re ready to open up a small portion of what we’ve built to early adopters so that it can be seen and further tuned.
It's the return of CRUSH! After taking a short summer hiatus, we're back in action, crushing the week's social media news into a juicy 3 minutes or less. And this week we're even giving you a special behind-the-scenes look into Crush Studios, so don't forget to join us on Facebook and Twitter.
The newest and third-largest nation in the world – Facebook Nation – is having trouble getting its currency off the ground. Facebook's announcement that Facebook credits will soon be the sole currency for all apps and games, has some of its 500,000 million citizens (i.e. developers) putting up a fight.
But Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg better start focusing on national security because other forces are preparing to attack. A web designer has filed a lawsuit against the social networking site claiming that, based on a contract entered in 2003 with Zuckerberg, he is entitled to 84% of Facebook, or $12.6 billion. And a Judge in New York has ruled to freeze the social networking site's assets until the case is resolved.
So Mr. Zuckerberg, how would you like to pay for that? Cash, credit, check or…Facebook credits?
In this week's quick hits:
Ebay has it's own legal woes, facing a copyright infringement lawsuit over PayPal technology that could cost them almost $4 billion.
Tweet Deck surpassed 15 million downloads this week, meaning that apparently more than 15 million people have yet to hear of Hootsuite.
And just when you thought Chatroulette couldn't get any creepier…it has now added a local feature, so you can now tell just how close that person (or body part) really is.
And in world news, China's online population has skyrocketed to “420 million as more people access the Internet with cell phones.” The Communist government has renewed Google's operating license, ending the months-long stalemate over Internet censorship and providing momentum for rights groups, such as Human Rights First, in their effort to create an open Internet behind the Great Chinese Firewall.
And that brings us to our “Crush of the Week” where we would like to recognize the brilliant folks over at Old Spice for their new, creative social media marketing campaign that is both entertaining and effective.
The recent Maryland rule making regarding political activities in social media is needed, but the rapidly evolving twitterverse has already moved past their requirement that campaigns register their Twitter presence at the state level.
My role at Progressive PST is simple – I’m the tool pusher, guiding our operation as we drill for supporters for campaigns and causes. And we’ve got some things going that I don’t see anyone else doing …
This week saw some very cool new media news including Chirp, "How to run a government from your iPad", why Steve Jobs caused the Iceland volcano, the new budget deficit video game (MA), Glee: the app, and of course Stella Artios – The Movie (starring you).
All this and more. Watch the video:
Twitter held its first developers conference, appropriately called "Chirp", this past week and revealed the following key announcements: it has surpassed 100,000,000 users (with more than 300 thousands users signing up a day), the site boasts more than 180 million unique visitors a month, and that twitter will be releasing every tweet to be archived in the Library of Congress. Up next in the spring conference circuit is Facebook, which is preparing to display its latest news at F8 this Wednesday.
In international news, various social media tools covered the latest British debate between the leaders of the Liberal Democrat, Labour and Conservative parties, providing instant snapshots of the country's reactions into the debate. More than 184,000 tweets were sent during the debate and Facebook saw even more action – with over 45,000 people joining the Democracy UK page, which featured a "Rate the Debate" app. However, Facebook crushed under the pressure as the swarm of traffic caused the app to fail during the event.
Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg was among the thousands of unlucky individuals whose travel plans were delayed due to the volcano that erupted in Iceland and created an ash cloud that caused the closure of European airspace. However, Stoltenberg is also one of the 450,000 people who own an iPad, which is how he has been running the Norwegian government from the United States.
Congressional deficit Commission Co-Chair Erskine Bowles is hoping that technology will be the key to balancing out our national debt. Bowles has asked Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to develop a game that will solve the national debt crisis, signaling both a new way to gain the interest of public, and opening up the possibility of fresh ideas by "crowdsourcing".
In other game news, if you are a Foursquare geek you will enjoy this new web series "Foursquare cops", brought to you by HubSpot and featuring the new police force the game has sent out to patrol the streets for cheaters.
Speaking of geeks, Glee fans are singing praises for the new "Glee" app, recently released and available for the iPhone, iTouch and iPad. The special "sonic network" adds a slew of interactive elements, making it more than just a music app. Users are able to not only sing and record their favorite show songs, but also share recordings, join people in their performances, and start Glee clubs.
And that brings us to our Crush of the Week, featuring another company who hit a high note with their innovative use of social media, the Belgian beer maker Stella Artois. But we don't want to ruin all the fun by just telling you how they did it, so check out their recent promotion to see it first hand.
