What Twitter and Facebook meant in the Egyptian Revolution

by Josh Bernoff

We now read that Hosni Mubarak has resigned due to popular unrest in Egypt. Throughout the coverage, we've read about how Twitter and Facebook were essential to the protesters. But in a blog post on the New Yorker site, Malcolm Gladwell says that the communications tools didn't make the difference. Defending his earlier article about the "weak ties" of social networks and how they differ from the "hearts and minds" revolutions like the civil rights uprising, he says:

But surely the least interesting fact about them is that some of the protesters may (or may not) have at one point or another employed some of the tools of the new media to communicate with one another. Please. People protested and brought down governments before Facebook was invented. They did it before the Internet came along.

So which is it. Did Twitter and Facebook cause the groundswell, or didn't they?

They certainly scared the Egyptian regime sufficiently to cause them to take the disastrous steps of shutting down the Internet and mobile phone networks.

Here are some ways in which social networks contributed to this revolution:

• They created rallying points -- sparks burst into flames of outrage. The New York Times says a video about Khaled Said, posted on Facebook, became a starting point for the revolutionary movement.
• They enabled people to see how many others shared their perspective.
• They enabled people to coordinate activity and get the word out about protests.
• They allowed memes about revolution to spread -- like the focus on Mohammed ElBaradei as an opposition figure.

If you want an analogy, think of "All in the Family," the sitcom that elevated the discussion about racism in America. "All in the Family" didn't create or advance the civil rights movement. Television didn't create that movement. But it was a highly efficient way to spread ideas that, eventually, caught on and changed American thinking. While racism has not ended, I would certainly say that television, and "All in the Family," made a huge difference in how America perceived it.

Malcolm Gladwell is right that without real people taking real risks, there is no revolution. Signing up for a cause on Facebook doesn't make a big difference in itself.

And there were lots of other factors, including coverage in Al Jazeera, that made a big difference.

But the Egyptian revolution took off more quickly, spread to more people, became more universal, and scared the heck out of a dictator more effectively because of social media. Social media didn't cause the revolution, but it was essential to its success.

 

Barack Obama goes all the way into the Groundswell

by Josh Bernoff

Just as we had hoped, Barack Obama's change.gov has implemented an idea site, complete with voting and viewing of others' ideas.

It's working. But the people are having their say. Right now the second most popular idea is to decriminalize marijuana possession.

Let's see what happens to these ideas. In any case, a great step in the right direction.

Obama's YouTube speech raises the question: is there an efficient way to listen to America?

by Josh Bernoff

Obama's march forward with social technology continues. Since we've never had a President-elect go so far with social technology before, there are no standards. So it's hard to know how to react.

For example:

There's a blog on change.gov . . .

. . . but it has no author. And of course, no comments.

The weekly "radio address" is on YouTube (and on the change.gov blog) and has over 300,000 views on its first day . . .

. . . but of course it has comments disabled, as well.

As we suggested, some of the "vision" ideas people have suggested are now visible on change.gov . . .

. . . but the other 99% are hidden.

We're pleased to see that Brian Solis at TechCrunch extending our idea of moving the President into the social world where he can hear from the people (he calls for Obama to become a "Two-way President").

This isn't at the top of Obama's list of priorities. Fixing the economy is. But you just have to wonder what it could do for a government that is supposed to be of the people, by the people, for the people, to actually listen to the people.

The problem is a scale problem. How do you deal with 10,000 suggestions? How do you learn from them? How do you manage them?

Step one: Hire a community manager of the United States. Jake McKee has already applied for the job.

Step two: Develop ways for the community to mostly manage itself, as Wikipedia does. Luckily, there are no shortage of social media experts ready to set that up. As all communities scale up, these problems solve themselves. But in this case, given the speed with which the community will grow and the contentiousness of politics, it will be a little trickier. (Jake, are you sure you want this job?)

Step three: Find ways to derive real insight from all the commentary. And here, we have solutions. Brand monitoring companies like Cymfony, MotiveQuest (which called the election), and Umbria should be doing this now and vying to offer their solutions to the Obama administration. Networked Insights mines ideas from community commentary -- this opportunity is ready made for them.

We'd also like to see some communities from Communispace or Passenger set up for a more civil, more responsive way to gather  intelligence. Give me 500 moms, 500 small business people, 500 republicans, and 500 millenials. When you need to know which way the world is going, ask 'em. Cheaper and better than polls.

The only part I worry about is this: is the social technology vendor community ready to become government contractors? Save a little staff for your corporate clients, ok?

To end this, just because I can, I'm going to put the president-elect's speech right here. Next I'm looking forward to the Obama Widget.

Tell Obama to embrace the groundswell. Now.

by Josh Bernoff

We told Barack Obama to tap the groundswell. He's getting there. Already, the his transition team's Web site is up at change.gov.

