Ad networks pride themselves in offering targeting options for optimal ad placement, and Resonate Networks is one such ad company that provides options for niche advertising as well. As an ad network specific for public affairs, political and corporate campaigns, Resonate Networks launches as a differentiated solution for a unique set of industries.
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New year, new president, new administration in the White House, and new focus on technology as an integral aspect of all the changes that lie ahead for President Obama’s term. Just this morning, Obama was sworn in as the 44th President of the United States, and already we’ve seen some major updates and changes to the White House’s website.

Aside from a new face and a new blog, the administration’s goals for technology have been laid out on a dedicated page within the website. Nothing posted here seems to be surprising or different from what we’ve heard throughout Obama’s presidential campaign in the past year, but it is important to note some of the changes outlined by the new administration.
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New policies announced by the incoming Obama administration highlight how social technology will be used to shape policy making. While Obama’s administration is clearly playing it safe when it comes to appointee online participation, for fear of embarrassing the new President-elect, it doesn’t mean that Obama doesn’t support leveraging the online medium for connecting with the people.

According to CNet, Obama’s transition team will be posting policy documents from official meetings with outside organizations publicly on the team’s site Change.gov. The site itself is intended to be a transitional website, aimed at forming a conduit for ongoing discussions between the administration and the people. So in a way, Change.gov becomes a socially-driven forum for conversing about policies and related questions and concerns having to do with the organizations meeting with the Obama administration.
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Last week I came to the Bay Area to attend Web 2.0 Summit and it ended up being one of the most historical weeks in this country’s history. Following the election of Barack Obama there was a huge wave of inspiration that was felt throughout those attending the Summit and based on the news articles I’ve read, the entire world.

Whether or not you voted for Barack Obama, there is now doubt that the belief in the American Dream has been revived within this country. Without it, we could have not elected the first African American President. Without going on about the numerous emotions felt this week, I wanted to express some of the most important takeaways for me personally.

Must Move Beyond the Hype

Al Gore said something which was extremely important:

When people are displaying interactivity or user generated content or social networking or whatever, that’s kind of the gee-whiz stuff. I’m not trying to diminish that at all but I am saying that I think our challenge really, those of us who are excited about the speedier development of the full potential that we have here. We need to move past that as quickly as possible to a time where all those features are just taken for granted, and is just like the water the fish doesn’t know it’s swimming in, and how do we get there.

I couldn’t have agreed more. I spend day after day talking about each feature that every social networking site adds, each new platform that they launch on, and theorize about where all of this is going. Yesterday for instance, one of the popular stories in the tech blogosphere was that LinkedIn had added events to their site.

Yes, it is great to see them adding such features, and yes it is great to watch where all of this is going, but it’s time to focus on the bigger picture. Many of us though are already taking advantage of these new technologies (social networks, social media, etc) to communicate more effectively with each other.

The Energy Revolution

There are numerous crises taking place around the world today. Whether it’s the two wars we’re involved in, the financial crisis, or most importantly the energy crisis we are facing, there is a revived sense of urgency. One thing that Al Gore said yesterday particularly inspired me and I felt that it was important to share it with as many people as possible. While I can’t find the exact words he said, this is in essence the story he shared:

In 1961, John F. Kennedy stood before the American people and asked Congress to provide the funds necessary to put a man on the moon and return him safely to Earth. The funds were granted and the mission was achieved. On the day that we landed on the moon, the average age in the control room at NASA was 26 which means that on the date of the announcing the mission, the average age of those individuals was 18. The young ones will also be the ones that are going to help develop the tools necessary to achieve complete energy independence.

While the numerous other crises facing this country are of equal or greater importance, it is important not to lose focus from energy related issues as it contributes substantially to global instability.

We Have the Ability to Get There

It’s time to start a movement. Al Gore sat down yesterday and told Tim O’Reilly and John Battelle that he feels as though he has failed. While he regularly instills the sense of urgency into those individuals that get to see him speak live, within a short period of time that sense of urgency is gone and most people fail to act.

Yes, switching out your light bulbs is one component of solving the energy crisis. I believe though, that given our knowledge of social media and our ability to spread ideas faster than ever before, we are properly positioned to drive the change necessary to accomplish extremely challenging goals. As we wait for a complete agenda to be put forth by the new Obama administration, it’s time to start preparing to leverage our expertise in social media and social technology to help drive change.

