Elections 2.0

The Web 2.0 and related technologies, “Information Technology 2.0”, are creating profound changes in our socioeconomic structures, political campaigns, cultural behaviors and business environments. These changes had first started to occur in the business-to-consumer space with the use of online social networks, wikis, personal blogs, podcasts and online videos. And over the last few years, the businesses have joined the bandwagon and the cloud computing and on-demand SaaS architectures concepts have become major part of enterprise technology related discussions.

However, over the last 6 months, another change occurred – unrelated to businesses or consumers. The Web 2.0 and related technologies started to make their impact in the 2008 elections political campaigns. The candidates have had their individual websites in 2000 and 2004 elections. However, for the 2008 elections, we have started to see Web 2.0 tools - online social networks, online videos (i.e. CNN/YouTube debates), CampaignForce SaaS application, RSS readers, Blogs, Twittering, and keywords-based advertisements on Google, Microsoft and Yahoo search networks – as new communications channels in addition to traditional TVs, Radios and individual websites. This use of Web 2.0 and related technologies has enabled the 2008 candidates to collaborate and communicate with their supporters and undecided voters in the unprecedented ways. More importantly, the candidates are reaching more people than before and at a much less cost. In the last few months, various industry bloggers and pundits have called this phenomenon as Elections 2.0 and I would agree with them.

Personally, over the last few weeks, I have made following three major observations in these Elections 2.0 campaigns.

First, frankly, I had never followed political campaigns closely until the 2008 campaigns came along. Yesterday, when I contemplated why and how the change occurred, I came out with a single answer, the Google Reader. Why? I don’t watch TV that much. I don’t read print news papers. And in the last eight years, my source of information has always been the online websites. Before I started using Google Reader, I would go each individual news website and only read the sports, business and technology articles. The politics never interested me so I never clicked on those links. Fast forward to today, I only read news, articles and blogs through my Google Reader subscriptions. Over the last six months, my subscriptions started to contain political campaigns related articles and blogs. Why I started read them in the Reader when I had not bothered in the websites? It is much easier and faster and I don’t have to leave my screen as I am rarely interested in details. The headlines over the last six months generated curiosity and I followed the links to read more. I developed awareness, formed my opinion and became more involved.

The second one is the proliferation of online videos in the Elections 2.0 campaigns and debates. I strongly believe that an online short video is the most powerful communication mechanism out of all Web 2.0 technologies. Yes, Blogs, Podcasts and the profiles on the online social networks help but we are still human. We believe more on talk. We change more often when someone talks to us. The online videos have provided a very low cost, yet a very effective communication vehicle to the Elections 2.0 candidates. The most profound result of this? Read the third observation.

The third one is around the involvement of youth in the Elections 2.0 campaigns. It has become clear when it comes to Election 2.0 technologies; the youth (generation X) is way ahead of generation Y and baby boomers. Why? Because the generation X is more collaborative than all the generations before. They like transparency from others. At the same time, they don’t mind expressing their opinions. I had always thought the political choices were very private except when you were in a rally. However, today, I see people – especially younger generation - expressing their political choices in their profiles openly and persuading others to follow their choices. There has never been such an active participation of youth in any elections campaigns before. This has forced candidates to change their tactics. They cannot ignore the youth in their campaigns anymore.

The gist of all three observations is simple. The Internet and related advancements have changed the politics arena as we knew it. This is yet another evidence of the profound non-technological changes that will be made possible using the Internet related advancements.

Readers - Productivity Improvement or Information Overload?

My work day usually begins around 6 AM to accommodate my east coast colleagues and meetings. A typical work day of mine includes a lot of collaborative meetings, emails, chats, and of course readings of hundreds of technology and business articles that pop-up in my Google Reader. I have a habit of hitting my Google Reader after few hours (around 8-9 AM PT) as most of my subscriptions are about Silicon Valley, Web 2.0, and Internet companies so most of them get content as the work day starts in the pacific coast.

Yesterday, I followed the same routine but little I knew the technology world had exploded within those two morning hours. My Reader was loaded with the news, articles, and blogs talking about Microsoft’s proposed Yahoo! acquisition. I was just two hours late, but I felt like I had missed the whole party! The articles and opinions were being written left and right by the industry pundits, and bloggers. Almost every subscription had some twisted story about the announcement. Additionally, as usual, the stock market was reacting. The Yahoo! stock was going up and the Microsoft stock was going down! Around PT noon time, the things had calmed down. The reality was setting in. The news and blog articles moved from the announcements to the consequences of the merger. Articles around technologies clashes, cultural mis-match, product over laps and lay offs started to pop-up in my subscriptions.

As I finished the work day, I had read so much about the merger that it felt like the announcement was made weeks or months ago. I didn’t need any more information to form my opinion or talk about the merger. I had all numbers on my finger tips. I could speak to both positive and negative consequences of the acquisition.

Later in the day, I stayed away from the Internet for few hours, and during those hours, I would realize that today I had just experienced a profound change in the way I consume breaking news in this new era of blogs and RSS readers. Only few years ago, I would normally read an acquisition or merger announcement on a news or technology website. Later in the week, my weekly magazine subscriptions would have articles on both positive and negative consequences of the announcement. Only after reading those paper magazines articles, I would understand details around the announcement and form my own opinion. Typically, it would be a week long process. Well, with the Microsoft-Yahoo! announcement yesterday, I consumed the same information in the same day and my opinion around the acquisition was ready at the end of the day.

Is this productivity improvement? Or is it information over-load? Well, I believe, it is more about personal preference of consuming information. Personally, I like juggling and working on multiple projects or initiatives. At work, I always get bored if I only have one thing going on. The Blogosphere has enabled me to multi-task more and thus has increased my satisfaction with the technology industry. However, there is a caveat around the multi-tasking. Each task takes more time and requires me to start much earlier in time to complete with quality and attention it needs. Therefore, I have adopted the habit of superior scheduling. And over time, I have come to realize that the habit of superior scheduling is the only way to remain productive and effective if you like multi-tasking and Blogosphere subscriptions.

I would like to know your thoughts around this shift on the information consumption through the blogs and articles aggregated in a single view of your favorite RSS reader.