Ever wonder how the polls and mainstream news coverage of the US presidential race stack up against the social media conversation? Then you’ll want to check out this ingenious dashboard (pictured above in the highest res I can muster right now).
Its charts showcase side-by-side comparisons of news, blogosphere and Twitter mentions of the candidates and more, providing an interesting mash up of perspectives–from the mainstream media down to to the individual opinions of lifestreaming micromedia. The up-to-the-minute Twitter and blog feeds of all things mentioning the candidates give you an unvarnished (and, caution, un-edited) taste of what people are talking about and linking to in the dynamic world of social media. Where do they find all that spare time?!? There’s even a Widget!
This is truly America’s first Web 2.0 powered presidential election (in terms of everything from fundraising to announcing a Vice Presidential pick via text message). So tools like this dashboard are a useful way for voters to take the pulse of the conversation themselves. Don’t know how long this one will remain up for. Let us know if you have found others. Maybe someone has created one for the iPhone already, available in an app store near you…
Special thanks: to Guy Kawasaki for tweeting this our way (along with the 18,000 plus other people who follow him on Twitter)
Image credit: perspctv
A terrific but frightening badvocacy story appeared in the Financial Times yesterday in Lucy Kellaway’s highly read column. She could be classified as a badvocate but one could more easily argue that EasyJet, the European low cost carrier, was the true “bad” advocate. As she tells it, she booked six tickets to Menorca for the holidays last March. She never received the confirmation from EasyJet and soon found out that they misplaced her reservation. What to do? She reordered. However to her surprise, EasyJet billed her twice (and those tickets add up to a tidy sum). She corresponded with their Customer Service department and it went from swell to hell fast. The story just continues to get worse with the repaid check from EasyJet getting lost in the mail and her email to them letting them know she covers customer service for the FT ignored. When she got a response, EasyJet apologized for the inconvenience but communicated that there was nothing they could do about the poor trail of customer service woes. Kellaway writes: “Yet as a journalist, I commend EasyJet. Making it almost impossible for me to have my money back is entirely sensible. The company has destroyed my goodwill, but my goodwill doesn’t matter. The reason I chose to fly with them wasn’t that I like them. It was that they were slightly cheaper and the timing suited me better than the competition.” Nothing worse than an angry customer and especially one that is also an influential journalist! What was EasyJet thinking? How does this story end? Someone at EasyJet finally figured out that making nice with Kellaway was preferable than her earning her disdain. She received an apologetic email from EasyJet saying she would get her money back after all. I bet that she will not be a fan of EasyJet for a long time.
Just read some interesting news about Google’s “Big Tent” plans for the Democratic and Republican conventions — which will have 500 and 200 credentialled bloggers working onsite, respectively. For $100 each, Google will provide Net access, workspace, couches, candy buffet, smoothies and massages — which is almost like working at the Googleplex for a day!
It’s a smart move for Google, of course, but John Murrell’s comment below really got me thinking:
>>> With all that coddling, the bloggers should be in fine form to try to do what mainstream media outlets have trouble doing at such carefully scripted events — dig up some news. <<<
On the surface, that sounds fairly traditional. Simply the difference between mainstream/broadcast news and microstream/narrowcast news coverage. But with 500 or 200 “embedded” bloggers — and traditional media likely following their lead as much as the reverse — could it actually impact the nature of the event? Could it turn the stodgy, overly scripted, boring conventions of recent history into a more raucous old-school debate with real issues being argued and discussed in the light of day by real people?
As a political junkie and a news junkie, I’ll hold out some hope that social media might help — or more likely, force — the parties to “loosen up” a bit at the conventions. If not, maybe we can get some of the rule-breaking social engineers who gave us “un-conferences” in business to apply their talents to create the country’s first “un-conventions” for 2012.
One is dark the other golden. One falls from the sky the other knifes through water. One is brought to you from a Hollywood studio. The other by way of a newcomer on the world pop culture stage, the Chinese politburo.
But, perhaps in a way, the differences stop there. Because the world can’t get enough of them. These two masked, high-tech superheroes of summer. And neither can the organizations and brands that placed such big bets on their muscular shoulders in hopes of that rarest of phenomena: the blockbuster summer success.
