Between Stations » politics http://www.betweenstations.com perpetual motion Mon, 30 Nov 2009 14:31:14 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 en hourly 1 Web 2.0 Idea That Screams ‘Uh-Oh’ http://www.betweenstations.com/2007/08/29/web-20-idea-that-screams-uh-oh/ http://www.betweenstations.com/2007/08/29/web-20-idea-that-screams-uh-oh/#comments Wed, 29 Aug 2007 20:51:23 +0000 Julie http://www.betweenstations.com/2007/08/29/web-20-idea-that-screams-uh-oh/ The Romney campaign is doing an advertising mash-up contest in partnership with some online software people and Yahoo.

The chirpy press release assumes that this will be done by supporters. I can’t quite tell if there’s going to be full editorial review of submissions before they post to the site. If not, this just screams ‘bad idea.’ It screams it as loudly and screechily as an auditorium full of tween girls watching the dreamy boy band of the month. Given the high negative ratings, uh, enjoyed, by Romney in polls, this has the potential to be either a big ouch or a big editorial time suck for some poor intern.

]]> http://www.betweenstations.com/2007/08/29/web-20-idea-that-screams-uh-oh/feed/ 0 Political Search http://www.betweenstations.com/2007/07/03/political-search/ http://www.betweenstations.com/2007/07/03/political-search/#comments Tue, 03 Jul 2007 19:40:26 +0000 Julie http://www.betweenstations.com/2007/07/03/political-search/ Rolling into the three-decade long primary race, we have studies evaluating the search effectiveness of various US presidential candidates already.

One limiter of the study is that it seems to focus purely on PPC spend. I find some of what various candidates are doing from an organic perspective to be far more interesting. They’re all on [...]]]> Rolling into the three-decade long primary race, we have studies evaluating the search effectiveness of various US presidential candidates already.

One limiter of the study is that it seems to focus purely on PPC spend. I find some of what various candidates are doing from an organic perspective to be far more interesting. They’re all on all the social networks, YouTube, and Flickr, for instance, and then each candidate seems to have their own spins:

  • Mitt Romney has a blog, ostensibly by his brothers, on a subdomain. He’s also been using his domain since 2002, and hasn’t done anything limiting like add office or year to the domain — smart.
  • John Edwards has a freaking SPLASH PAGE. Ugh! But he uses wacky code to avoid having it indexed. Again, he’s using his ‘name’ domain, no wacky offices or years. Again, a blog. And nice rollover menu code.
  • Barack Obama is more of the same, only he’s added a UGC section over at my.barackobama.com. Nice.
  • Hillary Clinton, like John Edwards, has a dumb splash page with wacky code. Once in, it looks like she has a UGC section… but wait! DEAD LINK!!!! I’m also underwhelmed by her meta-description on a SERP.
  • Meanwhile, Rudy Giuliani is on a dumb domain (JoinRudy2008.com, registered 2006, and not reusable if he doesn’t get it this round, or if he DOES and needs to be re-elected later). He’s got some nice ‘add these widgets to your blog!’ for quick link-building.
  • Sam Brownback officially makes me ask: WHAT IS WITH SPLASH PAGES THIS SEASON. Especially for a guy without a metric ton of name recognition. Interestingly, once you make it in, he’s got one of the cleaner designs and a text-driven home page — which most of the others just don’t.

Looking at bad political sites makes my head ache. I may go research nice places to go during the Republican Convention in 2008, happening right here in my home town of Minneapolis-St. Paul. I am SO going to be out of town, after having lived through the 1996 Democratic Convention in Chicago. I’ve had a full lifetime worth of Secret Service Agents preventing me from getting a coffee, thankyouverymuch.

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