Scott Brown's Voter Bomb and how he could have gone further
I got excited on Monday when I saw Scott Brown's Voter Bomb. A simple site where Mass residents could go to pledge that they are going to vote for Brown and indicate how many other voters they would get to vote too. After you pledge you are given a page to share with your friends and explain why they should vote for Brown. While this is a fantastic idea and got over 32,000 pledges, it didn't go far enough.
Future campaigns should take the voter bomb idea a step further by setting it up like a rewards program. After signing up and pledging their own vote, users should be able to share with their friends. The message should encourage their friends to join their "network" and pledge a vote. If they do the original user receives credit for that new voter and anyone the new voter refers. You a literally tracking the viral distribution of the voter bomb. You could have an overall leader board showing who's network has pledged the most votes or depending on how long you run the site for, a weekly leader board. Everyone who signs up is registered for the GOTV e-mails reminding them they pledged on election day.
What you've done is given potential voters another reason to spread the word by playing off of their competitiveness. Competitiveness motivates people online...just look at the Foursquare type applications success.
Could even take the idea a a step further with an iPhone app that you can get people you see in person to pledge by bumping iPhones.
Obviously the Brown campaign did a fantastic job getting out the vote...It will be interesting to see how these ideas evolve,
Get paid for using less energy
EarthAid.net is a Washington-based start-up that keeps track of how much electricity, water and natural gas you use. It works sort of like Quicken for your finances--you plug in your online utility account information and EarthAid pulls in updates from the utility companies. The free site then shows you what you're using and when. If you reduce your energy use, you get points that you can redeem for rewards and discounts from local businesses.
This is an interesting way for utilities to promote energy efficiency. It adds another incentive to get people to use less energy.
Single parents, minorities and low-income residents depend on libraries for internet access
Connected Nation is trying to show the importance of anchor institutions to broadband expansion in rural areas. The organization, which has partnered with many states in for significant amounts of broadband stimulus money, conducted surveys in Tennessee and Ohio and filed the results with the FCC.
Some of the findings:
- Significant percentages of those who normally don't subscribe to broadband – specifically single parents, minorities and low-income residents – are relying on the local library as their sole or primary Internet resource: 25 percent of single parents, 25 percent of minorities, 18 percent of low income residents, and 11 percent of people with disabilities depend on libraries for Internet connections.
- More than one-half of library Internet users (51 percent) have children at home, suggesting that a significant portion of library Internet users are children. Of this group, 42 percent do not have a broadband connected computer at home.
- Nearly half of library Internet users (46 percent) search for jobs online, compared to 29 percent of other Internet users.
Anti-Grayson Political Site Links to Unregistered Twitter Account...So I Snatched It Up
From the OrlandoSentinel.com:
First came congressmanwithguts.com, a fundraising website started by U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson,D-Orlando. Now comes its Republican counterpart -- www.mycongressmanisnuts.com -- a parody page that mirrors Grayson’s site down to the black background and stark headline font.
The only problem...www.mycongressmanisnuts.com links to the Twitter account mycmisnuts. So I clicked to see what they are twittering...turns out the account wasn't registered. So I registered it.
They may want to hire a better digital media manager...I'm just sayin'.
I'm taking ideas on what to post...that is until they pick a different name to link to.
Post your ideas in the comments.
Tags
- Politics (10)
- marketing (5)
- twitter (5)
- campaigns (4)
- Government (4)
- internet (4)
- social media (2)
- Classifieds (1)
- Environment (1)
- facebook (1)
- View all 22 tags »
