by Josh Bernoff
Just as we had hoped, Barack Obama's change.gov has implemented an idea site, complete with voting and viewing of others' ideas.
It's working. But the people are having their say. Right now the second most popular idea is to decriminalize marijuana possession.
Let's see what happens to these ideas. In any case, a great step in the right direction.
by Josh Bernoff
We told Barack Obama to tap the groundswell. He's getting there. Already, the his transition team's Web site is up at change.gov.
Is it social? Not yet. It contains outgoing information. And it solicits your feedback. But when you tell President-Elect Obama your vision for America, your suggestion goes . . . well, I don't know where it goes. You type it in and then get the "thanks for sharing" message shown here. Will they just pick the ones they like and republish them?
Embracing applications like mystarbucksidea.com require two things to be successful. 1. everyone needs to see all the ideas. And 2. the organization has to respond -- tell what it is going to do (or not do) about the ideas.
So here's what I want you to do. Right now, go to this Web site: http://www.change.gov/page/s/yourvision. Enter your personal information. And when it asks for your vision, enter your own version of something like this.
Mr. Obama, in my vision for America, the government is responsive to the needs of citizens. Social technologies make this possible. You were very effective in mobilizing those technologies to help get you elected. Now it's time to use them to get your ideas from real Americans.
So here's what you should do. Publish all the ideas that people enter on this site. Allow us all to vote for them. And then tell us, directly, what you are going to do to address the ones that are most popular, or the best.
You have created a movement. Will you listen to the people who elected you? We'll be watching.
Remember, this will be most effective if you enter it in your own words. Let's see what happens!
by Josh Bernoff
Like many of you, I watched the election last night, and watched Barack Obama's acceptance speech. This speech capped off an election in which Obama demonstrated inspirational leadership and the power to organize and take advantage of a true groundswell. Groundswell means, literally, a rise in the ocean. Figuratively, it typically refers to a political movement in which people come together around a common cause. Could there be any better example than this?
Through my.barackobama.com, through Facebook and MySpace and YouTube, and through clever outreach to his supporters, Obama's campaign has truly energized its fans and turned the power of their passion to spreading his messages and gaining the votes he needed. In this country balanced on the knife edge on so many issues, I think it is no exaggeration to say that Barack Obama owes his victory to the effectiveness of his campaign's groundswell Internet strategy.
What now?
Barack Obama faces perhaps the most complex set of problems to face a president in the last fifty years, from terrorism to a teetering economy to a deficit that scares the crap of out me for my children's future. He has the power to inspire people behind the solutions he may come up with. He's clearly intelligent. But does he have the humility to gather those solutions from the popular groundswell that elected him?
If Starbucks can source ideas from the groundswell -- if Mattel can learn from its mistakes by connecting with ordinary people -- if Hershey's can get people to try new chocolates with Internet word of mouth, can Barack Obama's government tap the same sources of energy?
I call on president-elect Obama to create a community of committed Americans to discuss the solutions to the problems that face us. I call on him to designate a US Community Manager, with a small staff, to moderate and harvest those discussions to solve the country's problems. Forget polls. With a few million people in my.america.gov, Obama will be able to tap into the world's largest focus group. Communities are cheap, compared to most of what the government does. Create a space for the brightest people you know; use them to attract the best ideas. And better yet, use this energized community to sell those ideas to America.
Presidents are powerful, but the reality is that politics requires compromise. But politicians with the people on their side usually win out. With a community behind him, Obama will need no further mandate. And he'll look smarter with a few thousand idea generators behind him.
Or he could just do things the way people in Washington have always done them, in secret, watered down, inefficiently, and in the most costly way possible. That's never worked all that well, and it's been working even more poorly lately.
It's late, and tiredness has overcome the usual constraints on my idealism. I promise to be more reasonable in the morning. In the meantime, how about giving the groundswell a chance, President-Elect Obama?
This post has now appeared in the Boston Globe. Also see my update about Obama's change.gov.
by Josh Bernoff
As you can see from this graphic, the banner at the top of myBarackObama.com, Barack Obama is serious about people's ability to change the world. But we're about to see just what happens when his supporters don't support his decisions. There are lessons here for corporations, too, so watch what happens.
I've written about how Barack Obama has leveraged the power of his supporters, not only through the social network of his supporters, my.barackobama.com, but through energizing those supporters during the primary. Democrats -- and Obama supporters -- are more likely to use social networks, a tendency that could benefit Obama as he attempts to reach out to their Independent friends in the general election.
But social networking in politics is still at the broadcast stage -- candidates ring their networks like a bell to amplify their messages. As we tell corporate clients all the time, once you start talking to people in the groundswell, you need to listen, as well.
