You know what, Jeremiah Owyang put together these stats on Social Media and the 2008 Presidential Election in Snapshot of Presidential Candidate Social Networking Stats: Nov 3, 2008

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Internet Usage in United States
United States Population: 303,824,646
Internet Usage: 220,141,969
Penetration rate: 72.5%
Growth from 2000-2008: 130.9%
Stats from Internet WorldStats (Census, Nielson)

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Facebook
Obama: 2,379,102 supporters
McCain: 620,359 supporters

Obama has 380% more supporters than McCain

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MySpace
Obama: Friends: 833,161
McCain: Friends: 217,811

Obama has 380% more supporters than McCain

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YouTube
Obama: 1792 videos uploaded since Nov 2006, Subscribers: 114,559 (uploads about 4 a day), Channel Views: 18,413,110
McCain: 329 videos uploaded since Feb 2007 (uploads about 2 a day), Subscribers: 28,419, Channel Views: 2,032,993

Obama has 403% more subscribers than McCain
Obama has 905% more viewers than McCain

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Twitter
Obama: @barackobama has 112,474 followers
McCain: @JohnMcCain (is it real?) 4,603 followers

Obama has 240 times more followers in Twitter than McCain

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Community Platforms/Branded Social Networks
MyBarackObama: I was unable to find total number of registered members (anyone have data?)
McCain Space: I was unable to find total number of registered members (anyone have data?)

I mean, overall, Obama had 4 times more presense in Social Media than John McCain. 

And, with Search Engines (ie: Google Insights for Search) it’s about 3:1 in Obama’s favor.

But don’t forget to vote Tuesday; I am certainly looking forward to it.

By the way, there was an article in the New York Times today about Campaigns in a Web 2.0 World

It seems to me Social Media and Web 2.0 are becoming more vital, perhaps even the centerpiece of campaigns, going forward:

“…..drawing on Mr. Obama’s background as a community organizer, his campaign decided early on to build a social network that would flank, and in some cases outflank, traditional news media.“

“.. Many of the media outlets influencing the 2008 election simply were not around in 2004. YouTube did not exist, and Facebook barely reached beyond the Ivy League. There was no Huffington Post to encourage citizen reporters, so Mr. Obama’s comment about voters clinging to guns or religion may have passed unnoticed. These sites and countless others have redefined how many Americans get their political news.

When viewers settle in Tuesday night to watch the election returns, they will also check text messages for alerts, browse the Web for exit poll results and watch videos distributed by the campaigns. And many folks will let go of the mouse only to pick up the remote and sample an array of cable channels with election coverage — from Comedy Central to BBC America.”

Could it be, that besides having more to day than McCain, Obama had a lot more avenues to say it?

Again, I digress from Web Analytics, to talk about current events outside Analytics - but which Analytics could be applied to.

I am happy to see that Conseratives and Liberals, Right and Left, Republicans and Democrats, - no one likes the $700 Billion Bailout Plan proposed by the Bush Administration - even though everyone agrees on some type of radical action needs to be taken now.

Paul Krugman’s Cash for Trash OPED in today’s New York Times displays an understanding of the current financial situation and his ability to simplify it into 4 steps (almost like the 4 stomachs of Cows); by being able to conceptualize this Wall Street Meltdown into a series of steps with sequences he’s displaying the best skills of a Web Analyst - the ability to take complex information and synthesize it into a working model.

I believe, making sense of the data, what Paul Krugman does, is the one fundamental skill all Web Analysts need - the ability to use synthesis to take a complex situation and derive insight into it.

Even if you don’t agree with Paul Krugman the $700 Billion Bailout Plan if too flawed to pass in anywhere near it’s current form, at least you can get a sense of understanding, of empowerment even, by reading his OPED on Cash for Trash.

Here’s Paul Krugman’s 4 step analytics summary of current dire economic predicament the United States is in; Krugman thinks instead of bailing out Wall Street firms at step 4, with no accountability, we should be giving them more liquidity at step 2, in return for part ownership.

