Quick Hits — April 3, 2011

Now blooming: the first Quick Hits of spring.

• Obama reelection announcement will be a digital extravaganza (Update: it was). Also note the possibility of a big Dem independent expenditure group forming. Update: C.f. What Obama’s re-election kickoff says about the campaign he’ll run and Four Hidden Messages In Obama’s 2012 Reelection Launch.
• eNonprofit Benchmarks Study Reveals Latest Metrics for Advocacy, Fundraising and Social Media. Read alongside the results of New Organizing Institute’s extensive experiments in online advocacy research.
• Rep Weiner’s multimedia defense of the health care law, and Lessons from the Grassroots Fight for Health Reform, co-authored by friend-of-e.politics Natalie Foster.
• Secret Libya Psyops, Caught by Online Sleuths.
• Facebook Aims to Make Friends in Washington, and Gibbs to Become Facebook Communications Chief? The Job Might Seem Familiar.
• When Crowdsourced Data Meets Nuclear Power.
• 49 World Leaders’ Fake Twitters, In Descending Order Of Entertainment Value.
• Facebook Test Mines Real-Time Conversations for Ad Targeting.
• Best of ArabLeaks: Just how much did these cables change the world?
• Social media and earthquake recovery, Bing and Japan: Don’t Do This With Social Marketing, and sobering Satellite Photos of Japan, Before and After the Quake and Tsunami.
• Arab revolutions through YouTube eyes, plus An inside look at Morocco’s youth-led revolt, where a group of activists, formed on Facebook, organize nationwide protests demanding democracy. C.f. this slideshow: New Pages in Egypt’s Facebook Revolution.
• The Arab Powder Keg, An animated map of protests in the Middle East as they spread from country to country.
• From Innovation to Revolution: Do Social Media Make Protests Possible? Enough already!
• More Republicans Than Dems Watched Political Web Video in 2010.
• Political Campaigns Go Viral: The impact of the Internet on elections has only begun to be felt. In which Karl Rove notices the internet, says absolutely nothing new about it.
• Can GOPers Adjust to the New Media Era? C.f. Gingrich’s Not Exactly Instant Response and Newt’s missing tweets.
• Haley Barbour’s Google problem, which features Haley Barbour’s morning e-mail list full of tasteless jokes. Which naturally leads to Barbour Aide Resigns Over Off-Color Emails.
• Democrats Milk Wisconsin Union Issue to Build Base, while Wisconsin Showdown Spurs 2012 Republican Web Fundraising.
• Anatomy of a Social Media Success: “It Gets Better” Project.
• Rahm’s Digital Ad Team, Led by Former Obama Staff, Stresses Integration, featuring friend-of-e.politics Mark Skidmore.
• Haley Barbour’s son sends rambling e-mail to Bill Kristol, which Kristol gives to the AP.
• Boehner New Media Director Heads to Chamber.
• Sarah Palin’s Stalker. Or, the dangers of content aggregation.
• Pawlenty forms exploratory committee, announces via Facebook. C.f. Colbert Pays Tribute to the Tim Pawlenty Web Ad, and Revealed: The Banksy of Online Political Video.
• The Art of the Sting: A short history of our new sensation, the undercover video takedown.
• E-Mail Beats Blogs and Web Sites for Rumor Mongering.
• Forrester: User Attitudes Toward Email Improving.
• Who Says What to Whom on Twitter. Half of tweets are produced by 20,000 “elite” users, via Shaun Dakin.
• Social CRM: Measuring Relationships (the Wrong Way, and the Right Way).
• Facebook Comments – Boon or Bane to Nonprofits? C.f. Is Advertising on Facebook Really Effective?
• Facebook Marketing: Six Reasons to Approach With Caution.
• Google’s Quest to Build a Better Boss. Via A Loyal Reader (thanks Dad!)
• When Unrest Stirs, Bloggers Are Already in Place.