Obama is seeing this in a big way. For political reasons -- moving, as all politicians do, more to the center for the general election -- he reversed a previously held position and will vote for a provisions of a bill called FISA that provide immunity from prosecution for phone companies that worked with the government on homeland-security driven wiretapping.
Many of his supporters disagree with him on this and see it as a betrayal? How many? At least 14,000. That's how many of them have banded together in a group called "Senator Obama - Please Vote NO on Telecom Immunity - Get FISA Right", highly visible on his own social network my.barackobama.com. This group is easy to find as it is now the largest group of the thousands on his site. One of his supporters' heartfelt cries of dissent is now the top search result for "Barack FISA." And the New York Times has written about the internal conflict.
What would you do? This situation is likely to happen to you as you participate in the blogosphere, create communities, and pursue corporate goals.
Obama is likely to run afoul of this again and again as he inevitably tacks to the centers -- and away from his supporters -- in the coming months. Here's our advice (and the same applies to you as you make corporate decisions and deal with the groundswell):
I'll make following statement in closing -- please try to respond to this post based on what a politician or a businessperson should do in this situation, not based on your support of Obama, McCain, or whomever. This is about leveraging the groundswell, not Democrats and Republicans. (A futile request, I know from experience, but it's worth a try.)
by Josh Bernoff
We don't normally do political polling. But when we did our last Social Technographics survey I got sneaky. I asked people who they were voting for. The result is a fascinating peek into the minds and social behaviors of voters. The full report is available to Forrester clients here, but I'll share the data we published with all of you blog readers below.
First, for your reference, here's the social technographics ladder again, most current version. As we described this spring, it show how people are at different levels of participation in social activities, and the groups can overlap.
Just as with business travelers, we can apply this to any group of people we can identify. So let's see how social participation differs among Democrats, Republicans, and Independents. (For the purposes of this survey we classified people who usually vote Democrat as Democrat and people who usually vote Republican as Republicans -- the Independents are those who don't consistently vote one way or another. There weren't enough third-part types for us to get their profile.) Here's the data (over 10,000 online people surveyed nationally):
Right away you can see there is a persistent tendency for Democrats to participate more fully in social technologies. Looking at the index (all adults = 100), you can see that Democrats are at least 10% more likely to do just about anything involving social technologies. The Republicans are the opposite -- they're a lot LESS likely to participate (like Nixon's "silent majority"). They're 22% less likely to be a social network (Joiners) and 21% less likely to be uploading video or blogging (Creators). These are not extreme differences, but there are definite tendencies here, likely correlated to the fact that Republicans tend to be older than Democrats on the average. Notice that the Republicans are near par for Spectators, though -- they're watching, even if they're not as active participants. The Independents are somewhere in the middle, approaching the average in Joiner and Critic activity.
Now let's look at it by who people are voting for. Here's how the Democratic field looks (these are the top four most popular candidates in our national survey; we included Al Gore in the survey in case he decided to enter the race). Remember, these are the profile of the candidates' supporters.
There are important differences among democrats. One in three Obama voters is a Joiner, which may be helping the my.barackobama.com strategy. Edwards voters (62% Spectators) are the most likely to be consuming social applications; Clinton voters are the least, with only 49% Spectators and 42% Inactives. 34% of Gore voters are Critics -- he ought to connect with them in some sort of community or forum to make them a force for his issues in the general election. Obama, Clinton, and Edwards voters are all rich with Creators (at least 22% of their supporters) -- energize those voters and they'll start getting the Spectators excited.
The profile of supporters of Republicans is perhaps the most revealing:
Note the relatively anemic levels of Creator participation -- no Republican gets above 16%. The Creators are the voters who energize everybody else with their contribution. As we get into the general election, which of these candidates can energize the online social world? (Ron Paul, who didn't get enough votes in our poll to generate a profile, clearly could, but it seems unlikely that he'll get the chance.) It's also interesting that Mitt Romney's supporters are more active than the rest of the Republicans' -- he ought to be doing more than just having his offspring blog.
Interestingly, while as far as I know we haven't been contacted by the candidates since we published this research, we have been getting some interest from other companies. Why? Because marketers see the social drama playing out in the election and want to see what lessons can be drawn for their own brands.
Listen folks -- I can do this type of analysis for just about any group of consumers. What would you like to see next?
by Josh Bernoff
Satellite trucks line up outside the spin room.
During the debate, the spin room is quiet. Most of the reporters are in the "filing center" (another gym next door). The candidates' spokespeople wait around listlessly.
Gather.com's bloggers blogged live on these bleachers while watching the debate on a monitor.