I just want to point out, again, the importance of forming a “working model” of a situation from which you can then preform analysis - if you can not conceptualize a problem, then any solution (ie: Secretary of the Treasury Paulson’s solutions, for example) are little better than throwing darts at the dart board (problem), and in the dark.

” … So let’s try to think this through for ourselves. I have a four-step view of the financial crisis:

1. The bursting of the housing bubble has led to a surge in defaults and foreclosures, which in turn has led to a plunge in the prices of mortgage-backed securities — assets whose value ultimately comes from mortgage payments.

2. These financial losses have left many financial institutions with too little capital — too few assets compared with their debt. This problem is especially severe because everyone took on so much debt during the bubble years.

3. Because financial institutions have too little capital relative to their debt, they haven’t been able or willing to provide the credit the economy needs.

4. Financial institutions have been trying to pay down their debt by selling assets, including those mortgage-backed securities, but this drives asset prices down and makes their financial position even worse. This vicious circle is what some call the “paradox of deleveraging.”

“….. The logic of the crisis seems to call for an intervention, not at step 4, but at step 2: the financial system needs more capital. And if the government is going to provide capital to financial firms, it should get what people who provide capital are entitled to — a share in ownership, so that all the gains if the rescue plan works don’t go to the people who made the mess in the first place.”

And, even arch conservative William Kristol does not like the Bush Administration’s $700 Billion financial Bailout Plan, and most conservatives don’t like it either - for much the same reasons that Krugman does not like it - it’s bailing out the wrong people and has no oversight previsions, making the Treasury Secretary too much power.  William Kristol writes in his New York Times OPED:

“… I’ve been shocked by the number of (mostly conservative) experts I’ve spoken with who aren’t at all confident that the Bush administration has even the basics right — or who think that the plan, though it looks simple on paper, will prove to be a nightmare in practice.”

Of course, Kristol wonder’s if Barack Obama or John McCain have the courage and exhibit the political will to oppose the $700 Billion Bailout Plan with the upcoming Presidential Election around the corner - what if, by opposing the $700 Billion Financial Bailout Plan the economy gets even worse, perhaps going into a deep recession, or even … a depression, then the electorate will blame what ever candidate voted against it.

On the other hand, were Barack or McCain back the current $700 Billion Bailout Plan and it fails quickly, blood would be on their hands, as well - and it could change the outcome of the election.

Using the Analytics approach I mentioned earlier in this post, the synthesis of information into a working model, so that you can then come up with insight and wisdom - the $700 Billion Bailout Plan looks too much like Authorization plan the Bush Administration floated just before it went to War with Iraq - the pressure to quickly “act” and vote - seems to be a familiar tactic that is used by this administration, to force people to act, often out of fear, against their own best interests - because they don’t realize, with the rush to act, what interests are actually being compromised.

We do need to do something quickly - but not that quickly - perhaps not even before the upcoming election .

We should, I think, work towards a solution and try to contain the damage on Wall Street and in the Global Financial Markets, but without giving the Treasury Secretary a blank check to do whatever he wants.

I also enjoyed reading Roger Cohen’s  Fleecing America in the New York Times OPED section tonight - Cohen brings another perspective - that United States is no longer the predominant Economic Super Power and that, primarily, under the Bush Administration, the bulk of what was once our Wealth, has moved off shore, to China, Russia and India. .. and the joke is on us - though Krugman was warning about this day for the last 5 years, last I counted - and the joke is on us - all of us - now that reality is setting in.

Not only that, but he somehow brings in sales for the disgusting artwork of Damien Hirst - the guy who puts dead large Sharks in formaldehyde, just like this one at the Metropolitan Museum of Art; here’s part of a story about this artwork in Time Magazine in a story tiled “A Shark’s Tale”

Damien Hirst’s pickled shark, formally known as The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, has been presented as a three year loan by its owner, the hedge fund billionaire Steven A. Cohen, to no less a grand lady than the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

And to think, this is the same Met whose trustees used to be touchy —granted, it was long ago — about admitting Picassos into the collection.”

