Foursquare adds C-SPAN to its team

Posted by Casey@SMS on Jun 29th, 2010 | one comment

C-SPAN is the latest network to team up with Foursquare, as Mashable reports. This attempt to boost political education and C-SPAN’s mobile presence will allow visitors checking in to be provided with tips geared towards politics. For example, they will be presented to watch a documentary on the federal budget when they check in at the capital building in Washington, D.C.  Also, a check in at the Supreme Court will afford visitors the opportunity to watch Supreme Court Justice interviews via C-SPAN. Soon, these political education tips will expand to cities outside the D.C. area. This is a great opportunity to use social media to increase the public’s general knowledge about U.S. politics. Almost every time a major election comes around, the media constantly points out how low voter-turn out there is and how generally, many people do not have a great deal of knowledge about politics in America. By reaching out through social media, I believe this can be changed, especially by using location-based apps when consumers check in at politically relevant locations.

Post-inauguration thoughts about social media

Posted by PoliticalCampaigns on Oct 28th, 2009 | no comments

Here is Rob Paterson’s thoughts on social media and politics – post inauguration…

First of all – WOW!!!!!

Here in point form are some thoughts about what I think has also happened in the social media context:

• Twitter was huge and held together – was this not Twitter’s Performance Waterloo? – I found it a wonderful adjunct to my TV and my web watching. I limited my stream to those people that I knew and cared for and it was as if I was there side by side with them. This amplified the whole experience. Some were on the ground in Washington – their collective Tweets were like a composite eye – in aggregate they gave me a sense of being there.

So – if you wish to add more “experience” to your event and hence make it more “sticky” having a Twitter stream will do that.

If you claim to be a new organization and you do not use Twitter thoughtfully – then you are no longer in the game

• Streaming – I was joined by millions who wanted to make their computer the centre of their experience. I wanted this because I could add more layers to what was going on. I cannot do this with TV where all I can do is shift channels. I could use Twitter – I could have several streams open at the same time – I could chat – the list goes on. I think that this also was the Tipping Point for TV delivery – this is what the Tsunami was for blogging. This was the event that shifted the web as a delivery platform from being nice to being the most important. Of course it did not work as well as it was hoped. But the flaws in execution and in load management does not change the new reality. The Web is where TV will be seen. CNN’s excellent partnership with Facebook was a ramp up of this idea. I found it such fun to have the feed AND my peeps online on the same page. I started to think of BSG and a Twitter/Facebook combo. Not just news but more importantly to be able to watch whatever I wanted with my friends – a concert, a theatrical show, a documentary, a lecture content shared with friends is better than content watched alone. TV Web Stream PLUS my friends looks like a killer combination

So if you produce content for TV and you have not made up your mind that the web will be your primary arena you are no longer in the game.

Adding conversation with friends and enabling filtering of this group is the icing on the web TV cake

• Making this easy is very important. On the one hand we have the CBC who use a very tricky stream delivery and who clearly want to pull you back to the TV offering – on the other hand we have CNN and Facebook – their set up was exceptionally well done. Now the stream overloaded but that is solvable. CNN also offered multiple views – there was not only one stream but 3. I was struck by that. I can see down the road the value of offering many many views – I then become the editor of my own view of the event. Now I have control. What a shift in power! One of the views that is worth having is the C – Span view by that I mean one without any commentary – with my peeps we can do that too.

So – It is clear to me that CNN have crossed the Rubicon – they have senior folks who no longer see the web as good or interesting but as the primary way forward

• There is a new Media company out there. The White House is going to become a media powerhouse of its own. The Obama administration is going to do for social media what Teddy Roosevelt did for the Press and FDR did for radio but more so. The Roosevelts gave the new media worlds of their time a boost. But the press/media organizations were still always outside the Whitehouse. As the President showed us in the campaign, he is a master of being the media organization of the future – the White House will have massive conversations directly with the people – an not just the people of the US but with the people of the world. The 44th President is a master of the Cluetrain. Politics are all about Biological Markets.

So,  just as he will show up all other elected leaders by his agenda so I think he will show up all others in mastery of how to use social media to do the great work of our time – how to engage people so that they no longer sit passively waiting to be saved but that they are brought into the conversation that encourages them to take responsibility for their own lives and their own communities.

This for me is my biggest aha – that our own conversation will soon move away from “cool” from the “Tech” to what this is all about. It is surely all about an awakening from the deep sleep, the passivity, the numbness, the dumbness – of the traditional mass media.

This where where responsibility replaces passivity. This is the great change and revolution of our time. The social use of media will wake us up and connect us to our real work.