Whether you agree or disagree with everything that the new administration proposes, they are at least listening and that’s a hell of a lot better then before. The way to have the loudest voice is through social media, so use it for change and the betterment of the world. Below is part of Gore’s talk at Web 2.0 Summit provided by CNET.

Plurk, the micro-blogging service which received a lot of buzz earlier this year, is pulling a Twitter and launching “Plurk the Vote”. According to the press release, “Plurk the Vote provides a platform to share political beliefs and discuss in real-time the key issues that will decide the 2008 Presidential election. Registered Plurkers hosting their own mini-election during Plurk the Vote also have the chance to win $5,000 in prizes for the most lively discussion and participation.”

The service is similar to the Election 2008 product rolled out by Twitter last month in that it parses through “plurks” (the equivalent of “tweets” on Twitter), and filters out those messages related to Obama, McCain, Joe Biden, and Sarah Palin. The other component of this new “Plurk the Vote” campaign is that users gets to set up their own mini-elections.

The user who attracts the most number of votes will receive $5,000. So far the majority of Plurk users appear to be liberal. 84 percent are voting for Obama and 16 percent are voting for McCain. Apparently undecided is not an option on this poll! Adding political features is clearly a trend in the social media space. C-Span launched Debatehub, Facebook launched a registration application, and of course Twitter launched Election 2008.

This is one more site to add to the mix. Plurk has continued to grow rapidly but most of that growth appears to be abroad. Alexa.com shows the site is growing at a furious pace whereas Compete.com shows the site has been on the decline domestically for the past few months. Are you on Plurk? Do you use the service frequently?

Today, a number of companies have announced new services that will help users track the political discussion taking place around the web related to the Presedential debates and the election. Earlier this week I wrote about the new MySpace MyDebates site as well as how the candidates are leveraging social networks for their campaigns.

Today, Twitter, C-SPAN, and Facebook have all made announcements regarding new political offerings. Twitter has launched a new election site which enables users to track all of the discussion taking place surrounding the debates and the candidates. If you check out Twitter’s Election 2008 site, you will immediately notice that the coverage streams in real-time.

The service appears to have a similar feel to Politweets except that it is streaming. I was able to find what I would already consider “classic” Sarah Palin videos by watching the stream of tweets. I highly recommend checking out the Election 2008 site to watch the discussion take place in real-time.

C-SPAN has also announced the launch of their Debatehub site (in conjunction with JESS3) which will track the debates as they are happening. It’s a blogger-friendly site which gives users instant access to blog posts happening around the web, a timeline of the debate and video clips that can be embedded on any site. There is also a keyword diagram which lets users easily see what topics are being discussed most frequently.

The tools available are extremely valuable for anybody covering the debates. One of the most useful tools is the video player in which you can create clips with specified in points and out points.

Finally, last night Facebook announced the release of a new voter registration tool. According to Facebook thousands of new voters have already been registered since launching the new tool. With so much influence, this is an unprecedented effort to register new voters. No other social network has made such strides to promote voter registration.

One thing that Facebook also theoretically has power to do is target voter registration based on various demographic characteristics. While Facebook hasn’t stated what determines whether you see promotions for voting, it’s clear that they will try to drive as many new registrations as possible. If you haven’t registered to vote, go register now.

Overall, it’s impressive to see the increasing integration between politics and social media. Twitter, C-SPAN, Facebook, and MySpace are just a few of the companies stepping up their political activity.

Last week MySpace announced the launch of the MyDebates site which takes politics on social networks to a new level. There is an interactive quiz which lets users see where they stand on issues in relation to each of the candidates. There is also a section which lets users see results of the polls. So far the results are definitely interesting with 45 of 50 states going to Barack Obama according to the latest poll.

While I don’t know the exact statistics on the people that took the quiz, it appears that the 21-34 years olds appear to have the most influence over the poll currently. One of the coolest features of the site is that there will be live coverage of the national debates and the ability to talk with others that are following the debate as they happen.

I actually found the poll to be extremely useful for judging my position although I wasn’t completely surprised by the results. Social networks are rapidly becoming a central place for political discussion. Just last week CNN covered how Facebook is being used to encourage users to register to vote:

“We need your help more than ever,” the Obama campaign said in a Facebook update Thursday which touted an updated version of the campaign’s application on the popular social networking site. The revised application is now headlined by a large module that allows users to check whether they are registered to vote, to request an absentee ballot, and to locate their polling place. The new module replicates functionality available on a Web site launched by the Obama campaign soon after the Republican convention.