Is it social? Not yet. It contains outgoing information. And it solicits your feedback. But when you tell President-Elect Obama your vision for America, your suggestion goes . . . well, I don't know where it goes. You type it in and then get the "thanks for sharing" message shown here. Will they just pick the ones they like and republish them?

Embracing applications like mystarbucksidea.com require two things to be successful. 1. everyone needs to see all the ideas. And 2. the organization has to respond -- tell what it is going to do (or not do) about the ideas.

So here's what I want you to do. Right now, go to this Web site: http://www.change.gov/page/s/yourvision. Enter your personal information. And when it asks for your vision, enter your own version of something like this.

Mr. Obama, in my vision for America, the government is responsive to the needs of citizens. Social technologies make this possible. You were very effective in mobilizing those technologies to help get you elected. Now it's time to use them to get your ideas from real Americans.

So here's what you should do. Publish all the ideas that people enter on this site. Allow us all to vote for them. And then tell us, directly, what you are going to do to address the ones that are most popular, or the best.

You have created a movement. Will you listen to the people who elected you? We'll be watching.

Remember, this will be most effective if you enter it in your own words. Let's see what happens!

Barack Obama, will you tap the groundswell?

by Josh Bernoff

Like many of you, I watched the election last night, and watched Barack Obama's acceptance speech. This speech capped off an election in which Obama demonstrated inspirational leadership and the power to organize and take advantage of a true groundswell. Groundswell means, literally, a rise in the ocean. Figuratively, it typically refers to a political movement in which people come together around a common cause. Could there be any better example than this?

Through my.barackobama.com, through Facebook and MySpace and YouTube, and through clever outreach to his supporters, Obama's campaign has truly energized its fans and turned the power of their passion to spreading his messages and gaining the votes he needed. In this country balanced on the knife edge on so many issues, I think it is no exaggeration to say that Barack Obama owes his victory to the effectiveness of his campaign's groundswell Internet strategy.

What now?

Barack Obama faces perhaps the most complex set of problems to face a president in the last fifty years, from terrorism to a teetering economy to a deficit that scares the crap of out me for my children's future. He has the power to inspire people behind the solutions he may come up with. He's clearly intelligent. But does he have the humility to gather those solutions from the popular groundswell that elected him?

If Starbucks can source ideas from the groundswell -- if Mattel can learn from its mistakes by connecting with ordinary people -- if Hershey's can get people to try new chocolates with Internet word of mouth, can Barack Obama's government tap the same sources of energy?

I call on president-elect Obama to create a community of committed Americans to discuss the solutions to the problems that face us. I call on him to designate a US Community Manager, with a small staff, to moderate and harvest those discussions to solve the country's problems. Forget polls. With a few million people in my.america.gov, Obama will be able to tap into the world's largest focus group. Communities are cheap, compared to most of what the government does. Create a space for the brightest people you know; use them to attract the best ideas. And better yet, use this energized community to sell those ideas to America.

Presidents are powerful, but the reality is that politics requires compromise. But politicians with the people on their side usually win out. With a community behind him, Obama will need no further mandate. And he'll look smarter with a few thousand idea generators behind him.

Or he could just do things the way people in Washington have always done them, in secret, watered down, inefficiently, and in the most costly way possible. That's never worked all that well, and it's been working even more poorly lately.

It's late, and tiredness has overcome the usual constraints on my idealism. I promise to be more reasonable in the morning. In the meantime, how about giving the groundswell a chance, President-Elect Obama?

This post has now appeared in the Boston Globe. Also see my update about Obama's change.gov.

Barack Obama vs. my.BarackObama.com on FISA -- When Your Fans Disagree With You

by Josh Bernoff

As you can see from this graphic, the banner at the top of myBarackObama.com, Barack Obama is serious about people's ability to change the world. But we're about to see just what happens when his supporters don't support his decisions. There are lessons here for corporations, too, so watch what happens.

I've written about how Barack Obama has leveraged the power of his supporters, not only through the social network of his supporters, my.barackobama.com, but through energizing those supporters during the primary. Democrats -- and Obama supporters -- are more likely to use social networks, a tendency that could benefit Obama as he attempts to reach out to their Independent friends in the general election.

But social networking in politics is still at the broadcast stage -- candidates ring their networks like a bell to amplify their messages. As we tell corporate clients all the time, once you start talking to people in the groundswell, you need to listen, as well.

Obama is seeing this in a big way. For political reasons -- moving, as all politicians do, more to the center for the general election -- he reversed a previously held position and will vote for a provisions of a bill called FISA that provide immunity from prosecution for phone companies that worked with the government on homeland-security driven wiretapping.

