social media

LabourList Review Part 2

01/19/2009 by simoncollister Leave a Comment

LabourList: It's Approach to Digital Politics
From a quick glance it’s evident that LabList is going big on creating clever and vitriolic campaigning tools and content seen during the Obama presidential campaign (and playing on some of the same by ConHome). My instinct tells me that this worked for those two groups because both are/were in opposition and campaigning for an election. The risk for Labour is that although it may feel at times as though it’s in opposition, it isn’t.

My advice would be to go about making friends using LabList as well as trashing the opposition.. Show a bit of humility and demonstrate you’re listening and responding to people’s opinions (party and non-party) as well as taking the party political approach. I’m not saying that this approach doesn’t happen (or won’t happen in the future) but two observations I’ve made on LabList indicate that it hasn’t quite struck this balance yet.

Firstly is Derek Draper’s comments which from reading some of the posts come across as if he is flaming other users. In fact, in the site’s first comment thread some of what appear to be responses from Derek’s to complaints by commenters about over-zealous moderation are pretty troll-like. In fact, they’re so troll-like I half wondered whether they were really left by Derek himself.

Two random examples:

“that was because it was a libel and i thought i would save you the trouble of me suing you. if you don't "get" our comments policy read it again and maybe ask a friend to explain it”

“Well… you'd better hope you don't need the police, a school, get ill, need to use public transport etc. etc. if this is the level of debate we're up against I think we're going to be ok!”

Not exactly the best way to make friends and influence people. And I understand that in traditional politics there’s llttle chance of converting those clearly not going to vote for your party and thus little point expending energy engaging/trying to convince otherwise, I would argue this approach doesn’t work – or at least translate well – into the digital political environment. I can’t help but feel that Derek’s a bit traditional politician at the moment.

Secondly, some of the creative anti-Tory campaigning stuff is – while inventive and coming from the right direction – a bit too much. A couple of comments from broadly supportive users also flag the issue of going after the Tories as too much too soon when more in-depth debate about policy, news, etc is what’s wanted.

Coming Next – Part 3… LabourList: My Conclusions

Chinwagging tonight

12/02/2008 by simoncollister 3 Comments

Whoops – I meant to post about this in advance but clearly I have to organise my time better.

I'll be on the panel tonght at Chinwag's event: Xmas Futures, Crystal Balls? discussing, um, I guess, what 2009 will bring.

Others speaking on the panel include:

Neville Hobson – blogger, communicator, digital luminary
Jonathan Mitchener – Futurologist & Principal Research Scientist, Devices, BT
Jamie Coomber – Head of Digital Strategy, Profero

I'll be bringing up the issues of the economy, the perennial echo of "next year will be *all about* digital, the direction a lot of digital PR and marketing seems to taking compared to the route I believe it should be and how this leads my thinking right up to Doc's vision of the "end of the social bubble."

Hopefully see some people there.

Technorati tags: Chinwag, Future watching, Crystal balls