In case you missed it, the age of America as the dominant financial power - gone.  Read this (you can agree with it, or not, but even if you don’t agree - then come up with something better to explain what’s going on):

“…. It’s that the Hirst bull market in the midst of the most convulsive week for financial markets since 1929 says something important about the global economy and America’s declining place in it. In case you missed it, Hirst sold 223 works last week for just over $200 million, well above Sotheby’s pre-auction estimate.

Oliver Barker, the auctioneer, identified the Russians as major buyers. Sotheby’s took a preview of the sale to New Delhi, where it received a number of pre-auction bids. Jose Mugrabi, a New York dealer, told my colleague Carol Vogel that Hirst is a “global artist” who can defy “local economies.”

For local, read American.

Anyway, a post script. In his piece for Bloomberg News that I’ve linked to above, Martin Gayford notes that the same Damien Hirst is asking 50 million pounds — $100 million — for his new diamond encrusted skull.

Sounds like the “diamond encrusted skull” of Damien Hirst won’t be sold to anyone around here - unless Treasury Secretary Paulson has his way and gets his and G.W. Bush’s  $700 Billion Bailout Plan approved by Congress - then maybe, maybe, some Wall Street Bank or Financial Instituion will have the money to throw at Damien Hirst and buy the diamond encrusted skull - and put it next to “The Bull” on Wall Street (Nah, maybe Goldman Sach’s will buy it with TaxPayer’s money and display the skull in their lobby.

But seriously, just about everyone thinks the $700 Billion Wall Street Bailout Plan is too flawed to pass in it’s current form.  Hopefully, the pressure to “do something now” will not be successfully exploited, as it has in the past, to stick us all with a bill we don’t want or, for a fact, need.

And while I’m at it - I said the other day I would provide an “influencer” list from Radian6 surrounding the the $700 Billion Bailout Plan - here it is.

And here’s a link to the entire file - knock yourself out - but note the Huffington Post seems to be on top of almost any political story, including this one.  Could it be the Huffington Post is “more influential” for this discussion on $700 Billion Dollar Bailout than the New York Times?  Beats me.

Finally, here’s a series of Topic Clouds from Radian6 on the $700 Billion Dollar Financial Bailout and how it varies by media:

Blogs only:

Blogs tend to focus on discussing the government “plan” to buy the distressed securities while letting the Financial Institutions that got us into this mess, off the hook.

Online Videos Only -

Online Videos focus more on the size of the Bailout - based on the Topic Cloud Meta-data:

Main Stream Media -

Twitter - Micro Media

Interestingly, the Topic Cloud for Twitter is much more useful than the others, from my point of view as it contains some of the TinyURL’s that are being shared online over the last day.  I think, and maybe Radian6 needs to figure out a way to do this - a way to work URLs into the Topic Clouds are needed, in general.

At least, here they happen, with Twitter, due to the nature of the content and the size of a micro post.

For example, the stories that are being talked about in Twitter are “Bush administration wants $700 billion for Wall St. bailout” with the “size” of the bailout being most notable - also the use of slang missing from the other Topic Clouds shown.

Forums

Well, that’s about it for this long, long post.

I expect Monday and Tuesday to be filled with a lot more turmoil as Congress and Online News Media take a closer look at the the $700 Billion Bailout Plan - but I hope we just don’t find ourselves back in 2003, when Bush called the shots and we ended up going into Iraq due to faulty information.

Paul Krugman has his doubts about it - No deal, on the main story  of a $700 Billion Is Sought for Wall Street in Massive Bailout, or 2,000 dollars for every person this year.