Many of his supporters disagree with him on this and see it as a betrayal? How many? At least 14,000. That's how many of them have banded together in a group called "Senator Obama - Please Vote NO on Telecom Immunity - Get FISA Right", highly visible on his own social network my.barackobama.com. This group is easy to find as it is now the largest group of the thousands on his site. One of his supporters' heartfelt cries of dissent is now the top search result for "Barack FISA." And the New York Times has written about the internal conflict.

What would you do? This situation is likely to happen to you as you participate in the blogosphere, create communities, and pursue corporate goals.

Obama is likely to run afoul of this again and again as he inevitably tacks to the centers -- and away from his supporters -- in the coming months. Here's our advice (and the same applies to you as you make corporate decisions and deal with the groundswell):

1. Make the right choices. You are not a tool of your supporters, you are supposed to be a good decision maker. Don't be unduly swayed by thousands of your supporters, if you believe you need to make different decision.
2. Justify your decision. And I don't just mean in the press. In the network. Obama himself needs to make a statement within the network to show he is listening, and justify his decision. He needs to acknowledge that he has supporters, and he listens to those supporters, even when he disagrees with them.
3. Give your supporters credit. There are lots of good ideas in a network like this. Obama needs to call out some of these, support them, and say where he got them. This will go a long way toward keeping the base energized.

I'll make following statement in closing -- please try to respond to this post based on what a politician or a businessperson should do in this situation, not based on your support of Obama, McCain, or whomever. This is about leveraging the groundswell, not Democrats and Republicans. (A futile request, I know from experience, but it's worth a try.)

The social profile of political candidates

by Josh Bernoff

We don't normally do political polling. But when we did our last Social Technographics survey I got sneaky. I asked people who they were voting for. The result is a fascinating peek into the minds and social behaviors of voters. The full report is available to Forrester clients here, but I'll share the data we published with all of you blog readers below.

First, for your reference, here's the social technographics ladder again, most current version. As we described this spring, it show how people are at different levels of participation in social activities, and the groups can overlap.

Just as with business travelers, we can apply this to any group of people we can identify. So let's see how social participation differs among Democrats, Republicans, and Independents. (For the purposes of this survey we classified people who usually vote Democrat as Democrat and people who usually vote Republican as Republicans -- the Independents are those who don't consistently vote one way or another. There weren't enough third-part types for us to get their profile.) Here's the data (over 10,000 online people surveyed nationally):

Right away you can see there is a persistent tendency for Democrats to participate more fully in social technologies. Looking at the index (all adults = 100), you can see that Democrats are at least 10% more likely to do just about anything involving social technologies. The Republicans are the opposite -- they're a lot LESS likely to participate (like Nixon's "silent majority"). They're 22% less likely to be a social network (Joiners) and 21% less likely to be uploading video or blogging (Creators). These are not extreme differences, but there are definite tendencies here, likely correlated to the fact that Republicans tend to be older than Democrats on the average. Notice that the Republicans are near par for Spectators, though -- they're watching, even if they're not as active participants. The Independents are somewhere in the middle, approaching the average in Joiner and Critic activity.

Now let's look at it by who people are voting for. Here's how the Democratic field looks (these are the top four most popular candidates in our national survey; we included Al Gore in the survey in case he decided to enter the race). Remember, these are the profile of the candidates' supporters.

There are important differences among democrats. One in three Obama voters is a Joiner, which may be helping the my.barackobama.com strategy. Edwards voters (62% Spectators) are the most likely to be consuming social applications; Clinton voters are the least, with only 49% Spectators and 42% Inactives. 34% of Gore voters are Critics -- he ought to connect with them in some sort of community or forum to make them a force for his issues in the general election. Obama, Clinton, and Edwards voters are all rich with Creators (at least 22% of their supporters) -- energize those voters and they'll start getting the Spectators excited.

The profile of supporters of Republicans is perhaps the most revealing:

Note the relatively anemic levels of Creator participation -- no Republican gets above 16%. The Creators are the voters who energize everybody else with their contribution. As we get into the general election, which of these candidates can energize the online social world? (Ron Paul, who didn't get enough votes in our poll to generate a profile, clearly could, but it seems unlikely that he'll get the chance.) It's also interesting that Mitt Romney's supporters are more active than the rest of the Republicans' -- he ought to be doing more than just having his offspring blog.

Interestingly, while as far as I know we haven't been contacted by the candidates since we published this research, we have been getting some interest from other companies. Why? Because marketers see the social drama playing out in the election and want to see what lessons can be drawn for their own brands.

Listen folks -- I can do this type of analysis for just about any group of consumers. What would you like to see next?

More photos from the debate spin room

by Josh Bernoff

Satellite trucks line up outside the spin room.

During the debate, the spin room is quiet. Most of the reporters are in the "filing center" (another gym next door). The candidates' spokespeople wait around listlessly.

Gather.com's bloggers blogged live on these bleachers while watching the debate on a monitor.

