Liminal states

In Strategies for progressives on Twitter, Tracy Viselli and I talked about the importance of tools and techniques for flash actions on Twitter.  Conservatives have been organizing longer and have the early lead, but I think progressives and bipartisans are starting to catch up.

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DRAFT! Work in progress, feedback welcome.

Final version to appear on The Seminal.

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What are the learnings from our Ask the President experience?

For me, a few off the top of the head.

1) a single page with instructions where people can vote for multiple ideas is extremely valuable for competitions like this (although our layout still needs work)

2) the combination of a twitter account (@p2pt0) and hashtag (#p2) is a good one

3) I briefly went hashtag-crazy.  Oops.  Thanks to Myrna the Minx for pointing this out.  More generally this is something we still have to sort out: how to get the information diffusion to work effectively across hashtags?

What else?

jon

Ask the President (aka #askpres) has gotten brief mentions in the Politico, a second link from WashPo, and Jake Tapper tweeted about it.  Momentum is building!  And there are other projects going on to get citizen input into White House press conferences:

• Jake Tapper is soliciting questions on Twitter and will read them all. He’s aware of #askpres.
• Faiz Shakir is soliciting questions on his (registration-required) blog at Center for American Progress. He did not appear to be aware of #askpres.  I tweeted to Alan Davidson, and per Ari’s request Harry Waisbren is trying to use his contacts at CAP to connect people.

Four of the questions on the list on the #p2’s wiki* are in the top 12 on the Ask the President site, including the one I submitted on behalf of Get FISA Right (what are your plans and timeframe to get FISA right) at #8.

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The first installment of Lessons from Skittles for poets and activists briefly described how Skittles’ Twitter-centric viral marketing campaign caught fire and concluded that one lesson is that activists without a lot of time or money should seriously consider incorporating Twitter in their plans.   That’s a pretty general conclusion.  So our next two installments will look at two case-studies in progress.  You can watch them unfold as they’re happening, or even better get involved and learn by doing.

This weekend we’ll cover Ask the President, which offers poets and activists a chance to propose and vote on questions for White House press conferences.  As Ari Melber discussed in The People’s Press Conference, Ask the President — #askpres for short — will need to create buzz to have a chance at getting their questions asked and answered.  Activists also need to create buzz to help get their questions voted up.

The following weekend, we’ll discuss 30 Poets / 30 Days, a project for National Poetry Month in April 1 being organized by my brother, Gregory K of Gottabook.  Three years ago, Greg’s blog post about “Fibs” (Fibonacci Poetry) went viral and got picked up by the mighty Slashdot and then the New York Times.   Will lightning strike twice?
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A few weeks ago Agency.com and Skittles kicked off “Interweb the rainbow”, a brilliant marketing campaign that involved multiple social networks. The idea was simple: replace the Skittles.com home page with different social network sites. Late that Sunday evening, they set it up to show everything that people were saying on Twitter about Skittles. Everything, good, bad, or indifferent.

On Monday, Skittles was the #1 topic on Twitter.

By Tuesday, there were zillions of blog posts as well as positive presss in the Wall Street Journal, LA Times, the Financial Times and Advertising Age.   Gender differences in response to Skittlemania has oodles more links.

…

In this series I’ll discuss what activists can learn from the Skittles experience — and poets, too, for reasons that’ll become clear in the next few days.

More here, on The Seminal.

Thanks to everybody who gave feedback on the draft version I posted earlier (which also gives some ideas about what next week’s installment will cover).  Apologies in advance; if I missed anybody in the credits at the end of the article in the Seminal; please let me know and we’ll get it fixed.

And what a great chance for first-hand experience with activism on Twitter!  It’s easy, too. You can start by retweeting my request for help digging this article:
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DRAFT! Work in Progress!  Feedback, please!
Final version to be published in The Seminal, potentially in two parts

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Ask the President‘s site is up and running!  The idea’s simple: people can submit questions and vote on which ones they’d like to see answered at a White House press conference.  Ari Melber’s The People’s Press Conference in The Nation has details; other partners include the Washington Times and Personal Democracy Forum.

If you think it’s a good idea, here are a few ways you can hep get the word out on Twitter.

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Original draft March 16.  Revised March 19.

“Net movement” journalist/activist Ari Melber’s latest brainstorm, Ask the President, is launching on March 19 at http://www.communitycounts.com/Obama.   The basic idea is to provide a followon to Change.gov’s short-lived Open for Questions series [1, 2]: a way for people to submit potential questions and vote on what they think the best ones are.  It’s an intriguing idea, with the possibility of providing a path around the media gatekeepers who have historically controlled access.

Here are some thoughts about how Tweeple (people on Twitter) who support the idea can help with Ask the President‘s launch.

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I’m testing out Dan Zarella’s TweetSuite, which includes Tweetbacks and a Tweet This button.

Unfortunately, according to the comments here, it apparently only works on posts that have been created since the plugin has been installed.    So I’m creating this post to test things out.

We shall see …

Today, on Twitter, I saw another woman, Allyson Kapin (who goes by @WomenWhoTech), get frustrated when she saw a list of “top” folks in social media that, once again, omitted all but one woman…. Soon after, a discussion ensued, and, within minutes, Kapin started a new “event” on Twitter…

— Denise Graveline on The Eloquent Woman, February 25

The idea behind #Women2Follow Wednesdays is straightforward: to recognize and promote women in the technology and social media field — and help people find each other.  If you’re on Twitter, it’s easy to participate.

1. Tweet a list of one or more women on Twitter you think people should follow, along with some info about why.  Make sure to include the #women2follow hashtag!
2. Watch others’ recommendations and find interesting people to follow

Like I said, easy.  Here are my recommendations over the last three weeks.

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The great thing about the #digg it experiment (trying to use Twitter to increase visibility for progressives, feminists, and women of color on Digg), is that it’s so easy to explain to people*:

1. if you’ve got a story you’re trying to promote on Digg, include the #digg hashtag when you tweet it, and at least one of #p2, #rebelleft, #topprog, #fem2, or #woc
2. if you see something with the #digg hashtag, digg it if you think it’s interesting — and retweet it as well

The first round of experiments a few weeks ago went very well.  So last Friday we decided to try again, sending mail to a couple of progressive mailing lists encouraging people to digg and retweet.  Once again, the results were great.

Over 20 people have participated so far, and a total of 15 stories got tweeted with #digg and at least one of the progressive hashtags — most aggressively by Twitter user @diggleft.  Of these, give got at least one retweet.

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