I’ve been getting a few readers who are critizing me for having poltical views and writing about them in a Web Analytics blog.  On the other hand, we’re whitnesses to  what appears to be the collapse of the global financial system.   Why would that be off limits to talk about in a Web Analytics blog?

Ok, so it it needs to be about Web Analytics, what are the influencers here - at least, let’s put Social Media on it, and that’s running now - it’ll be ready in a few hours.

One thing I noticed about Radian6, is that ranking news stories based on “Engagement” works better if the story is a few days old, as you need that much time to get a lot of comments on stories where a reader can leave comments.

It seems to me that we’re living in historic times, in a lot of ways, and it’s all of our responsibilities, I think, to process what is happening around us and comment on it, as we can.

More, later.

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• McCain proposes to deregulate Health Insurance - just like the Banking industry

Last night at the TechSet party which is part of the Web 2.0 Conference,  I spoke to someone I know who told me the Washington Post is working on a article this week on John McCain and Alzheimer’s disease.

Apparently, there’s rumors that McCain has the early stages of Alzheimer’s and is being treated for it, aggressively.

Regardless of who is responsible for this video, the concerns are real - and the part with volumes of McCain’s medical history and only 3 hours to examine it, suggest that McCain’s real medical condition is being obscured by mountains of reports.

I watched Jon Stewart on the Sarah Palin Interview this morning and it’s one of the best skits he’s done - I guess he’s got a lot of good material to work with.   Also, Tina Fay, on Saturday Night Live is almost a “look alike” for Sarah Palin - which opens up a lot of possibilities of skits SNL can do.

Anyway, here’s the Comedy Central - Daily Show Clip from John Stewart - aired September 15th, 2008.

I read everything Paul Krugman writes at the New York Times and usually agree with him, point for point (I guess that gives you an idea of my views) - so when Paul Krugman wrote about the Blizzard of Lies today, I figured I’d use the Radian6 tool to see just how much negativity and lies are being thrown out there by each side.

And, by the way, it’s not just Paul Krugman saying the McCain camp is going over the edge to pull Obama in the mud, the New York Times have also reported it independently in a story titled McCain Barbs Stirring Outcry as Distortions

“….Mr. McCain came into the race promoting himself as a truth teller and has long publicly deplored the kinds of negative tactics that helped sink his candidacy in the Republican primaries in 2000. But his strategy now reflects a calculation advisers made this summer — over the strenuous objections of some longtime hands who helped him build his “Straight Talk” image — to shift the campaign more toward disqualifying Mr. Obama in the eyes of voters.

“They just keep stirring the pot, and I think the McCain folks realize if they can get this thing down in the mud, drag Obama into the mud, that’s where they have the best advantage to win,” said Matthew Dowd, who worked with many top McCain campaign advisers when he was President Bush’s chief strategist in the 2004 campaign, but who has since had a falling out with the White House. “If they stay up at 10,000 feet, they don’t.”

I guess, winning, at all costs, seems to be what the game is, here.  And where does it all stop - when is enough, enough?  And what about an October surprise, isn’t there one every October when there’s a Presidential Election?   Maybe Osama suddenly “appear” again, and say something, like he did 4 years ago, almost as if he’s doing it “on cue”.

Or maybe, just maybe, Israel will attack Iran, again, on cue - they kinda want to do that anyway, everyone sees Iran as a treat - an “October” attack … wouldn’t that be “conveniently” timed?  Or maybe it’ll be some other “surprise” - the point is, when does it all end?

While I don’t think I can entirely answer the question without knowing what the sources of the stories really are - Radian6 and other tools like it can certainly show the volume of “noise” and in this case, lies, going on.

I think it’s undeniably true that is you have a “louder” story - if you repeat a story enough, even if it’s groundless, people will start accepting it - that’s what happened with the 9/11 and Iraq connection - everyone knew it was false, especially the administration - yet the kept on repeating it so people believed it - and the administration knew it.

