Joshua Green has this excellent piece entitled "The Amazing Money Machine" in this month's Atlantic that deconstructs how Barack Obama's campaign has rewritten all the rules of campaign fundraising by brilliantly embracing social networking and shrewd Internet and mobile technology tools. Obama's "preternatural ability to elicit huge sums" would not have likely materialized if a group of Silicon Valley innovators hadn't jumped on the Obama train early, much like savvy tech VCs (which some of them are) looking for the next big thing.
Three forces had to come together for this to happen: the effect of campaign-finance laws in broadening the number and types of people who fund the political process; the emergence of Northern California as one of the biggest sources of Democratic money; and the recognition by a few Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and venture capitalists that the technology and business practices they had developed in their day jobs could have a transformative effect on national politics.
Among Obama's Silicon Valley brain trust are Mark Gorenberg, a partner in the San Francisco venture-capital firm of Hummer Winblad, who understood the inefficiencies of big donor fundraising when he worked on the John Kerry campaign and helped raise funds from a broader base in a successful effort to reclaim Congress from the Republicans.
More than anything else, "it was the idea of Obama and the world he speaks for seemed to excite something deep within the limbic system of the Valley brain," sparking as he does the hope for something new and different, the perptual pasttime of Silicon Valley. Gorenberg and his friends (entrepreneur Steve Spinner and John Roos of Wilson, Sonsoni, Goodrich and Rosati are also highlighted in the article) set into motion a social networking machine, first of the old-fashioned kind and then of the true Web 2.0 variety, giving Obama the unbelievable ability to almost effortlessly raise two hundred million dollars from millions of supporters, a true contrast to the big roller days of Democratic party fundraising.
It helped that Obama's campaign could count on some high-profile techies to run the web side of things. Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes took a leave of absence to work full time for Obama, no doubt shepherding the phenomenal MyBarackObama.com, which lures visitors into giving money, donating time, making phone calls or organizing campaign activities.
When My.BarackObama.com launched, at the start of the campaign, its lineage was clear. The site is a social-networking hub centered on the candidate and designed to give users a practically unlimited array of ways to participate in the campaign. You can register to vote or start your own affinity group, with a listserv for your friends. You can download an Obama news widget to stay current, or another one (which Spinner found) that scrolls Obama’s biography, with pictures, in an endless loop. You can click a “Make Calls” button, receive a list of phone numbers, and spread the good news to voters across the country, right there in your home. You can get text-message updates on your mobile phone and choose from among 12 Obama-themed ring tones, so that each time Mom calls you will hear Barack Obama cry “Yes we can!” and be reminded that Mom should register to vote, too.
Silicon Valley's key role in helping Obama become a money machine bodes well for the tech industry should Obama succeed in winning the presidency. But it is also a remarkable phenomenon that has forever transferred the power of political funding from the select few to the masses.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 8:51 PM | Print | Comments (0)(Washington, DC) The U.S. phone industry is sympathetic to the pursuit of anti-piracy policies by Hollywood and the record industry, the head of the industry's main trade association said today. Speaking at a Media Institute lunch, US Telecom CEO Walter McCormick was asked about the record industry's recent stepped-up pressure on ISPs to help labels ferret out music pirates, a tactic that mirrors Hollywood's own efforts to get broadband providers to identify customers' sharing of unauthorized content.
"There is a commonality of philosophy between the entertainment industry and our industry," McCormick said. They all share a common belief that rightsholders should get compensated for their work. But McCormick stopped short of saying that his members would actually agree to serve as traffic cops for the entertainment industry.
Most of McCormick's speech (PDF) before the crowd of lobbyists and attorneys focused on the main goal of The Media Institute: protecting free speech. Today's phone companies are as much a part of the media as any other communications outlet, he said. "Media means more than newspapers, broadcasting and cable."
More importantly, broadband technology "is improving our democratic process" by revolutionizing how candidates run for office, as evidence by the hotly contested race for the Democratic presidential nomination. The billions of dollars invested in the broadband infrastructure are responsible for the unprecedented amount of new forms of political communications, McCormick said. "It is the private sector that is bringing the very public benefits of broadband."
