On "Military Endorsements", Or, Another Weird Christine O'Donnell Story

by: fake consultant

Mon Oct 25, 2010 at 10:30:10 AM EDT

What it basically comes down to is that the United States Marine Corps and the United States Army are "Christine O'Donnell for Senate" MySpace friends, or that there are persons who have created United States Army and USMC MySpace pages that purport to be official that have "befriended" her candidacy. There's also a Navy page that appears to emanate from a US Navy recruiting office in California on her '08 campaign's "friends" list.

At a minimum, all of this would seem to be a combination of inappropriate behavior and poor management of social media; at worst, you have activity that is "some kind of unlawful", either on an administrative or civil level.

I'll make this fast...but I'll also make it interesting.
Follow along, and you'll see what I mean.

The pitfalls of over networking

by: Jeff Ballard

Sat Mar 14, 2009 at 07:46:42 AM EDT

I am Jeff Ballard of East Wakefield, New Hampshire, which is located in southern Carroll County. Have not heard of it? Trust me, the first time I heard of Wakefield I had no clue where it was. It is home to the Poor People's Pub, which is a Moose Mountain Area Democrats favorite! (Locally owned by a Democratic family)

I work as an Emergency Department RN at Wentworth Douglass Hospital in Dover. This past cycle I ran for the New Hampshire Legislature and came up short in our heavily Republican district.

My point of giving you this introduction is to highlight what I think was my own shortcoming in the past election, over networking. I now know Democrats from Lancaster to Nashua, from Portsmouth to Keene, from Maine to California, but I only know twenty or thirty from my own hometown.

In today's electronic age where we have invaluable networking tools such as Facebook, Myspace and friendly hosts such as Blue Hampshire it becomes much too easy to seek refuge from the world by spending too much time on these sites and not enough time engaged in your local communities.

After all who does not prefer spending time with like minded people, and though we might not always agree with each other, it is comforting to know we have some place to go where the people "Get it".

So my challenge to all of you is to look out how many Facebook friends, or email contacts you have which live outside of your hometown, and now go meet that many people right in your own town.

I know personally if I do that in the next election cycle I will be able to win a seat in the New Hampshire House. What could it do for you?

This Week: Darmouth Debate, MySpace/MTV Ticket Give-Away and a Special Q&A with Elizabeth Edwards

by: Amy Rubin

Tue Sep 25, 2007 at 14:18:12 PM EDT

All last week there were hundreds of house meetings held across New Hampshire, but with over 100 guests, Laurie McCray, from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, hosted the biggest meeting, and won a ticket to accompany Elizabeth Edwards to this week's presidential debate at Dartmouth College. Congratulations, Laurie!

Laurie will join Elizabeth at the September 26th debate, but she's not the only one who will be able to ask Elizabeth her questions about the campaign and John's plans for change.

Before Wednesday's debate, we will sit down with Elizabeth to address some of the questions and concerns on the minds of New Hampshire voters. You can submit your own question for this special New Hampshire pre-debate video.

Barack Obama's MySpace Problem

by: Nicholas Gunn

Wed May 02, 2007 at 16:47:06 PM EDT

By the time of Obama's official campaign announcement in late January, Anthony's Obama profile--which had the valuable url of myspace.com/barackobama--already had more than 30,000 friends, well more than the other contenders. Over the following weeks, it continued to grow at a rapid pace, generating lots of headlines about Obama winning the "MySpace primary." Yesterday, the profile had just over 160,000 friends. Today, that url has only about 12,000. And it's under new ownership. Joe Anthony, one of the super volunteers of the Connected Age, has lost control of the page he started to the professionals on Obama's staff.
?
The exact chronology of events is in dispute but the general trajectory is clear. As his volunteer workload grew to all hours, Anthony decided to email the Obama campaign asking to be paid in some way for his time. This set off discussions within the campaign about what to do, and ultimately they decided they had to control the page. Unfortunately for all concerned, the negotiations on how to do that were a disaster.

Coordination with a volunteer they had never met, who lived far from campaign HQ, and who controlled an asset of increasing value to their effort, was just not as seamless as they would like. Who knows who he is actually emailing, they worried. How do we know if the answers he is giving people are the right ones? Welcome to the age of voter-generated media, where a super-volunteer using popular online tools and sites can become as important as big donor or a top campaign surrogate.

This is causing quite a ruckus in the Progressive Blogosphere, with some of the most widely read progressive bloggers chiming in.  The DailyKos, MyDD, and Eschaton generally share the same outrage over this story:

Yea, $49K to deliver 160,000 supporters; that's .32 cents each for opted in and engaged activsts. A bargain. [The amount was actually up to $44K] $50,000 is what it takes to advertise on the Liberal Ad Network for two weeks. It's a minor expenditure in the grand scheme of things.

Click on 'There's More' for the rest...

Myspace primary Jan.1 & 2 2008

by: Jon Bresler

Sat Apr 07, 2007 at 18:05:01 PM EDT

Read on with quotes from Blue Hamster Rep. Jim Splaine from Union Leader article
New Hampshire primary defender Rep. Jim Splaine, D-Portsmouth, called it a good thing.
"It's exciting," he said."It draws more interest to the primary process, and that's good for us. Anything that increases overall awareness of the Presidential election coming up might give us more attention."
On his Web blog, Splaine noted, "The New Hampshire Presidential Primary, of course, will still be the first real election."
New Hampshire law requires the New Hampshire primary to be held at least seven days ahead of any "similar election.'' Is an online primary a similar election? Of course not, says Secretary of State Bill Gardner.
He said it's more like a poll. But, he mused, "it doesn't end, does it? The power of the mind of man...."