So what’s happening now, according to Paul Krugman:

“…Did you hear about how Barack Obama wants to have sex education in kindergarten, and called Sarah Palin a pig? Did you hear about how Ms. Palin told Congress, “Thanks, but no thanks” when it wanted to buy Alaska a Bridge to Nowhere?

These stories have two things in common: they’re all claims recently made by the McCain campaign — and they’re all out-and-out lies.”

Without breaking down “Who” is pushing out this story, which would take a bit more work - we can say that since September 9th, there’s been 2421 sources of indexable content about Sarah Palin with “pig” and “lipstick” in it - which kinda suggests that this story is drowning out whatever else is being said.   There’s also a lot more content on the Bridge to Nowhere - but that’s already peaked.

Meanwhile, there’s not much going on to correct the Obama, Kindergarten story - which tells me something - either the Democrats can’t get the message out - or they don’t realize they need to shout louder.

Because in this battle, the battle of public opinion, the perception of who is right vs. who is wrong has more to do with who can shout the loudest.

Yes, I wish Radian6 could tell me the “Who” behind what stories are going out - sure, it can give you the “influentials” (see below)

But it will still take additional work to find out (for example) how much of what is in Huffington Post is muddying up the waters or not.

What’s clear is that Political Blogs and especially Blog networks are influentials in this debate and are being used by both sides, often more effectively by one than the other.

Looking at FireDogLake Blog - which is one of the top influencers, but not the most influential among them, you can quickly see that this blog is signaling out McCain’s camp for slugging the news, filling it with lies.

But, at this point, and Obama’s camp, should realize this - that it doesn’t really matter if a story is true or not - it’s what people believe - and if you have enough of a voice - you can dominate the conversation(s).

That is what I think is happening here - and in order to counter this unfortunate, but very real reality - you need to shout even louder with the truth .. but that doesn’t appear to be happening and that is cause for concern.

“..Why do the McCain people think they can get away with this stuff? Well, they’re probably counting on the common practice in the news media of being “balanced” at all costs. You know how it goes: If a politician says that black is white, the news report doesn’t say that he’s wrong, it reports that “some Democrats say” that he’s wrong. Or a grotesque lie from one side is paired with a trivial misstatement from the other, conveying the impression that both sides are equally dirty.

They’re probably also counting on the prevalence of horse-race reporting, so that instead of the story being “McCain campaign lies,” it becomes “Obama on defensive in face of attacks.”

Still, how upset should we be about the McCain campaign’s lies? I mean, politics ain’t beanbag, and all that.

One answer is that the muck being hurled by the McCain campaign is preventing a debate on real issues — on whether the country really wants, for example, to continue the economic policies of the last eight years.

And, just in case I get more comments from readers who tell me I should just write about Web Analytics and let Obama and McCain duke it out in a sea of slime that’s being created (…. and who would most benefit from a bunch of slime? - who most needs there to be a lot of slime and false lies out there?), let me answer with the about

Execute on Being you

Viewing this video clip, which I found out about via the New York Times article titled, In Palin’s Life and Politics, Goal to Follow God’s Will is disturbing.

There is no separation of Church and State for Sarah Palin.  George W. Bush is like that too, ramming his own personal beliefs on the rest of the world, weather they wanted it, or not.

It’s one thing to have faith, belief in God, even to spread the word (if that’s what you think your mission in life is) which informs, guides and inspires; it’s another to be so consumed with a belief that your right, that people would burn in hell if they didn’t agree with you.

Judge for yourself - I’m sure a lot of evangelicals will like it - but are we so fragmented that this is what we’re going to end up with?

Does Matthew Hurst think that all attention is good?  Look at Baby Palin Brings Home the Bacon

Well.. if Baby Palin is bringing home bacon - it’s full of Worms for McCain and Palin.

Palin is, for the moment, getting more attention than either Obama or McCain!

Online reputation and identity are getting harder to define - to say what they really are at any one moment.  Just as in quantum physics, when particles display both a Wave-Particle duality at the same moment , an online identity or biography, in some notable cases, such as with Sarah Palin, becomes much more “fluid”.

