I saw this while reading a TechCrunch Article this morning, so I thought I’d share for with the rest of people not reading techcrunch. Also check out the Fundrace on Huffington Post.  Every time politics meets technology to make the process more transparent and easy for the people, I get giddy inside.

Over the last year and half, I’ve looked for various YouTube videos on Obama.  Of course some where in complete utter distaste and should prolly be take down, but the vast majority were inspirational and depict the American genius and  creativity.  Below are my favorite YouTube videos about Obama with a few honorable mentions.

Barack Obama/Bobby Kennedy - Hope

Work to Do Remix

Yes We Can - Barack Obama Music Video

Barack Obama: Reflections of Bobby Kennedy

Barack Obama: We Shall Overcome

The Obama Dream

The “Obama Movement”

BARACK OBAMA YES WE CAN RAP SONG

Honorable Mention

Baby Got Barack

Sing for Obama Grassroots Music Video

Barack Obama: Poetic Politics

For Obama: “Si Se Puede Cambiar” by Andres Useche

What are your favorites?

Over the years the number of blogs I read on a regular basis has increased. However, the quality of the posts and the quality of the writing has remained stagnant.  Why is that?  I don’t  have the answer.  If I did, I’d write a book and try to get deal for it.  Maybe it’s just me but I think that if you’re going to call yourself a professional blogger your writing and your research should be at the level of a professional.  Over the last two days, I’ve watched an interview on a profession tech blog where the interviewer was irritating. I’m not going to link to it because it’s a new venture and I’ve the pleasure to meet the gentleman who is behind it.  Nice guy.  His niceness aside, his interviews are terrible.  On the ones that I’ve watched the questions were similar to that of five-year old interviewing his/her parents for a school project.  What made the recent interview even more unbearable to watch was the fact that interviewer kept interrupting the interviewee and made “huh-uh” noise after every sentence.  Now to be fair to him, he is not the only guilty of crappy interviewing of the web.  There are many more out there.   I wouldn’t have such a problem with this if these people would refer to themselves as amateur bloggers as opposed to professional bloggers. To all who claim to be professional bloggers; please take a writing class, an interview class and a research class.  Calling yourself a professional requires more than the ability to copy and paste from a site larger than yours (with or without two lines of your own) or post low qualities videos and call them interviews.  To put out such crappy work, undermines your blog and insults your readership.  Then again it’s  very possible that I have a twisted definition of  the word “professional.”

All these Facebook events had me thinking:  Of all the politicians and or non-profits, who can really benefits from the extra exposure on Facebook?  At first glance the answer is easy.  Everyone of them can benefit from additional exposure on Facebook and if you subscribe to the theory that all publicity is good publicity, this is even more true. 

Before discussing who has the most to gain, it is imperative to mention that each organization must first determine its goals on Facebook and  its target audience and their habits.  For example, there is no need to for an organization like National Association of Home Builders to create a presence on Facebook, if their goal is to reach more Builders Members.  On the other hand, I don’t understand why an associations like National Minority AIDS Council or the Red Cross, have yet to take advantage of Facebook groups and Apps to promote their activities (at a local level if need be) and even launch education campaigns about AIDS and blood drives, respectively.

That being said, I think some stand to gain more than others.  In my opinion, the most stand to gain are local politicians and local organizations.  Facebook actions (i.e. signing up for events, following local group, viewing a tagging photos) better translate in the real world if they are kept in the small communities where that people can physically relate to and have to be part of every day.  I have no data to support this but one can only look at LateNightShots in DC and its success to get what the idea.  The site works because it drives people to meet and get together offline.   And they can do this because it’s hyper-local. Whether you agree with what they do  when they meet offline is a subject for another discussion.

While national organizations and national politicians can not benefits as much from the basic Facebook features as their local counterparts, they can rely on Facebook Apps to accomplish the same thing.  The Apps can be used as a tool to allow like minded users be a part of hyper-local community that will allow them then to engage with each other and organization/politician online and offline. 

Basically, a successful utilization of facebook to get a message across would be to create hyper-local groups than whose action and support can translate in the real world

Unless you’ve been living under rock, you are probably aware of the all the hype that Facebook has been receiving. With something like 45 millions users, everyone, from politicians to activist/Non-Profit organizations, has been trying to leverage for their purpose and or cause. The first event I attended focused on how political organizations and candidates can utilize Facebook to reach the masses. The Facebook reps started the presentation with statistics about the site, its users and the potential for growth. The numbers were impressive but nothing that hasn’t been published everywhere on the web. Needless to say, I was really excited about that part of the presentation. In latter part of the presentations made following recommendations to organizations and candidate that wished to tap into Facebook users:

• Form groups and keep the content fresh (i.e. pictures, wall post, notes, and posted items).
• Be candid, transparent, and relevant (i.e. don’t used canned photos only, don’t run everything by legal and PR, talk about Grey’s anatomy…everyone watches it)
• Encourage interaction between group members and have actionable items.
• Build Facebook application using the Facebook Platform when you find limitations in current Facebook functionalities (i.e. Barack Obama app & Causes App).
• Purchase various Facebook advertising package to target a specific audience (i.e. all 22-24 yrs old males living in NY) or to gain wide audience.

Post presentation, they had a Q&A. Again nothing exciting, expect you politician profiles can now have more than 5000 friends, and Groups administrators will soon be able to message more than 1000 people at a time.

The second event, titled Facebook Developer Garage, was held at GW the next day. By the title you can see that it was geared towards geeks like me. There was a bit of an overlap between the presentations. The presenters displayed the same stats from the other conference. I guess they can’t really compile new statistics overnight. During the second part of the presentation, the focus was more on the much touted Facebook Platform. To summarize, their message to developers was “build fast and iterate.” They made the case that the platform is young and full of potential. They, as in Facebook, have not yet identified all the characteristics of a killer app. The best way to discover users’ likes and dislikes is by trial and error, which is what they do themselves at Facebook (…think of backlash when news feed was first introduced). After the presentation from Facebook reps, some local developers came up and demoed their Facebok apps. Each of them talked about the challenges encountered while building their app and fielded some questions. I can not end with out a word of thanks for Jesse Tomas and Nick O’Neill for setting up the second event. It was very ad hock, but successful.

Next post what I learned…