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A great NPI event today

We had a great NPI event in DC today on web video.  We will have our own video up soon, and photos, but if you are really dying to see it it is playing a lot on C-Span, and you can watch it on the web on the C-Span website right now.   Congrats to Pete Leyden and the team for putting on one of our better events.   For more on NPI and its thinking about web video visit www.newpolitics.net.

Barack Obama loses friends

In an effort to migrate to an official MySpace page, Barack Obama lost about 80-90% (according to techPresident) of his friends that were on his unofficial page. More on that here and here. To read what happened as told by the creator of the unofficial page, Joe Anthony, click here. I'm interested to see how this plays out, and to see what you think, as Obama seems to have lost over 100,000 friends.

UNRELATED UPDATE: (via Tim Chambers) Endorse Barack, a new site that is a " central point for petitions where grassroots citizens call for our elected officials to endorse Barack Obama for President" is now up.

For more information on NDN's coverage of the 2008 Presidential election, click here.

NPI Event Reminder: Tomorrow 5/2 - The Exploding World of Political Web Video

Join the New Politics Institute tomorrow for a special event on this exploding world of political web video, including:

Steve Grove, News and Political Editor, YouTube.com, on the role of YouTube and web video in politics.

Karina Newton, Director of New Media, Office of Speaker Pelosi, on how web video is being used for governing.

Dan Manatt, founder and executive producer for PoliticsTV.com, on how any organization can immediately start using web video.

Phil de Vellis, aka ParkRidge47, an important political web video innovator, on how progressives can use the new tools to make powerful, political content.

Jeff Weingarten, President, Interface Media Group (IMG), on how Presidential campaigns are using web video.

As always, the event is free and lunch will be provided. Video of the event will be posted on our site for those who cannot make it or are out of town. Please RSVP if you can come, and in the spirit of the new medium, feel free to spread the word.

The Exploding World of Political Web Video

Wednesday, May 2nd

12:00PM - lunch will be served

Phoenix Park Hotel

520 North Capital Street NW, Washington DC

For more information or to RSVP you can contact: Tracy Leaman, 202-215-2224, or tleaman@ndn.org

Learn more:

Watch The Political Web Video World

Read Julie Bergman-Sender's NPI paper Viral Video in Politics: Case Studies on Creating Compelling Video

http://www.newpolitics.net

NDN in the News: Peter Leyden in the NYT Sunday Magazine and the San Francisco Chronicle

New Politics Institute Director Peter Leyden was featured in two major articles in the last few days.  The first was a San Francisco Chronicle preview of the role of bloggers at the 2007 California Democratic Party Convetion and the second, Matt Bai's piece in the NYT Sunday Magazine entitled "The Post-Money Era."  Excerpts from the articles and links are below.

Bloggers Descend On Dems' Gathering

(04-28) 04:00 PDT San Diego -- When Democrats gathered at their candidate-rich California state convention five years ago, a lone blogger from Berkeley was the first, and only, one of his kind to apply for media credentials to cover the events.

Today, an army has arrived in the wake of Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, founder of the Daily Kos -- one of the nation's most highly trafficked Web logs, which boasts about 600,000 daily readers.

This year, a record 50 Internet-publication bloggers will join the estimated 400 credentialed "mainstream" media in the press room to track the goings-on of seven Democratic presidential candidates and 2,100 California party delegates this weekend.

And those numbers don't count the estimated dozens of mainstream media journalists who will be blogging for major newspapers or the unknown numbers of delegates who will be producing their own running commentary of the convention.

"What this is doing is blowing apart the old calculus for who gets to come to the party and who doesn't," says Peter Leyden, director of the San Francisco-based New Politics Institute, a think tank that tracks the intersection of the Internet and politics.

With the 2008 presidential election just 556 days away, political parties and candidates understand that bloggers have become a critical part of the commentary on political developments "on a scale that is absolutely astounding," he said.

"Many of them have passionate followers, people who are crazy about politics," Leyden said. "And if you legitimize them, and bring them into inner circles ... they will get a huge new segment of folks energized that aren't necessarily reading newspapers and aren't involved in politics..."

Read the entire article here... 

The Post-Money Era

By Matt Bai 

“...The need for money is probably going to reach some diminishing return, and it’s probably going to be a pretty low ceiling, compared to past campaigns,” predicts Peter Leyden, president of the left-leaning New Politics Institute. In other words, the emerging high-tech marketplace may yet bring us closer to what decades of federal campaign regulations have failed to achieve: a day when candidates can afford to spend less time obsessing over the constant need for cash and more time concerned with the currency of their ideas.

Read the entire article here...

NPI Event: 5/2/07 The Exploding World of Political Web Video

From the Macaca moment in the Virgina Senate race to a series of Presidential candidate announcements, web video has caught the attention of the established political world because it is now seriously impacting politics. This new tool is creating a wave of innovation that promises even more impact in the coming cycle. I invite you to join the New Politics Institute for a special event on this exploding world of political web video, including:

Joe Trippi, former campaign manager for Howard Dean’s 2004 presidential bid, and now working for John Edward’s presidential campaign, on how the presidential campaigns can expect to use web video.

