"My Congressman Tweets, Does Yours?"

Sunlight Foundation is a non-partisan foundation dedicated to using the power of the Internet to make information about Congress and the Federal government more accessible to United States' citizens. By doing so, the foundation hopes to promote a government "transparency" that will promote openness and accountability of our government's actions. The foundation has already, through an online petition, enabled Congressional representatives to twitter during Congressional hearings. This has given representatives the ability to keep citizens informed of current government happenings as well as getting instant feedback. Sunlight Foundation continues to advocate for further advancements in government transparency.

I believe the Sunlight Foundation's mission, if furthered, will expand democracy and give individual citizens even more of a voice in government. Until recently, American citizens have relied on the conscience of their elected officials; hoping that when they cast the vote for their representative their aspirations for legislation would be fulfilled indirectly through that representative. The emergence of a more transparent government, however, has paved the way for more direct representation. Citizens can now remain informed on current government activity as well as providing government officials with feedback that will enable the officials to truly embody the political aspirations of the citizens they represent.

"YouTube Leading the Way"

In McConnell and Huba's, Citizen Marketers, six lessons vital to creating a democratized community are outlined. This six lessons are demonstrated by sharing the elements of YouTube which have made it a pacesetter in the realm of social networking. The elements are summarized as follows:

1. Community Emphasized. Features like comments, tags, and voting promote involvement and the formation of groups within the social network. YouTube’s private email system has also provided a method of communication that does not violate its user’s personal email directories, thereby increasing email participation.
2. It’s Easy. YouTube has made the sharing of videos and content simple for its users. The site has provided built in functionality within its “Share this video” message at the end of each video.
3. Statistics. YouTube has provided its viewers with data concerning the number of times a video has been viewed, number of comments posted, and the rank of the video as determined by ratings. McConnell and Huba have coined the term, “data transparency” to describe YouTube’s approach to statistical data sharing.
4. Personalization is Encouraged. YouTube promotes the personalization of profiles. Individuals are able to subscribe to channels as well as tag terms that will yield them videos related to their tags.
5. Welcoming Aesthetics. YouTube has created a neutral site that is pertinent to all ages and groups. Tabs have also made the site easy to navigate and therefore more accessible.
6. Search Functionality. YouTube has offered many different searchable terms such as title, date, added, view count and rating.

YouTube as a leader of social networking sites has endorsed community, ease of sharing and displaying data, individualism, and universality. These lessons and the success YouTube has achieved because of these elements could be a example to other social networks looking to attain success.

“The 1% Rule”

Fact: Roughly 1% of a community’s users will create content.

What does that mean?
In online communities only 1% contribute to the material. That means that nearly 99% of the community is either merely editing/commenting or are not contributing at all. According to an article in the Guardian, “Earlier metrics garnered from community sites suggested that about 80% of content was produced by 20% of the users, but the growing number of data points is creating a clearer picture of how Web 2.0 groups need to think. For instance, a site that demands too much interaction and content generation from users will see nine out of 10 people just pass by.” This fact prompted me to question who this 1% is. Is there a specific demographic or psychographic that encompasses the 1%? It would be fascinating to determine if there is a parallel between these users. In Citizen Marketers it states that researchers have found this select group to be in their 20s, computer saavy, highly educated, intellectually curious, sociable, and more males than females. This correlation between the 1% users, means there is a biased view online. This 1% limits the diversity of opinions represented on the internet. Much like a bias in media can influence views, so can an internet community bias. For example, the news media portrays crimes frequently on its broadcasts. Because of the excessive amount of crimes broadcasted, individuals are more prone to believe that the crime rate in their area is much higher than it actually is. If we, as an online community are only presented with predispositioned analyses, we are being fed false information.

Guardian Article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2006/jul/20/guardianweeklytechnologysection2

"I Know What You Tagged Last Summer"

Using the delicious site, as a class we each explored users that had tagged pages that pertained to similar interest of ours. I chose the page http://laws.adoption.com/ to bookmark. I found a delicious user who had also bookmarked the page. I found this user had bookmarked 27 pages relating to adoption. When I scrolled through the adoption tags, I found several pages bookmarked pertaining to private domestic and international adoption. I can infer from the sheer volume of these pages that the individual or someone close to her is looking to adopt a child. I found several tags that lead me to believe the user was a woman. These tags included Avon, candles, coupons, and gardening. By looking at her tags, I also gathered the woman was a Christian because she had several tags including the word Christian as well as bible and prayers. Furthermore, when I was looking through her adoption tags, I found several pages on Christian adoption agencies. She is very interested in politics. In fact she has tagged 47 pages pertaining to politics. I believe she is a Conservative Republican because nearly all of her pages relate. I also believe she is from Georgia. It was one of her more frequented tags and she had many pages about Georgia politics tagged. She is interested in genealogy and tagged a website called Famster. She specifically even tagged the page titled The Crosby’s. I think it would be viable to say she is related to the Crosby family somehow. I even watched a family reunion video which looked to be shot off the seawall in Galveston. Digging further into her adoption tags, I found a couple pages on The Archdioceses in Galveston. She has a lot of pages on photo editing as well.

I was surprised to find that you can discover so much about a person just by exploring the tags they have on their delicious page. Even very personal information is easily accessible to anyone who chooses to explore a page. This discovery only furthered the notion of a “digital footprint.” With the increasing use of social bookmarking sites like delicious, the spread of personal information is becoming even more extensive.

Cluetrain Manifesto and Its Effect on Advertising

#2 Markets consist of human beings, not demographic sectors. (95 Theses)

This statement is one which I believe presents a challenge to advertisers in this day and age. Approaching a market as individuals and not just a collective demographic of people is something which I believe the advertising industry is attempting to achieve. However, I find it unusual that in advertising courses and even advertising firms, demographic studies are still researched and applied to campaigns. I took a course in advertising last semester. A good majority of the class was spent on identifying demographics and learning how to cater to those specific demographics.

Which brings me to this thought: Is it possible to cater to individuals or does there have to be some element of generalization (demographic analysis)?