The Obama camp’s effort to encourage registration and absentee voting on Facebook comes less than a day after the McCain camp rolled out its own application on the site to encourage its supporters to vote early or obtain absentee ballots.

“Now more than ever, your vote is critical,” the McCain-Palin update said. “Voting early, or with an absentee ballot, is the best way to avoid the long line on Election Day and get your vote counted.” The new McCain application takes users to a page on the campaign’s Web site where they can fill out a form to request an absentee ballot or register to vote.

While it’s difficult to measure the impact of political activities on the various social networks, it’s clear that both parties are taking social networks seriously as they demand a large portion of young voters’ attention. It will be interesting to see how much traffic is generated to these sites as the Presedential debates take place over the coming weeks.

This afternoon I saw an article on Techcrunch which highlights the launch of McCainSpace, a social network for John McCain supporters. Its competition? my.barackobama.com of course which has actually succeeded at becoming a hub for the Obama grass roots campaign. The new portal was launched by KickApps (also one of the sponsors of Social Ad Summit) and provides a much needed upgrade to what previously existed.

The most hilarious part of the site is the video of John McCain when you first view the homepage. I’ve embedded a copy of the video below and if I’ve ever met an enthusiastic person, John McCain is it. Check out the video:

The site also displays videos of individuals that support McCain for one reason or another and describe why they support him. One video appears to be a joke though. Maybe the person is being serious but it appears to be a little bit sarcastic. “I support John McCain because he likes the Bush tax cuts which really helped out economy.” I won’t get too political but the guy speaking in the video appears to be joking a significant amount.

If you are big Republican fan then go jump on the bandwagon over at McCainSpace, something McCain is clearly passionate about. While McCain may not be technically savvy, as he just learned about Google and the internet a couple weeks ago, his campaign definitely is. According to the Wall Street Journal today, the McCain campaign is snapping up search terms faster than you can say “Barack Obama”.

As the campaign heats up, it appears that both candidates are taking it to the web. While it’s one area that Obama used to dominate it appears that the McCain campaign is trying to shake things up a little. It will definitely be interesting to watch how the next few months play out.

Have you been paying attention to the Democratic National Convention? It’s pretty much the only thing in the news for the entire week so if you haven’t heard about it you have probably been living under a rock (or some similar form of shelter). There are a bunch of sites covering the events but when it comes to the mainstream press there aren’t many doing a great job as it applies to social media.

If you haven’t read about it elsewhere, C-SPAN in partnership with JESS3 (who is also drives the images of the Social Times) and New Media Strategies released a site which has full coverage of the convention from C-SPAN as well all other sources around the web. It is not a single sourced coverage but is instead an aggregation of everything which is going on around the country.

The site is significant because it places blogs on the same platform as traditional media. For the boring old C-SPAN, this site appears to be a complete shift from the company’s more traditional past. Included in the site are live streams from QIK and best of all an aggregator of all the Twitter activity surrounding the DNC as well as the RNC. The difference between this and Politweets, another political Twitter aggregator, is that this site has a basic level of statistics about the tweets taking place.

Take a look at the DNC08 Twitter Page to see more DNC coverage. As the coverage concludes later this week, look to the site to give full coverage of the RNC convention. It’s a competition between the parties for building the most buzz and we are only half way through the process. This week the Democrats have taken the stage, continue to watch the coverage through next week on the RNC Convention Hub.

Today MySpace will be announcing a formal partnership with the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD), to launch MyDebates.org, a site which will interactive tools for users to engage in the upcoming Presidential and Vice Presidential debates. This is the first time in history that the Presidential debates will be streamed live online. The site will also provide a forum for viewers to post feedback live.

This is a monumental announcement for MySpace who expects this site to transform the Presidential election process. MySpace has been extremely active in the political process, previously announcing the launch of Decision ‘08 back in June. As I pointed out in June, one participant who has been surprisingly less active is Facebook. Back in January, Facebook partnered with ABC for the New Hampshire debates. Nothing has been announced since.

The debates will begin in September and will be broadcasted live on television as well as on MySpace. Currently MyDebates.org redirects to a MySpace landing page which has left me a bit confused on the logistics of this new site but wherever the site is located it will provide: an application which embeds the debates, on-demand playback functionality, polling opportunities and the ability to share the videos across the web.

This is a huge announcement for MySpace and it highlights the increasing integration of politics and the web. There is no doubt that this trend will continue, this announcement simply being one landmark in the process toward complete digital integration with the political process.