Karina Newton, Director of New Media, Office of Speaker Pelosi, on how web video is being used for governing.

Dan Manatt, founder and executive producer for PoliticsTV.com, on how any organization can immediately start using web video.

Phil de Vellis, aka ParkRidge47, an important political web video innovator, on how progressives can use the new tools to make powerful, political content.

NPI recently released an innovative “video report” that laid out a dozen categories of web video already affecting politics – from gotcha videos to video chat to flash animation to longer web features.  The event will build off that overview and bring together some of the political pioneers in this web video space to talk about what they are learning about the most effective strategies and the most promising opportunities.  You should also make sure to read Julie Bergman-Sender's NPI paper Viral Video in Politics: Case Studies on Creating Compelling Video.

As always, the event is free and lunch will be provided. Video of the event will be posted on our site for those who cannot make it or are out of town. Please RSVP if you can come, and in the spirit of the new medium, feel free to spread the word.

The Exploding World of Political Web Video
Wednesday, May 2nd
12:00PM - lunch will be served
Phoenix Park Hotel
520 North Capital Street NW, Washington DC

For more information or to RSVP you can contact: Tracy Leaman, 202-842-7213, or tleaman@ndn.org

Best,

Peter Leyden 

Director of the New Politics Institute

This event is part of the Re-imagining Video series presented by the New Politics Institute, a think tank helping progressives master today’s transformation of politics due to the rapid changes in technology, media and the demographic makeup of America. NPI is building a working network of top technology, media, and demographic professionals who want to help move best practices and new innovations into progressive politics. We are developing a body of useful reports that can be found at: http://www.newpolitics.net.

Social Networking Makes the Move to Mobile Tech

At NDN and NPI we've been making the arguement for a while that the next big thing is mobile technology.  If you haven't seen it, Tim Chambers' report Mobile Media in 21st Century Politics is an excellent way to get up-to-speed on how ever more powerful mobile phones and other mobile devices are changing our world.

The facts on the ground are backing us up.  Today's NYT profiles the proliferation of applications for mobile devices:

The social networking phenomenon is leaving the confines of the personal computer. Powerful new mobile devices are allowing people to send round-the-clock updates about their vacations, their moods or their latest haircut.

New online services, with names like Twitter, Radar and Jaiku, hope people will use their ever-present gadget to share (or, inevitably, to overshare) the details of their lives in the same way they have become accustomed to doing on Web sites like MySpace.

Unlike the older networking sites, which are still largely used on PCs, these new phone-oriented services are bringing the burgeoning culture of exhibitionism to more exotic and more personal locations. They are also contributing to the general barrage of white noise and information overload — something that even some participants say they feel ambivalent about.

But such services have the same addictive appeal for young people as BlackBerrys do for busy professionals, said Howard Hartenbaum, a partner at the venture capital firm Draper Richards, which is an investor in Kyte.

“Kids want to be connected to their friends at all times,” Mr. Hartenbaum said. “They can’t do that when you turn off the computer.”

Central to the technology of Kyte and similar services is the marriage of mobile phones and the Web. Users download Kyte software for their phones at www.kyte.tv and can send their photos and videos — however grainy — from the phone to their online Kyte “channel.”

Vudu: yet another assault on traditional TV

The Times ran a very good piece today on a new company, Vudu.  It is one more story of many on how TV, and video, is being re-imagined:

Vudu, if all goes as planned, hopes to turn America’s televisions into limitless multiplexes, providing instant gratification for movie buffs. It has built a small Internet-ready movie box that connects to the television and allows couch potatoes to rent or buy any of the 5,000 films now in Vudu’s growing collection. The box’s biggest asset is raw speed: the company says the films will begin playing immediately after a customer makes a selection.

If Vudu succeeds, it may mean goodbye to laborious computer downloads, sticky-floored movie theaters and cable companies’ much narrower video-on-demand offerings. It may even mean a fond farewell to the DVD itself — the profit engine of the film industry for the last decade. “Other forms of movie distribution are going to look silly and uncompetitive by comparison,” Mr. Miranz asserts...

and

“The first time I ever saw TiVo was an a-ha moment, and this was the same thing,” says Jim Wuthrich, a senior executive with Warner Brothers Home Entertainment Group. “It [Vudu] looks fairly sexy and inviting. This is going to pull people in.”

VUDU is arriving at a time of rapid change in the entertainment and media landscapes. This year, for the first time, a majority of American homes will have a broadband connection to the Web, according to iSuppli, a research firm. That benchmark has reshuffled the cards in the media and entertainment industries.

With versatile data pipes now reaching into most homes, the deep thinkers in Hollywood and Silicon Valley say they believe that television shows and movies — just like e-mail, Web pages, songs and albums — will one day be cheaply and efficiently imported into the home.

