Fighting the Last War
by Patrick Ruffini :: February 27th, 2007 6:21 pmDavid All has a poll up. Which app will have the most impact in the 2008 Presidential election?
Right now, it’s 14 votes for GooTube and zero for everyone else.
That’s a “fighting the last war” mentality. Ask the pundits to predict what will work in the next election cycle and they’ll repeat what worked in the last one.
Which isn’t to say I have a better answer. I don’t. Online video is far from being mature yet. But assuming this cycle plays out like the last one, the killer app of 2008 hasn’t been invented yet. It will be invented in a garage in August of this year, start gaining critical mass by the end of the fourth quarter, and be on the tip of everyone’s tongue by the middle of next year. That’s not my inner Nostradamus speaking — that’s transposing YouTube’s growth trajectory in 2006.
Online video is here to stay, but YouTube, copyright challenges notwithstanding, has other issues to contend with. They can remain a player if they solve their getting-ridiculous lag time and publishers’ desire for hi-def online video.
Tagged: online politics 
video youtube
Comments (4) 
Trackbacks (2) 
del.icio.us 
digg it 
subscribe
Both comments and pings are currently closed.
Well, I think people are using the terms “app” and “technology” interchangeably.
The poll provides these options (technology in parentheses):
* YouTube (video)
* Second Life (virtual world)
* Myspace (social networking)
* Facebook (social networking)
* Wikipedia (knowledge base)
* Blogs (online news)
A virtual world? Nope. Market penetration will never get to a critical mass by 2008.
Social networking? Ditto. A little bit better penetration, but mainly in the sub-30 crowd that doesn’t vote (”median age of 35″ stats aside).
An extensive knowledge base? I doubt it. People aren’t going to search out obscure facts on political issues or candidates.
Online (community driven) news? Been there done that, I think. The web is changing politics, but people barely can digest the news they get from the newspaper and other more “mainstream” sources.
TV was the the technology leap in politics over the last 50 years. Online video offers all the benefits of the sound bite with the strengths of the net. It will obviously be the transformative technology of the 2008 election, especially since most of the election is going to happen in the next 14 months (getting from a dozen candidates to two or three).
Now, the “app” may not be Youtube. It could be some new fangled Web 3.0 service that will emerge in February of next year. But Youtube = online video in a lot of people’s minds. And online video is going to be the biggest net-driven technology to influence the 2008 election (get ready for more macaca).
I agree that the “Killer App” may not yet be known to us. Just like the eventual winner of the election may not be known to us either.
I think that it is very important to use existing technologies in creative ways to get to where you want to go. Look at http://www.presidentialquest.com. Search engines have been around for a very long time; the revenue model has been proven.
Now look at what Presidential Quest does - there is a search engine for each candidate. When a supporter searches on a particular candidate’s site, a portion of the ad revenue goes to supporting that candidate. Very simple, very easy, and most importantly, FREE.
I was an Obama fan. I even made a site about him. But as I started to do research on all the candidates, I found that Obama is no better and no worse than any of the other candidates. He has some great ideas and some bad ones, and the others do too.
Check out the 2008 Presidential Candidates comparison and let me know what you think.
[…] Patrick Ruffini is right. Yeah, YouTube may be popular now, but just be so quick to say that it will have the most impact in ’08. […]
[…] But if you’ve ever doubted the power of something as simple as an online poll, just check out the discussion which was initiated by someone clicking vote on my Trench Reader Poll. Patrick Ruffini and Todd Zeigler both thought that I wasn’t looking far enough on the horizon. I answered their criticism in the comments of Todd’s blog if you’re interested. […]