Once the debate is over, reporters and camera crews flood into the spin room. Here, a huge scrum of reporters broadcast an interview with a Hillary Clinton spokesperson.

After a few minutes, candidates themselves show up in the spin room. The first ones to arrive are long shots. Former Alaska Senator Mike Gravel showed up pretty quickly.

New Mexico governor Bill Richardson followed.

US Representative Dennis Kucinich of Ohio appeared with his wife by his side. (Yes, she really is that much taller than he is.)

Senator John Edwards' wife, Elizabeth, gave interviews as an Edwards surrogate.

A camera on a huge crane delivered images from way above the proceedings.

Inside the debate spin room with Gather.com's bloggers

by Josh Bernoff

I spent last night in the spin room at the Democratic Presidential debate put on by WMUR-TV and CNN at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire. WMUR is a Manchester TV station, owned by Hearst-Argyle.

Gather.com and WMUR teamed up to recruit bloggers to write about the debate. Only about 25 people signed up, probably because they didn't  give the promotion enough time. Gather.com's members chose the 15 best -- five democrats, five republicans, and five independents, all New Hampshire residents.

While this sounded like a good idea to me, when I saw the original blog postings I wasn't all that impressed. But that all changed last night.

I sat in the "spin room" with the bloggers as they covered the debate. First, let me set the stage. The spin room was a college gym with little platforms belonging to each candidate (photos here). During the debate, which happened in a hockey rink right down the street, the bloggers and I watched on a monitor in the spin room. (At one point they showed a shot of us on CNN.)

From the blogging perspective, what I found interesting was how the gather.com bloggers rose to the occasion. These were some pretty typical and ordinary people, moms, a student going back to journalism school -- not your hard-core political types at all. But partly because the spotlight was on them, and partly because they got to react to each other, some nice insights came out. Fred Hollander, an engineer whose question on earmarks was posed to the candidates during the debate, found most of their responses unsatisfying -- "Sounds like the democratic frontrunners would continue with the traditional corruption." (How cool is it that a blogger gets his question answered on national TV?) Rebecca Lavoie has a very  nice summary of the emotional style each candidate demonstrated, which is at least as important as issues and positions. Keith Ballingal pointed out that there seems to be an unnatural affinity between the Edwards and Obama campaigns -- and as soon as I read it, they backed each other up again on another point. And David Mirsky, who sat next me, seemed the most prolific with insights during the event.

Seth Godin has complained about the shortcomings of live blogging and I agree -- there's an inverse relationship between speed and value. But these regular old people that Gather has selected are getting better. I can't wait to see what they do with the Republicans.

After the debate was over, the spinning began. The room, which had been mostly empty, filled up with about thirty or forty film crews along with hundreds of print reporters. These proceeded to swarm around the surrogates on the platforms, giving interviews to "spin" their candidate's performance. Eventually most of the candidates showed up, roughly in reverse order of their popularity. Mike Gravel was first, Bill Richardson and Dennis Kucinich and Bill Richardson soon after. Naturally, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John Edwards didn't show by the time I left, about 45 minutes after the debate ended.

Tags: WMUR, Democratic debate, liveblogging, gather.com, bernoff, Forrester Research, Groundswell

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Personal Democracy Forum Report: Seth Godin

by Josh Bernoff

Seth is a flame thrower. We all know that. Here are some of his thoughts.

The key "Ideas that spread, win." Successful democracy is about spreading ideas and causing action.

Godin says this starts with TV -- interrupt people to put your idea in front of them. This worked. Especially in politics.

The TV industrial complex: Buy ads, get donations, get elected, get more donations, around and around.

Now the world is filled with noise. TV is broken. (Yeah, we know that Seth.) This is why it will cost a billion dollars to elect a president.  The amount of clutter is huge. "We can't just keep branding everything. . . .We can't keep just being spammers."

Political sphere -- still marketing like targeting people in a singles bar. As opposed to romancing people who care about their ideas.

"Permission cuts through the clutter."

Now politicians are realizing they are in the fashion business.

So in politics, stop trying to be average for average people. Instead, start with the geeks and the nerds -- the early adopters. The message starts with the geeks and the nerds.

The key "create stories people want to share."

Also: "people feel good when they are connected with other people with the same ideas."

Turn the marketing funnel into a megaphone for your customers.

His new version of the cycle is this: Be remarkable. Tell a story to your sneezers. They spread the word. Get Permission. And so on.

Seth's critics say he is full of attractive ideas that don't work. I disagree. Seth is a disciple of the new thinking. Listen to him. Take his ideas and shake up your thinking. Yes, he lets you do the real work for yourself. Is that so bad?

Tags: Personal Democracy Forum, PdF2007, Seth Godin, bernoff, Forrester Research, Groundswell

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