Elections

Reddit: Obama visit generates most activity ever

President Barack Obama broke all the campaigning rules when he held an unmoderated Q&A session on one of the Internet's most infamous socially aggregated new sites -- and he also broke a Reddit record.

Obama's session on Reddit yesterday attracted more user activity than any other single submission to the forum, more than even the site's front page, Reddit revealed today in a stats breakdown of the virtual visit.

By the end of the day yesterday, the site had clocked nearly 3 million page views for the submission and the number kept growing by the … Read more

Microsoft, Google folks are top sources for Obama funds

President Obama's campaign is getting financial help from people associated with two big tech firms: Microsoft and Google.

Following the University of California, those companies were listed as the second and third top contributors to his re-election campaign by OpenSecrets.org, followed by the lawfirm of DLA Piper and Harvard University.

Mitt Romney's list is a who's who of Wall Street: Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, and Credit Suisse Group.

The money did not come from the organizations themselves, but from political action committees, individual employees, owners, and family members, and includes … Read more

Does a Reddit live chat give Obama more tech cred?

Ever the tech-conscious politician, President Barack Obama today held a live Q&A session on, arguably, the geekist message board around -- Reddit.

The session may up the president's tech cred, which has already been bolstered in the past by his social media prowess and use of technology in campaigns.

Many have said that his use of social media in the 2008 election helped him get elected and just last week, Obama's campaign became the first to accept contributions via text messages.

Reddit General Manager Erik Martin said he didn't know what this would do for … Read more

Obama answers live questions on Reddit, crashes servers

U.S. President Barack Obama briefly took to Reddit today to do one of the popular social news site's AMA or "ask me anything" sessions.

The interview, which kicked off just after 1 p.m. Pacific and lasted roughly an hour, quickly brought the site to its knees.

Ahead of the overload, Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian confirmed that President Obama was legitimately participating in the event, adding that the questions were being answered from Charlottesville, Va., where Obama is currently campaigning for a second term.

The format allows any registered Reddit users to ask questions, and the … Read more

Crowdwire looks at politics via lens of social media, branding

The screen grab above is from The Crowdwire, a new, noncommercial project that among other things looks at the success of the political campaigns in regard to branding and social media.

As you can see, in this snapshot for the period July 16 to August 15 the brand of President Barack Obama and his Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, figure in the top three most-discussed brands on social media (I was surprised to see that the Batman movie came in only at fourth place considering the fact that the Colorado shootings took place July 20).

The Crowdwire (@TheCrowdwire on Twitter), a … Read more

Where Google spends its PAC money on Capitol Hill

Google's efforts to gain influence in Washington is sending money to some politicians who may make Internet civil liberty advocates cringe.

According to a report filed with the Federal Election Commission, Google's PAC (Google Inc. NetPAC), as of July 2012, the search giant has made almost half a million dollars in campaign contributions.

That's no chump change compared to other tech powerhouses. Microsoft's PAC doled out $24,000 in July, bringing its total campaign contributions for the year to $565,500. Yahoo's total campaign contributions for the year amount to $36,500. Oracle gave $174,… Read more

Obama still beats Romney in digital messaging -- study

While Mitt Romney is getting better at harnessing the power of the Internet for campaigning, the current POTUS still dominates the online world.

President Barack Obama's campaign has used more direct digital messaging than Romney's campaign, according to a Pew Research Center report released today.

The report notes Romney's attempts to catch up to Obama's tech savvy, with Romney's most recent stunt involving the announcement of his VP pick via an app. The report also mentions Obama's 2008 sucess with social media campaigning.

The research -- part of the center's studies over the … Read more

Malaysian law stirs online 'blackout' protest

Many high-profile Web sites in Malaysia are blacked out as part of a one-day protest against changes to a law that they say would restrict online freedom of speech.

Many home pages have been replaced with banners protesting the new amendment, dubbed "114A," to the Malaysian Evidence Act.

Revised in April, the Evidence Act 1950 was updated to include Section 114A, the "presumption of fact in publication," which critics claim would mean Web site administrators, Web hosting providers, Internet providers, and those who own a computer or mobile device "on which [content] was posted" … Read more

Paul Ryan's sparse, mixed record on technology

Rep. Paul Ryan, the new Republican pick as vice presidential nominee, has not been a leader on technology topics and has a mixed tech voting record in this area.

This should be no surprise. If you're in the U.S. Congress, you're not likely to focus on technology unless you're a member of the relevant committees. Ryan isn't. Instead, he's the chairman of the House Budget committee and has spent years trying to get entitlements under control.

So far, though, Ryan's voting history indicates that he tends to align himself with the Republicans' party … Read more