Tim Chambers's blog

My company is the "Official Website Producer" of the 2008 Democratic Convention site, and a new announcement just occured on that site...one that ties into NDN's advice on engaging the blogs.

They just announced the credentaling of a formal "State Blogger Corps."Here is a snippet of the story:

"Months ago, we began the process of credentialing bloggers who cover state and local politics, as part of the DemConvention State Blogger Corps.  More than 400 blogs applied for the program.  And they’re incredible.  Some blogs are the work of dedicated groups of activists, a few are full-time professional endeavors, and many others are the products of busy individuals blogging about local politics in their free time.  Those selected to be part of our State Blogger Corps were announced today.  And in every case, these bloggers have become experts on the political happenings in their states....

They’ll be seated with their respective delegations at the Convention.  These bloggers will have some of the best seats in the house and they’ll be the eyes and ears of local audiences online around the country."

You can see the full list of the 50 State Blogs chosen at the DemConvention.com site.

I am always looking for how the campaigns are using mobile media... and found this quote on MyDD talking about the Obama camp use of the medium at their recent big events:

"Now today, I read an account of Obama's South Carolina Oprah rally and was impressed by the further innovation of how the campaign is continuing to exploit his crowds. This strikes me as rather brilliant.

The campaign attempted to organize that enthusiasm by asking the crowd to text their cell phone numbers to the campaign. Jeremy Bird and Anton Gunn, the campaign's field and political directors took the stage to ask the crowd to text their phone numbers to Obama's campaign. They also broke a Guinness World Record by conducting the world's largest phone bank, 36,426 people in the audience called four names of South Carolinian voters listed on the back of their tickets and asked them to support Barack Obama.

Here, we see his campaign collecting supporters' cell phone numbers rather than e-mail addresses for more immediate access to them, and has taken the exploitation of the crowds as activists one step further by actually having them make calls right there."

A good NY Times story that summarizes the latest information on cellphone only households in the US and how that will effect political polling perhaps as soon as next year:

A key quote:

"According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Health Interview Survey, adults with cellphones and no land lines are more likely to be young — half of exclusively wireless users are younger than 30 — male, Hispanic, living in poverty, renting a residence and living in metropolitan regions.

The Pew Research Center conducted four studies last year on the differences between cellphone and land line respondents. The studies said the differences were not significant enough to influence surveys properly weighted to census data. With the increase in cellphone-only households, that may not be the case next year. Researchers, including the New York Times/CBS News poll will test that by incorporating cellphones in samples.

The estimates in the Health Interview Study suggest that cellphone-only households are steadily increasing.

“If the percentage of adults living in cell-only households continues to grow at the rate it has been growing for the past four years, I have projected that it will exceed 25 percent by the end of 2008,” Stephen J. Blumberg, a senior scientist at the National Center for Health Statistics, wrote in an e-mail message."

Another media related study was released today... this time on the next generation of Americans (and voters) on their use of mobile phones and their consumption of mobile media. 

This is a Nielsen study on the "tweens" or 8 to 12 year olds. There should be a rule that once a technology reaches these numbers with 8 to 12 year olds, it's crossed a certain critical mass and can be officially deemed a "mass medium."

So for this wave, the report estimates that TODAY that:
* 35% of tweens own a mobile phone.
* 20% of tweens have used text messaging.
* 21% of tweens have used ring & answer tones.

 And it adds that "while text-messaging and ringtones remain the most pervasive non-voice functions on the phone, other content such as downloaded wallpapers, music, games and Internet access also rank highly among tweens."

Imagine how deep-rooted mobile media use will be for this generation when they begin voting in 6 years. 

Signs of the times. AdAge highlights a new survey on future advertising spending in the next several years.

A key forecast:

"We expect [online ad spend]  to overtake radio advertising in 2008; to attain a double-digit share of global advertising in 2009; and to overtake magazine advertising in 2010, with 11.5% of total ad spend."

It also lists that globally internet ad spending would grow to $44.6 billion from approximately $36 billion -  which would increase it's share of the market from  8.1 to 9.4 percent.

This last Tuesday Verizon outlined a new more open strategy to supporting "any application, any device" that meets their minimum technology requirements on their network by 2008. This dramatic move also offers that "any application the customer chooses will be allowed on these devices. "

The Verizon Wireless President called this "a transformation point in the 20-year history of mass market wireless devices – one which we believe will set the table for the next level of innovation and growth.”

