The competing online activism conferences once again returned the media spotlight to an issue that dominated President Obama’s post-election coverage, the important role of the Internet in our political and public policy process.

Quite a bit, however, has happened since November of 2008.

Obama’s much vaunted 13 million member email list was rolled into the Democratic National Committee to establish Organizing for America, a grassroots arm of the DNC aimed at sustaining support for the president’s legislative agenda. This list proved quite valuable during the election, serving as the backbone of Obama’s campaign, and conventional wisdom at the time held that it would persist as a powerful force, helping to sweep the administration’s agenda through Congress quickly and with wide margins.

Despite such high expectations, Organizing for America has fallen flat on its face. As the Democrat rank-and-file was overtaken by internal squabbling between idealists and pragmatists, they lacked the grassroots support to marshal their policy agenda to victory, forcing Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid into backroom deals and strong-arm tactics that just barely gave them the razor thin margins needed on their largest legislative priorities.

While Democrats have been lauded for their mastery of technology and online politics, this perception has been met with a starkly contrasting reality. Speaker Pelosi, who promised the “most open honest transparent Congress ever,” has failed miserably at keeping her pledge to post all legislation online at least 72-hours before a vote. In fact, with regard to Obamacare, she went so far as to say “we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.”

At the same time, conservatives have found incredible success in leveraging online tools to organize, mobilize, and emerge as a force that can go toe-to-toe with the Left online.

To realize this you need look no further than conservatives’ success using Facebook, Twitter, and other social media to organize the nation-wide, ground-up Tea Party movement, or their success on YouTube by individuals like James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles, who exposed the fraud and corruption that single-handedly brought about the downfall of ACORN (even if in name only).

Whether it’s the money bombs that helped lead Scott Brown to victory, or bloggers exposing the so-called “stimulus” funding in phantom Congressional Districts, conservatives are reemerging online, and in a powerful way.

As the momentum shifts in such a commanding way heading into this November, while the left is focused on vicious attack politics and demagoguery, conservatives are leveraging the Internet in powerful ways to not only mobilize, but to foster a real discussion about the issues we face as a nation.

The fact of the matter is, the more the left talks about their disastrous agenda or their failed vision for America, the more ground they lose in public opinion polls.

They don’t want to talk about their failed government takeover of health care that is leading us on a devastating path toward higher costs, lower quality, and less access to care. They don’t want to talk about their pursuit of a disastrous Cap-and-Trade scheme that would constitute the largest tax increase in human history and drive American jobs abroad. And they certainly don’t want to talk about their failed record on bailout after bailout with no end in sight, and a complete inability to deliver on jobs and the economy.

It’s no wonder that reporting from the left-wing Netroots Nation Convention highlighted a dispirited mood among their attendees.

As The Wall Street Journal’s John Fund noted, “over at Netroots Nation, you could walk through their deepest optimism and not get your ankles wet.” And a recent column in Politico further observed the Netroots to be “immature,” “impetuous,” and “averting their gaze” from the midterm elections.

If there is one message that emerged louder than any other this year from across the Vegas strip at RightOnline, it’s that conservatives are energized, motivated, and poised for victory.

Read more from Erik Teleford at The Daily Caller

Anger over the Iranian presidential elections spilled into the streets, along with violence as protesters fought with Iranian security forces. So, was this a Twitter moment?  Did Twitter ignite the protests in Iran and abroad?

Not so fast, says Ethan Zuckerman, founder of the “citizen’s media” website Global Voices Online.

“A year after the fact people have tried very, very carefully to get a count of how many people were actually twittering from within Iran,” he says.  “And those estimates, the estimates I find most reliable range from several dozen to a couple hundred.”

According to Alec Ross, the senior advisor on Innovation to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, there is very little information to support the claim that Facebook or Twitter or text messaging caused the rioting or can inspire an uprising.

“What I have yet to see is a piece of data, a single piece of data, a single study that says, you know, access to information in environments of historic inter-cultural, inter-ethnic conflict has the following outcome when overlayed with a social media strategy,” he cautions.

“The Internet is a wildly powerful and disruptive tool.  It can be used for good, it can be used for ill.  It disrupts markets, it disrupts communication, it changes the way people connect and collaborate with one another, but it’s just a tool, and it’s a tool used by people for a variety of different ends.”

In other words, Ross says, social media may have some power, but like everything else, it has limitations.

With regard to the news out of Iran, Sanaz, an Iranian student studying in the US, says the social network websites at least helped get the news out about events after the election.

“It’s absolutely crucial for people to be able to use these websites,” says Sanaz, “because otherwise a lot of the news may not have gotten out, if the foreign journalists or Iranian journalists are banned or forbidden from doing their work.”

Largely because these social media tools are so new, those who study its effects have more questions than answers about its influence on conflict and change.

“What we’re really interested in is when someone comes up with a novel way of thinking and framing something,” says Ethan Zuckerman, “not just how that quote spreads through time, but how that idea spreads through time.”

Complicating matters, while analysts try to understand the uses and limits of social media, the technology keeps reinventing itself.  That’s especially true in developing countries, which in some cases have leap-frogged over cumbersome personal computers, instead using their phones as computers.

That’s according to Colin Rule, who is eBay and PayPal’s first director of Online Dispute Resolution.

“And these phones are getting smarter all the time,” notes Rule. “So, they can do text messaging, they can do voice communication obviously, but they can also start to access parts of the web and as they get more and more powerful they’ll be able to access more and more of the web.”