Once the debate is over, reporters and camera crews flood into the spin room. Here, a huge scrum of reporters broadcast an interview with a Hillary Clinton spokesperson.
After a few minutes, candidates themselves show up in the spin room. The first ones to arrive are long shots. Former Alaska Senator Mike Gravel showed up pretty quickly.
New Mexico governor Bill Richardson followed.
US Representative Dennis Kucinich of Ohio appeared with his wife by his side. (Yes, she really is that much taller than he is.)
Senator John Edwards' wife, Elizabeth, gave interviews as an Edwards surrogate.
A camera on a huge crane delivered images from way above the proceedings.
by Josh Bernoff
I spent last night in the spin room at the Democratic Presidential debate put on by WMUR-TV and CNN at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire. WMUR is a Manchester TV station, owned by Hearst-Argyle.
Gather.com and WMUR teamed up to recruit bloggers to write about the debate. Only about 25 people signed up, probably because they didn't give the promotion enough time. Gather.com's members chose the 15 best -- five democrats, five republicans, and five independents, all New Hampshire residents.
While this sounded like a good idea to me, when I saw the original blog postings I wasn't all that impressed. But that all changed last night.
I sat in the "spin room" with the bloggers as they covered the debate. First, let me set the stage. The spin room was a college gym with little platforms belonging to each candidate (photos here). During the debate, which happened in a hockey rink right down the street, the bloggers and I watched on a monitor in the spin room. (At one point they showed a shot of us on CNN.)
From the blogging perspective, what I found interesting was how the
gather.com bloggers rose to the occasion. These were some pretty
typical and ordinary people, moms, a student going back to journalism
school -- not your hard-core political types at all. But partly because
the spotlight was on them, and partly because they got to react to each
other, some nice insights came out. Fred Hollander, an engineer whose question on earmarks was posed to the candidates during the debate, found most of their responses unsatisfying -- "Sounds like the democratic frontrunners would continue with the traditional corruption." (How cool is it that a blogger gets his question answered on national TV?) Rebecca Lavoie has a very nice summary of the emotional style each candidate demonstrated, which is at least as important as issues and positions. Keith Ballingal pointed out that there seems to be an unnatural affinity between the Edwards and Obama campaigns -- and as soon as I read it, they backed each other up again on another point. And David Mirsky, who sat next me, seemed the most prolific with insights during the event.
Seth Godin has complained about the shortcomings of live blogging and I agree -- there's an inverse relationship between speed and value. But these regular old people that Gather has selected are getting better. I can't wait to see what they do with the Republicans.
After the debate was over, the spinning began. The room, which had been mostly empty, filled up with about thirty or forty film crews along with hundreds of print reporters. These proceeded to swarm around the surrogates on the platforms, giving interviews to "spin" their candidate's performance. Eventually most of the candidates showed up, roughly in reverse order of their popularity. Mike Gravel was first, Bill Richardson and Dennis Kucinich and Bill Richardson soon after. Naturally, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John Edwards didn't show by the time I left, about 45 minutes after the debate ended.
Tags: WMUR, Democratic debate, liveblogging, gather.com, bernoff, Forrester Research, Groundswell
by Josh Bernoff
Seth is a flame thrower. We all know that. Here are some of his thoughts.
The key "Ideas that spread, win." Successful democracy is about spreading ideas and causing action.
Godin says this starts with TV -- interrupt people to put your idea in front of them. This worked. Especially in politics.
The TV industrial complex: Buy ads, get donations, get elected, get more donations, around and around.
Now the world is filled with noise. TV is broken. (Yeah, we know that Seth.) This is why it will cost a billion dollars to elect a president. The amount of clutter is huge. "We can't just keep branding everything. . . .We can't keep just being spammers."
Political sphere -- still marketing like targeting people in a singles bar. As opposed to romancing people who care about their ideas.
"Permission cuts through the clutter."
Now politicians are realizing they are in the fashion business.
So in politics, stop trying to be average for average people. Instead, start with the geeks and the nerds -- the early adopters. The message starts with the geeks and the nerds.
The key "create stories people want to share."
Also: "people feel good when they are connected with other people with the same ideas."
Turn the marketing funnel into a megaphone for your customers.
His new version of the cycle is this: Be remarkable. Tell a story to your sneezers. They spread the word. Get Permission. And so on.
Seth's critics say he is full of attractive ideas that don't work. I disagree. Seth is a disciple of the new thinking. Listen to him. Take his ideas and shake up your thinking. Yes, he lets you do the real work for yourself. Is that so bad?
Tags: Personal Democracy Forum, PdF2007, Seth Godin, bernoff, Forrester Research, Groundswell