As given away up front by the pics, I’m of course talking about the latest Batman movie “The Dark Knight,” starring Christian Bale and Heath Ledger in his final completed performance. And American Olympic-swimming wunderkind, Michael Phelps. Who today impossibly won his sixth gold medal and set his sixth world record in the Beijing games. His 12th career gold overall. More than any Olympic athlete in any sport. Ever.
When International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge was talking to reporters yesterday about Phelps’ impact, he could just as well have been talking about Hollywood:
“The Olympic Games live around superheroes. You had Jesse Owens, you had Paavo Nurmi, Carl Lewis and now you have Phelps. And that’s what we need to have.”
Batman, Spiderman, Ironman… Phelps, Lewis, Retton… or how about iPhone, iPod, Google to throw some phenom brands into the mix (oh just go with it, it’s summer). All are Supermen–some literally. All are icons. Heroes that defy the impossible. And break through the quotidian clutter to inspire outsized imagination and advocacy.
And it’s not just their feats that are heroic. It’s how they are saving business (and rescuing the rest of us in the US from the wasteland of reality TV and campaign coverage). Just look at Batman. According to boxofficemojo.com, the US Domestic box office total for “The Dark Night” as of August 13 was, as Robin Leach of “Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous” used to say, a hefty little $451 million. That’s nothing compared to the worldwide box office. It now stands at $715 million! Can you say ka-ching?
Back in Beijing, polls estimated that the opening ceremonies were viewed by 1 billion worldwide. That’s 15% of tout le monde. In the US, the broadcast averaged 34.2 million viewers and received an 18.6 national household rating, according to the Hollywood Reporter. Impressive to be sure.
But Phelps himself is drawing a tidal wave of eyeballs. According to the International Herald Tribune, he’s shattering Web traffic records just on NBCOlympics.com alone:
More than 2 million people have clicked on NBCOlympics.com to watch a video replay of the thrilling men’s 4×100 swimming relay, where the Americans scored a come-from-behind victory over the French… That race alone accounts for more than 40 percent of the nearly 5 million video on demand orders from the Web site, NBC Universal said on Thursday… Three of the next four most-ordered clips were also Phelps gold medal races, with his 400-meter victory called up 492,000 times. The only non-Phelps video in the top five was a collection of highlights from last Friday’s opening ceremony… Web site users have also called up Phelps’ profile 3.7 million times, far and away the most of any other athlete.
Fortunately, this is one story it won’t be difficult to find great stats on, as it will be endlessly written about, talked about, and analyzed. Which after all is the point. An astonishing aside, in what has otherwise been an impressive use of digital media by both the producers of Batman and the Olympics broadcast to engage vast audiences, was the whack-a-mole-like efforts of the latter to keep images of the tape-delayed opening ceremonies from leaking out in the age of broadband. Check please.
Even as we all marvel at and enjoy the great success of these Summer Knights, Batman and Phelps, we’d do well to remember that every Superman has his kryptonite. As observed by the New York Times today, that might simply come down to what home team you root for. Phelps it appears is not quite yet a universal hero. He’s ours here in America, splashed everywhere across our screens and imaginations. But virtually unknown and relegated to the back of the local media coverage in China!
That’s just the way it works with heroes. Or villains for the matter. After all, it was the Joker who stole the spotlight in “The Dark Knight!”
Image credits: FilmSchoolRejects and Telegraph.co.uk
Advocates and Badvocates duke it out. A Latvian movie called “The Soviet Story” is being launched that compares communism to fascism. According to the Economist (08.04.2008), pro-Russians are using cyberspace to raise funds to create a counter documentary on the strengths of Soviet communism. If individuals don’t have the funds to spare, they can pitch in by offering to help translate the documentary into other languages. Good example of Advocacy and Badvocacy at play (or at war). Reminds me of the anti-Wal-Mart movie (Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price) and Wal-Mart’s celluloid response (Why Wal-Mart Works and Why That Makes Some People Crazy). I have to be honest – I love both Wal-Mart film titles!
