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Speculation has begun as to whether or not MeetUp.com is on its last legs. The odd messaging they chose they chose for their announcement suggests a lack of confidence in their decision:
"We have some news to share that we don't think you're going to like. There's no point in dancing around it so here it is. Starting May 1st, every Meetup Group will have to pay a monthly fee."
Not exactly the best way to begin to monetize your investment.
The BBC has an article on the rising use of the Internet in American politics, with a special focus on podcasts.
The Center for Media Research said in their email briefing today that there's evidence that more young people are interested in Social Security in the wake of the ongoing debate over how to strengthen the system for the future. CMR wrote:
President Bush’s campaign for social security reform has moved the debate to center stage. There is evidence that young adults are taking more of an interest than ever before. According to Hitwise, young adults are the fastest growing audience segment to the official government Web site for the Social Security Administration.
The share of young adults age 18-24 to the site increased 104 percent when comparing the four weeks ending March 5, 2005 versus the same week a year-ago. The second fastest growing segment to the Social Security Administration’s Web site is 25-34 year-olds. Their share of audience increased 59 percent (four weeks ending March 5, 2005 versus four weeks ending March 6, 2004).
Bill Tancer, vice president of research, Hitwise, says “The Social Security Administration’s Web site historically has appealed to seniors, but now young adults age 18 to 34 comprise a full 31 percent of the site’s total audience.”
Thanks to Matt Cronin of WebLiquid for passing along an article (free registration) from Online MediaDaily.
WHILE SEARCH MARKETING IS RESPONSIBLE for much of the resurgence of online advertising, politicians have been relatively slow to purchase sponsored search links. But activity on Google this week indicates that search engines might play a more significant role in political races in the future. Earlier this week, the 2006 gubernatorial campaign of New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer placed an ad on Google that appeared as a sponsored link on the keyword "AIG," an insurance group Spitzer is investigating. The 31 cent-per-click ad was taken down the next day, with Spitzer's spokesman, Darren Dopp, calling the purchase a mistake.
Consumers Union created a web-based ad spoofing prescription drug warnings in an effort to convince people to contact Congress and lobby for a law requiring more disclosure of drug trial test results. An article describes how they promoted it.
Schneider and Kathy Mitchell, who directs Internet advocacy at Consumer Union's Austin, Texas, office, decided early on to promote the cartoon by sending e-mail to prominent bloggers.
That strategy was crafted in part by Michael Ward, vice president at M&R Strategic Services in New York City, a firm that gives nonprofits advice on how to engage the public.
Ward said organizations such as Consumers Union are realizing the Internet is a cheap way to get the word out.
Steve Rubel launched an interesting discussion on whether RSS growth has stalled.
As I see it, the problem is that RSS is difficult to explain in laymen's terms and it is saddled with an ugly acronym. To this day, people cringe at the term HTML, but they have no problem accessing a web site.
For RSS to prosper, it needs to be divorced from its techie descriptions and name. It needs to be like email which people fundamentally understand as an electronic version of an email or letter. Instant messaging is understood as essentially a text-based phone call. But what is RSS?
I don't pretend to be one to have the answers here, but as someone who spends much time in the simplistic world of politics, I can tell you without a doubt that non-tech people cannot grasp RSS. Calling it syndicated content or anything like that doesn't help. We need to find a bricks-and-mortar world analogy to explain it effectively.
Perhaps it can be compared to a text pager? (When I have new content you want to see, I page you with it.) It's isn't wholly appropriate, but it starts to tell the story. I'm sure brighter minds will have better ideas.
And we need to make the tools easy to use and feeds no-brainers. From the people I've worked with to educate, I can tell you that Newsgator is the product to be emulated, which I fully expect Microsoft to do in a future version of Outlook. Most new users don't want to be installing new softare -- and in many corporate environments they aren't even allowed to do so.
And we need to do away with scary looking icons that say XML or RSS and have something as logical as an email update signup box that is not intimidating to newbies and isn't product-specific like Yahoo or Newsgator buttons.
If these obstacles can be overcome, RSS will not stall. But some marketing whiz needs to come up with a better name and subscription/reading mechanism.
MoveOn.org continues to generate press for itself over its ability to bundle contributions to targeted campaigns. The latest example comes courtesy of the Charleston (WV) Gazette:
Early Tuesday afternoon, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., sent an appeal over the Internet urging people to contribute to the re-election campaign of Sen. Robert C. Byrd, D-W.Va.
In less than 24 hours, more than 15,000 contributors gave $634,000 to Byrd’s campaign, according to the National Journal’s daily Internet publication “Hotline.” The average donation was about $42.25.
It took just minutes for the Vatican to alert the world's media of Pope John Paul's death -- using text messages and email so the 2,000-year-old Church could meet the new demands of real-time news.
The Vatican isn't exactly known as a bleeding-edge technology center, so any large organization who isn't prepared to use the latest technology for crisis communications is certainly behind the curve.
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