Politics 2.0- Social Networking Applied to Politics

Local entrepreneur Jeff Gladnick recently contacted the Delaware Business Blog regarding his vision to a build a social network that would connect politicians with voters. Basically, he wants to build a myspace for politicians, and he wants it to be focused at the local level. What struck me (besides the fact that I liked his idea) is how Jeff is clearly a passionate and driven individual.
Curious? Read what he has to say…

“If at first you don’t succeed…Try, Try (and try again). This is what I tell myself on the cusp of my 4th startup attempt. As I have gotten older, and perhaps wiser (which is up for debate), my strategy has changed quite a bit. Bankruptcy laws have changed, and I have more to lose then I did in college when my assets amounted to a few hundred dollars. Also, my goals with starting a company seem to have reflected my maturity.

Ever since the dot-com boom at the end of the 90’s, and really a bit before that, I knew I wanted to start a company. It seemed like the quickest route to making money, and more importantly, impacting and improving society. The first company I started was a website designed for students at my college to buy and sell their used textbooks. This idea might have crossed thousands of students’ minds who turned in their books and were shocked to discover their bookstore was offering them 1/10th of the cover price, only to turn around and sell it for a tidy profit. At the students expense of course. I thought I could do better. The site slowly picked up steam, and I even bought a few books on it. When the bottom fell out of the online advertising market, and the dot com boom crashed, my potential investors dried up with them. I closed down the project shortly after that. Two more attempts followed, one of which is still moving along ( www.snorhino.com).

As I find myself growing older, and losing hair, I have become more and more interested in politics, and lately, have begun thinking about ways to use the internet to improve the system. My new venture will attempt to provide independent candidates (traditional candidates too) with the tools they need to launch, manage, and win their political campaign online.

Impossible, some might say, it’s a good-old boy system. The big money always wins, the little guy gets the shaft. You have to have the support of a political party. No one votes for a 3rd party candidate.

These are the typical comments motivated citizens might face when trying to run for office in their community. Yet 3rd party candidates have achieved success before. Ross Perot got 20% of the presidential vote. Jessie Ventura was the Governor of Minnesota. It can be done. People will vote on a 3rd party candidate who they think has a chance. The major problem for 3rd party candidates is proving to voters that they do. Most voters assume is already a 2 person contest, ignoring everyone else on the ballot box (if they even got THAT far).

So how can the internet help our motivated, but cash strapped independent? Candidates already have websites. Big deal. Many are doing fundraising on the internet. Old news Others are even blogging and posting videos to youtube. Getting warmer! Some candidates have even created MySpace profiles and are soliciting “friends” to vote for them! Almost there!

Let’s think about that for a second. MySpace, if you aren’t already aware, is a social networking website that lets you search for “friends”. It’s not the only site like it, nor the first, but it is the most dominant. Almost every highschooler has one. Ask your kids. 10 years ago only the computer nerds were making friends online, now it’s completely mainstream. Ask your kids. While this isn’t all that revolutionary, the fame and fortune some of its more prominent users have been able to achieve is. Music groups, such as the Artic Monkeys, were the first to capitalize on this. Rising from complete obscurity to mainstream popularity in the music world used to take a record contract, agreements (bribes) with radio stations, a marketing campaign, constant touring, and some luck.

The Artic Monkeys did it by themselves in 36 months with basically…Myspace. And some luck. Dane Cook went from a little known comedian into an A-list comedian/actor by cleverly utilizing MySpace. And there are many more.

So can a politician use MySpace to win an election. Maybe. But MySpace isn’t quite setup for politicians to find voters. It’s setup for the younger demographic to make friends and hookup. You don’t see many politicians campaigning in nightclubs for the same reason. Also, MySpace just isn’t setup programmatically in a way that makes searching for political candidates very easy. It’s a needle in a haystack.

What we need is a new system, designed specifically for 2 goals:

1) Make it easy for voters to find local, state, and national politicians who match their political, social, and moral beliefs.
2) Make it easy for politicians to find qualified voters who match their political, social, and moral beliefs and solicit their vote and volunteer efforts.

This new website would have tools and features built in to identify candidates who closely match your own political viewpoints (each user will have to fill out a few questions. The more questions filled out, the more accurately they can be matched up with candidates/voters).

The system could be setup to show rising candidates, as well as the most popular overall for any given race. In this way, new candidates could be discovered, and popular candidates could gain traction. An independent, 3rd party candidate could indeed parlay their online popularity into an actual run for office. Who will be the first internet candidate?

So this is the basis for my new venture, and it will launch as DifferentPolitics.com in the next few months. We’re already done a working version of the website (although it’s a bit rough around the edges). If you’re interested in beta testing, helping, or anything else, feel free to contact me.”

Keep me posted Jeff, and good luck!

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