The question is when.

For all of their confidence, the new ventures now crowding the digital video launching pad look, if anything, a tad sickly. YouTube, which Google bought last year for $1.65 billion, is an exception: it has attracted millions of users fanatical about watching bite-sized video clips...

The whole piece is worth reading.  Feel free to learn more about our work on the changing media landscape at www.newpolitics.net.

NPI Event: 5/2/07 The Exploding World of Political Web Video

From the Macaca moment in the Virgina Senate race to a series of Presidential candidate announcements, web video has caught the attention of the established political world because it is now seriously impacting politics. This new tool is creating a wave of innovation that promises even more impact in the coming cycle. I invite you to join the New Politics Institute for a special event on this exploding world of political web video, including:

Joe Trippi, former campaign manager for Howard Dean’s 2004 presidential bid, and now working for John Edward’s presidential campaign, on how the presidential campaigns can expect to use web video.

Karina Newton, Director of New Media, Office of Speaker Pelosi, on how web video is being used for governing.

Dan Manatt, founder and executive producer for PoliticsTV.com, on how any organization can immediately start using web video.

Phil de Vellis, aka ParkRidge47, an important political web video innovator, on how progressives can use the new tools to make powerful, political content.

NPI recently released an innovative “video report” that laid out a dozen categories of web video already affecting politics – from gotcha videos to video chat to flash animation to longer web features.  The event will build off that overview and bring together some of the political pioneers in this web video space to talk about what they are learning about the most effective strategies and the most promising opportunities.  You should also make sure to read Julie Bergman-Sender's NPI paper Viral Video in Politics: Case Studies on Creating Compelling Video.

As always, the event is free and lunch will be provided. Video of the event will be posted on our site for those who cannot make it or are out of town. Please RSVP if you can come, and in the spirit of the new medium, feel free to spread the word.

The Exploding World of Political Web Video
Wednesday, May 2nd
12:00PM - lunch will be served
Phoenix Park Hotel
520 North Capital Street NW, Washington DC

For more information or to RSVP you can contact: Tracy Leaman, 202-842-7213, or tleaman@ndn.org

Best,

Peter Leyden 

Director of the New Politics Institute

This event is part of the Re-imagining Video series presented by the New Politics Institute, a think tank helping progressives master today’s transformation of politics due to the rapid changes in technology, media and the demographic makeup of America. NPI is building a working network of top technology, media, and demographic professionals who want to help move best practices and new innovations into progressive politics. We are developing a body of useful reports that can be found at: http://www.newpoltiics.net.

YearlyKos Event Tonight in Washington, DC

If you're in Washington, you should definitely check out the YearlyKos 2007 Convention grassroots fundraiser tonight at the Mott House from 6:30-9:00 on Capitol Hill.  Info below:

Join Sen. Feingold, Rep. Brad Miller, Rep. John Hall, Rep. Jerry McNerney and support YearlyKos in DC

Join... Senator Russ Feingold
Rep. Brad Miller
Rep. John Hall
Rep. Jerry McNerney
YearlyKos Convention Executive Director Gina Cooper

...activists, organizers and on-lookers as we drink, laugh and carouse liberally to celebrate the progressive blogging community and prepare for the 2007 YearlyKos Convention at a grassroots fundraiser...

Washington, DC on April 17, 6:30 - 9:00 PM,
at the Stewart Mott House at 122 Maryland Ave., NE

...(at the corner of Maryland Avenue & Constitution Avenue.) It's about as close to the Capitol as you can get without being elected, a few blocks from Union Station & Metro. Best of all, you don't have to be a lobbyist or even a Republican to afford it. We are asking for a minimum donation of $35 per person. Light snacks and soft drinks will be available. A modest donation will be asked for beer & wine. Parking is hard to come by in the immediate vicinity but should be available on the street within a few blocks or at Union Station.

Nielsen to track video "wherever it goes"

Another sign of how video and television are being transformed:

Television networks like ESPN, CBS and CNN have complained for years that out-of-home viewing was not counted because they are generally paid by advertisers only for the viewers counted by Nielsen. The move by Nielsen is a step in the rating company’s larger plan to measure television viewing everywhere it occurs, whether on televisions, computers and mobile devices.

“Nielsen has a mandate to follow the video wherever it goes,” said Sara Erichson, executive vice president for client services at Nielsen Media Research North American, a unit of the Nielsen Company. “A lot of where video is going is outside the home.”

The ratings will be calculated using cellphone tracking devices that recognize programs by sounds. The cellphone will be provided free to 4,700 participants, who will be paid a small fee each month. The participants pay their own cellphone bills. Integrated Media Measurement has recruited 3,000 people who are in six cities — New York, Los Angeles, Miami, Chicago, Denver and Houston — and Nielsen will recruit 1,700 others, aiming for them to be demographically representative...

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