With this new strategy, Verizon seems to be seeing that the benefits from being more open with their platform outweigh those of trying to maintain a more rigid, more controlled "closed garden" model.  

Some analysts believe that this move will broaden the number of "officially supported" devices on the Verizon network from what it is today (around  50 handsets) to somewhere more than 500 once developers have really begun taking advantage of this new offer.  I'd suspect that this would include many new devices that are not primarily voice based based, but that are pure data devices.

These new more broad pool of officially supported devices would then have to compete on offering a better consumer experience, and new and innovative features. 

 And this speaks to an overall trend we've highlighted before on this blog about "smartphones" getting smarter... and continuing to grow into full fledged media devices. 

In a first of it's kind study, Purdue University tested 10,000 students on how quickly a text message alert can spread throughout it's campus. This is interesting in terms of emergency announcements and response, but also from the aspect of how quickly political and social issue organizations can get key or timely news or call to action to it's entire distributed user group. The result in the case of the Purdue study was 7 minutes with reaching virtually the entire study group. "Nearly 10,000 students and faculty members agreed to receive a text message at 11:25 a.m. and respond as quickly as possible... "The answer, at least in this case, is seven minutes. That's how long it took his team to send out 9,979 text messages. Replies started coming back within the first minute, he said. Only about 30 people didn't get the text message."

In a trend I discussed a number of times on this blog, you can see how online social networks are continuing a direct play into becoming full fledged mobile services... Today Fox announced that MySpace Mobile will launch across all US carriers Monday... and this story touches another trend, the rise of mobile micro-targeted search...which will be the key play for the new mobile service. Both trends will have a serious impact on political outreach and political ad buying over time. Here is the story:

"Fox Interactive Media announced an advertising-funded mobile incarnation of its social networking service MySpace, part of parent company News Corp.'s wider bid to generate ad revenues via the mobile web. Fox Interactive Media already offers a premium MySpace Mobile service via operators including AT&T, Helio and Vodafone--the new ad-supported service set to launch Monday will operate across all U.S. carriers and will enable subscribers to send and receive messages and friend requests, comment on photos, post alerts, update blogs, and find and search for friends. At launch Fox Interactive Media will focus on sponsorships and banner ads, but eventually will move to more targeted advertising based on user registration data--local ads based on GPS data are also scheduled to follow.

In addition to the free MySpace service, Fox Interactive Media will introduce ad-funded mobile versions of FoxSports.com, gaming site IGN, movie site RottenTomatoes.com and AskMen.com--several local TV affiliates will also launch free sites, and in the weeks ahead, image-sharing site Photobucket will make its mobile debut as well."

 From today's NY Times...

"A new study released this week found that young people are more likely to vote by 4.2 percentage points if they receive a text message reminding them to show up to the polls.

The survey found that most of the recipients, and especially Hispanics, found the message helpful — unlike their reaction e-mail. But here’s the result that could be the most compelling to the campaigns: Each additional vote generated by the text message cost an average $1.56.

Compare that to some phone calls, which, for the same level of effectiveness, cost about $20 a vote. Door-to-door canvassing, which can increase young voter turnout by 7-to-9 percent, comes in at around $30 a vote.

'Text messaging can be another tool in the toolbox,' said Sujatha Jahagirdar, the project director for Student Public Interest Research Group’s Young Voters Project, one of the groups involved in the study."

Reed Hundt, the former Chariman of the FCC, writes about the true larger trends for mobile media and services over at the TPMCafe...here is a key quote from his posting:

"The inevitable corollary will be that mobile devices provide the primary mode of access to the Internet. Mobile computing devices -- laptops and "tweeners" (objects between cellphones and laptops) -- will become the primary means of using microprocessor power, at least for consumers.

The means for forming groups, gathering information, developing beliefs, sharing values, and taking action --what we apprehend now as social networks -- will become as widespread and effective as mobile communications itself. The handheld device will become the essential technology for performing the mechanical job of interacting within and between societies.

No single part of government in the United States pays much attention to these trends ...the implications of the new mobile web vastly outstrip government's capability to think about those implications ...Businesses in this field, on the other hand, are well aware of what's going on."