Of course his main point is that government regulation could harm this thriving new world. "We should avoid the risks of unnecessary regulation," McCormick Said.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 5:27 PM | Print | Comments (0)I'm a little late on this, but last week Verizon officially responded to Google's surprise petition to condition Verizon Wireless' C Block 700 MHz licenses on a reiterated commitment that Verizon will follow the open access rules that apply to those licenses for its own handsets. (PDF of Verizon's response here.) Google told the FCC that it suspected Verizon was planning a "two door" policy regarding the requirements and would not abide by the rules for handsets it supplies to its customers.
Verizon's response as outlined in the filing: Google is talking nonsense and is simply wasting the FCC's time.
Google’s Petition, by its terms, seeks no more than a restatement of the open platform rules that apply to C Block licensees and a statement by Verizon Wireless that it will comply with these rules. By its literal terms, the Petition asks the Commission to do nothing: the Commission’s rules, including 47 C.F.R. § 27.16, already apply to the C Block licenses.
Verizon says that Google is using the legal process to achieve "ulterior motives."
Lurking behind Google’s “narrow” request is an ulterior motive. Despite its protestations to the contrary, Google’s true goal is to use the licensing process as a platform to restart debate around the substance of the C Block service rules or the enforcement mechanisms put in place by the Commission. But that debate is over.
Moreover, Google's petition is inappropriate at this stage of the license application review process, Verizon says, and might even be unconstitutional because Verizon has done nothing to violate the FCC's rules. The FCC can't presuppose a violation unless one exists.
Simply put, Google’s model of regulatory enforcement would make a mockery of administrative due process and the right “to petition the Government for a redress of grievances” as guaranteed by the First Amendment. Indeed, Google in effect invites the government to “punish individual or group advocacy” -- here, by drawing an adverse inference from Verizon Wireless’s lawful actions -- something the government “cannot constitutionally” do.
Not only has Verizon not broken the rules, but it also has every intention of abiding by them, the filing claims.
A group of consumer advocates, the Public Interest Spectrum Coalition, filed comments in support of Google's petition. (PDF)
The Commission must make it clear from the very beginning that it will not permit any sort of “two door” policy that would undermine the C Block conditions by allowing Verizon to retail a category of devices that are locked to Verizon’s network, that block consumer access to certain web-based applications or content, or that fast-track equipment that fits its traditional business model while creating delays and barriers to potentially disruptive devices and applications.
AT&T Mobility CEO Ralph de la Vega says that despite common perception, AT&T's wireless service is not a closed system and that the nation's top mobile carrier stands ready to work with Google to incorporate the search giant's open Android platform into its mix of options. Speaking this morning at Morgan Stanley's Communication Conference (webcast replay here) de la Vega said "We haven’t put in a walled garden at AT&T. The way we view Android is giving customers another choice." He also hinted that talks are underway between AT&T and Google to do precisely that.
"If Google will work with us to customize that system to give customers choice, then we’ll work with it," he said, adding that Google has sent encouraging signals that it will customize Android to make AT&T happy.
de la Vega also addressed last week's announcement by Sprint, Clearwire, Intel, Google and a group of cable companies that they will mount a WiMax venture. He specifically rebutted the notion that the new WiMax initiative has a "speed to market" advantage over AT&T's own, longer term plan to launch a competing mobile broadband service using LTE (long term evolution) technology. The new venture claims it will start rolling out WiMax this year, while AT&T doesn't plan to deploy LTE until 2010 or so.
"I think we have the time to market advantage," de la Vega said. Although the new Clearwire effort may get the network up and running, mobile broadband needs an ecosystem of technology developers and handset makers. "We have the ecosystem in handset and data cards," he said. "When people talk about future technologies about WiMax, I think people need to take into account that you just can’t have it in the network."
His view is backed up by this excellent article in today's Computerworld which examines the competing technologies and concludes that LTE has the upper hand, not because of any speed to market factors but because it is based on the GSM standard, which predominates globally.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 9:18 AM | Print | Comments (1)
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