This may nowhere be more true than in many African nations, where use of mobile phones and other portable devices is exploding.  Marc Lynch is an associate professor of international affairs at George Washington University.

“I think one of the things which we all grapple with as social scientists trying to deal with this is that it’s implausible that this fundamental transformation in the way people process and receive information and the way information flows, is its implausible that this doesn’t matter.”

So what’s the real world impact of social media?  Can BlackBerrys and smart phones inspire demonstrations?  Does Twitter, Facebook or YouTube make it easier or more difficult to organize large, diverse groups of people?

Answering that question, says Marc Lynch, remains “maddeningly difficult” and will for some time.

Read more at VOANews.com

Earlier this month, I examined the social media efforts of both the Blunt and Carnahan campaigns.  My analysis is restricted to the candidates’ efforts on Twitter and Facebook, as these are the leading social media platforms in this election cycle. A complete breakdown is below:

Twitter

Analysis:

@RoyBlunt tweets multiple times a day about both national and state issues, and campaign events.  However, he does not regularly incorporate links or hashtags into his tweets.  Blunt does include calls to action, but they are directed at either soliciting donations or to publicize offline activities.  Online supporters want to help the campaign, but online.  A “Please RT” or “Donate Your Avatar For A Day” goes a lot farther than “Will You Donate?”

Blunt has the right idea with his custom background.  It is simple and includes the URLs for his other social media channels; however, the spacing is incorrect, which cuts out his name and the end of the YouTube channel URL.  The campaign’s Facebook URL is also inaccurate.

@RobinCarnahan’s tweets include articles about her campaign, national and state issues, as well as, photos and information about offline events.  Carnahan also interacts with her supports by replying to and retweeting her followers.  While Blunt struggles with the spacing on his background, Carnahan uses it perfectly to display both her name and her Facebook Page URL.  A custom Twitter background is not vital (especially with so many third party applications) but it does provide an opportunity to display a candidate’s other social media sites.

Winner: Carnahan

Facebook

Analysis:

Blunt uses the service Ping.fm to post his message to all of his social media accounts.  The problem is the language for each platform varies, which creates sloppy postings.  For example, @RoyBlunt tweeted, “No surprise – the Washington Democrats who supported the failing “stimulus” support using your money to advertise it, too. #YouCut.”  However, Ping.fm also posted this to his Facebook Page, “No surprise – the Washington Democrats who supported the failing “stimulus” support using your money to advertise it, too. YouCut.”  My guess is Ping.fm removes “#” when posting to Facebook; however, that leaves extra words at the end of the post.  Services that post to multiple accounts are a bad idea; they create sloppiness and exude laziness.

If you couldn’t tell I’m not exactly a fan of Blunt’s social media operation, but, this should not to take away from Carnahan’s good works.  She posts good content with catchy descriptions on her Facebook Page.  Carnahan also includes supporter videos, which are always a plus (I don’t know why more campaigns don’t take advantage of this).  Carnahan would benefit from more calls to action.

Winner: Carnahan

Conclusion:

In a race with national implications that many prognosticators consider a “toss up,” Roy Blunt is not helping himself by being sloppy online.

Read more at Montgomery Advertiser

Three unnamed sources have said Facebook will delay its initial public offering until 2012.  “Waiting lets Zuckerberg, 26, hone the skills needed to steer a company that issues quarterly results while facing criticism on such matters as user privacy,” says Brian Womack.  Facebook is currently valued at $24.9 billion.

Read more from Brian Womack at Bloomberg

Read more from Sarah Perez at ReadWriteWeb

Read more from Dave Pell at Forbes

(via TechRepublican) ABCNews takes a look at how social networking is influencing politics.

We can learn a lot from Ford’s unveiling of the 2011 Explorer on Tuesday.  Rather than introducing the “100% reinvented” Explorer at an auto show (which is standard procedure), Ford revealed it exclusively on its Facebook Page.  Talk about making your Facebook “fans” feel special.

Ford’s Facebook unveiling is the twenty-first century version of General Motors’s Parade of Progress.  From 1936-1956, GM ran road shows called Parade of Progress, which brought GM products directly to every small city and community across the country.  They believed that a “well done, non-commercial, entertaining, educational, free road show would do wonders to help put General Motors’s message across.”  Ford is taking those same ideas and applying them to Facebook.

Of course, political campaigns should not be expected to produce an event as extravagant as Ford’s, but giving your supporters a few exclusive insights is a great way to keep your existing supporters happy, generate new followers and have repeat visitors.

A lot of campaigns get sucked into the conventional notion that they have to post multiple times a day to achieve online success.  This leads to a lot of “babble” being posted on each account.  My suggestion is to reduce the bulk posting, while mixing in at least a few exclusive posts every couple weeks.  Exclusive posts could incorporate campaign video, an opinion piece or a short Q&A with supporters.

I’m not saying that campaigns should significantly decrease their posting habits, but there is no need to post six things a day.  Over posting ensures that a lot of content will be washed away in a few days because most people won’t click beyond what is immediately visible to them.

Everyone likes to feel special, so show your online supporters “the love” and give them something exclusive because at the end of the day a happy supporter is much more valuable to the campaign than an unhappy one.

–Chris Walling serves as the Political Editor at ProjectVirginia, “Where Politics Meets Social Media”