ThinkStream

Real world of examples of the business use of Twitter are becoming more common (@comcastcares) and with that, Chris Brogan offers a great list of things that Twitter is useful for, how to answer critics of the medium, and what not to do:

50 Ideas on Using Twitter for Business chrisbrogan.com

This is a happy update to my post way back about how electricity constrains us, especially in public spaces. Now new technology will allow electrical power sources to be wireless and have effective ranges up to a few meters. The immediate practical applications are wirelessly charged laptops and computer monitors that would be powered by the desk they were sitting on.

Now all they need to do is apply this technology to all of the stationary seating at airports and we’re home free!

Intel Moves to Free Gadgets of Their Recharging Cords – NYTimes.com

WaPo story on the Obama online operation pulls the curtain back just a bit. The thing that jumps out of this article beyond the obligatory “video is good” and “listen to people and communicate with them” is the fact that Obama as 5 times as many people working on his online presence than McCain.

The next time someone on the Right complains about how we’re all behind on the net, ask them if their opponent is outstaffing them 5 to 1 in their online operation.

Not only is the size of the staff indicative of the level of commitment, but I also think it’s telling that they are in-house. Outsourcing custom development and tool building is smart, but if you don’t have true believers interacting with supporters through your web presence every day, no amount of money paid to a K Street firm is going to help you.

Tom Matzzie, mastermind of the failed Progressive Media USA, has put together a group to threaten potential conservative donors with exposure, lawsuits, and general harassment, called Accountable America.

Of course, as you’d expect, the Right is utterly unafraid: Group Plans Campaign Against G.O.P. Donors – NYTimes.com

Chris LaCivita, proudly speaking as usual on behalf of the infamous Swift Boat Vets movement, has a great quote at the end of the article,

“They’re not going to be intimidated by some pipsqueak on the kooky left.”

From my experience at DCI, I’d liken Chris to the political equivalent of Venture Bros.‘ Brock Samson, always willing and able to do whatever is necessary to win. I whole-heartedly agree with his assertion, but fundamentally I think it misses the real point at hand: if a donor believes enough in the political speech of a group to give their hard earned money to finance it, why wouldn’t they proudly identify with that group?

If anything, I hope Accountable America does bring more transparency to political speech. I think discerning voters are well served by knowing who is behind the issue messaging they consume.

If shining the light on where messaging money comes from keeps the disingenuous away or prevents wealthy donors from pouring gas on a political fire they know to be bogus, so be it. But to think that true believers are going to cower in the face of accountability is absurd.

Patrick Ruffini explains how the so called “Phantom Session” of House Republicans, continuing the debate on energy after Pelosi turned out the lights, has turned into a full fledged movement: #dontgo. For the uninitiated, #dontgo is a “hashtag,” a way to tag and track conversations across the user base of micro-blogging utilities like Twitter. The #dontgo meme has also spawned several sites of its own, including dontgo.us, which showcases the Twitter traffic on the subject, the Call Congress Back petition site, and now #dontgomovement, which is more of a full fledged site offering additional background, commentary, and news on the movement.

But Patrick still has the best t-shirt… #dontgo: A Turning Point for the Right The Next Right

Last Friday, a revolution occurred on the floor of the House of Representatives. Didn’t hear about it? It wasn’t front-page news, because the MSM had already been “turned off.”

Nancy Coppock at American Thinker really pulls together the events and aftermath of the Republican debate on energy after Speaker Pelosi shut down the floor of the House to go on vacation. The lights, microphones, and video cameras were turned off, but that didn’t stop Republican lawmakers from debating, engaging the gallery directly, and getting their message out. If you’ve ever wondered about the value of emerging technology like Twitter or Qik, this is an excellent illustration of message propagation in the (forced) absence of traditional media.

American Thinker: Breaking Speaker Pelosi’s News Blackout: Thanks to Rep. John Culberson (R-TX) there was one small camera recording the events. Twitter messages alerted America to the historic events. Rep. John Shadegg (R-AZ) named the event “The New Boston Tea Party”, but that was quickly changed to “The Boston Tweet Party” by the new, tech real-time media. Messages flew across the country to anyone wanting to participate, as Culberson led the Real Time Media charge sending out live messages from the House floor…

Jon makes a point at the end of this article that is both fundamental and wholly misunderstood by people who run traditional campaigns: it takes real people communicating with real people to make online communication effective. I’ve added the emphasis below:

Know It All – - Rebranding via Blogging: “Large organizations like to adopt best practices that can be used by anybody, but a lot of things that are effective online are not easily duplicated – the natural interaction, the person-to-person communication. Campaigns tend to want templates and data dumps. If the vision is spamming people with press releases, it will have the appearance of what works, but it won’t work. People have the idea you can push a button to say ‘make it viral,’ but you have to provide something of value to the people you want involved – prestige, traffic, ideological progress – and in an attention economy, you have to get it to them quickly. That way, they’ll push it to the audience you want to reach. That’s what makes the Internet a social medium, they get value from distributing it.”

Kegerator Door Kit: Here’s how to turn any unassuming refrigerator you have laying around into a full on beer dispenser. If you’ve got the space, I think this might be a more economical solution to high volume cold beer distribution than an off the shelf kegerator.

Evidently the Bush tax cuts drew more tax money out of the rich than ever before. The WSJ says that Obama’s plan to further increase taxes on the rich will actually result in them paying less tax overall, since they’ll find ways to shelter themselves from reporting higher income.

Their Fair Share – WSJ.com: “The way to soak the rich is with low tax rates”

Over the 4th of July holiday I was fortunate to stay at the Hope & Glory Inn in picturesque Irvington, VA. The experience was incredible, and while I could go on in four more posts about it, the one thing that really struck me while I was there was the reaction of the Northern Neck boating community to the July 4th fireworks show put on by the Tides Inn.

We took in the fireworks with some other Hope & Glory patrons on a cruise boat. After steaming up Carter’s Creek to the Tides Inn we tied up at small dock and took in the spectacle. We were of course surrounded by boats on all sides of all kinds, either tied up or anchored in the “creek.”

What I noticed after the fireworks started was that after a volley of a few rockets, boats all over would sound off by blowing their horns. After a while it became clear that the more impressive volleys got more honks of the horn. The regular pace of the show lent itself to this instant feedback, with the best fireworks getting three or four quick honks.

It struck me that this was a great example of consumers giving instant feedback on a product or service, a veritable real-time focus group on fireworks displays. Instead of Gallup control groups turning a dial during a political speech we had Virginia boaters sounding off on their favorite arrangement of holiday combustibles. Crowds of course do the same thing via applause, but I think this method was made more poignant by the fact that while the people watching were dispersed over a large area, the sound of their boats’ horns was singular and carried over a long distance on the water.

This type of instant feedback is something I’m sure all the major brands out there would love to have from their consumers. As technology increasingly makes instant feedback possible, corporate entities, instead of asking consumers to respond directly to them about their products, are now able to effectively monitor the consumer “honking” via distributed communication channels. A case in point is Comcast Cable, which monitors Twitter for people complaining about their service. Comcast operatives even reach out via twitter to try and learn more about issues and lend whatever information they might have to help solve problems, though in my experience the later has been somewhat limited.

The art of this monitoring is something Jon Henke and company over at New Media Strategies have honed to a science, and to think that opinions that you as a consumer express online anywhere aren’t being exhaustively tracked is niave. But it is interesting to think that at the end of the day, it’s really just turning an ear toward who gets the most honks.