• Mobile News, Yes. Mobile Paid News Apps? Not So Much.
• New Article Format Helps Drives Mother Jones’ Traffic, Ad Revenues.
• Corning’s Surprisingly Popular “A Day Made of Glass” Corporate Video.
• Editing Disaster Alert:WaPo Botches Pap Smear Story.Watch that “publish” button, kids!
• TechCrunch Awesomely Gives Giant Finger to AOL. Blogger “relations.”
• The strange tale of the Lebanese space race.
• In Defense of Gilbert “Aflac Duck” Gottfried.
• Weird (Marion Barry) Mystery of the Day.
• Palin’s Facebook post about Obama’s anti-drilling policy reads like campaign talking points. C.f. Sarah Palin enraged at Daily Caller for printing her side of story.
• The Washington Post Has Achieved Perfect Fairness via website redesign. C.f. My Pants Are Baggy, My Shoes Are Tight, My Balls Are Post Is Swinging From Left to Right.
• The Internet and Campaign 2010: More than half of all American adults were online political users in 2010.
• Days of Double-Digit Growth in Social Network Users Are Over.
• Tweeting Around The New York Times Paywall.
• The Value of a Tweet.
• Jumpstarting a Key Contact Program.
• No Room on Facebook for “Third Palestinian Intifada” Page.
• Faux Facebook cause is a feel-good brand booster.
• If Obama Posts a Côte d’Ivoire Video to YouTube, Does Anyone Hear It?
• 2011 Design Trends and Best Practices.
• Inside the social media strategy of a progressive think tank, featuring The Good Doktor Rosenblatt.
• Question: Does Quora Do Politics? and How might Quora be used for political advocacy?
• Twitter Tips for Rahm (and Other Elected Officials and Staff). C.f. Oh, F*ck Yeah: @MayorEmanuel Gets a Book Deal.
• The internet’s most annoying campaigns.
• China cuts off phone calls if word ‘protest’ is used, or does it?
• Fallout from AOL/HuffPo merger begins, via The Awl, and Huffington’s Cultural Revolution: Destroying the Old World to Forge a New One, For a While. Finally, The stupid saga of Andrew Breitbart and the Huffington Post.
• Fl gov Rick Scott a stranger to email, nor is email terribly fond of him.
• Glenn Beck Contemplates Starting Own Channel.
• Fake tweets by ‘socialbot’ fool hundreds of followers .
• Egypt Air removes Israel from (online) map.
• American Majority’s “Voter Fraud” App encourages voter fraud.
• Four Crucial Mobile Photo Apps.
• OMG! Oxford English Dictionary grows a heart: Graphic symbol for love (and that exclamation) are added as WORDS. I [heart] linguistic evolution.
• The impotence of the tea-party movement. Did it matter in 2010, or was it just hype?
• Overthinking the Meaning of Drop-Down Menus.
• Apple Pulls ‘Anti-Gay’ App After Pressure.
• 7 questions for the American University Social Media Club, featuring friend-of-e.politics Alex Priest.
• Optimizing a Screen for Mobile Use.
• What Advocacy Organizations Can Learn from Radiohead.
• Content Yawn: What content farms tell us about what we’re interested in.
• Gamification: not the secret to solving the world’s problems.
• eCampaigning Review 2010/2011.
• GetUp! And then what? Critiquing online organizing in Australia.
• Iran to distribute video promoting the imminent return of the Mahdi. Sinners repent, the end is apparently nigh.
• Reality: CIA sock puppets. Which is followed by parody(?).
• Obama Mad Libs. Title is “Applications of Successful New Media Strategy.” Fun with “Learning from Obama.”
• The First CRM of Congress: Suffragette City.
• ZX81: Small black box of computing desire, via Matt Stevens. Note: e.politics has two.
• Boeing’s Biggest-Ever Plane Takes Test Flight. I wants!
• And finally, an animated history of Social Media Gurus, in which great truths are revealed.

Too much = never enough? Check out previous editions of Quick Hits.

– cpd