For details, take the New York Times article  titled - Don’t Like Palin’s Wikipedia Story? Change It that tells a story of how a Wikipedia Editor named “YoungTrigg” subtly changed several details listed on Sarah Palin’s Wikipedia page.

But here’s the thing - after reading the NYT article and hearing others around me discuss this situation - I wondered if what I was looking at here is really really something else than “online reputation management” on steroids (according to the NYT article, Henrik Abelsson, who tracks the traffic of Wikipedia pages, said that on Friday (August 29th) there were 2.4 million page views for Gov. Palin’s Wikipedia article while for the entire month of June 2008 the John McCain article had 645,000 page views while the Barack Obama page had 1.35 million page views).

Actually, a few days ago, I wrote two posts about this phenomena at The Analytics Guru - Being Uncritically your own best friend and More on our own nariation where I  described a process which I called “self narration“.   In “self narration” the story we tell about ourselves (to our selves) defines what we end up displaying to the world.   To take my two posts a little further - I’d say the process of is really more like “metadata” that surrounds events that are, in themselves, unmeasurable (similar to “Rich Media” files, Flash and AJAX parts of websites).

What if we could take self narration to a point where critical events of online identity are subtlety changed by editing the “metadata” around them?  Is that really just online reputation management or a “fluid definition” of identity akin to Wave-Particle duality?

It’s not even clear if “YoungTrigg” did anything wrong - yet, the traceable fact (30 edits that happend on the night before the announcement, by YoungTrigg) - suggests a need to morph Sarah Palin’s online identity to fit a sudden political need (I won’t say, by who, since it’s obvious).

In other words, and according to my definition of self narration, someone decided to describe Sarah Palin differently (than how she was described before) - as if the story of one’s life can be molded like  silly puddy.  According to the New York Times article:

“… In total, YoungTrigg — whose user name is a reference to Ms. Palin’s infant son, Trig — made 30 “edits” to the article, all positive and largely unnoticed, since they came at a time when few were discussing her as a possible running mate of Senator John McCain’s.

The coincidence of the user’s name, and the sudden spurt of activity just before news broke of Mr. McCain’s choice, has raised suspicions that YoungTrigg was a campaign operative tasked to make sure that her Wikipedia article was ready for prime time, much as handlers have been assigned to do the same for the candidate.”

“…. Also, YoungTrigg reached out to an anonymous editor who had changed the Palin article on Thursday night, without any evidence, to say that she was Mr. McCain’s choice. In a public note to the anonymous editor, YoungTrigg wrote: “Where did you hear that Palin was the VP nominee? I can’t find anything online.”

Whether this pokes a hole in the idea that YoungTrigg had inside information, or rather confirms that the user had an unusually acute interest in whether the news had leaked out, is hard to tell.”

The NYT article goes on to explain how taking charge of the self narration process has become a necessary part of politics:

“…In modern politics, where the struggle is to “define” yourself before your opponent “defines” you, Wikipedia has become an important part of political strategy. When news breaks, and people plug a name into a search engine to find out more, invariably Wikipedia is the first result they click through to; it is where first impressions are made.”

But I’d like to suggest this whole process, which I call “self narration”, has much wider applications beyond the political sphere (unless you want to call everything, politics - which some people do).

I like to think the way we describe ourselves, becomes our reality - as much as the way others describe us - or an event - also becomes, to a large extent, our reality of it.

For example, the famous Hindenburg disaster, according to Wikipedia, displays some of the same qualities as

“… the Hindenburg caught fire and quickly became engulfed in flames. Where the fire started is controversial; witnesses on the port side saw yellow, red flames first just forward of the top fin, around the vent of cell 4. One, with views of the starboard side, saw flames beginning lower and farther aft, near cell 1. No. 2 Helmsman Helmut Lau also testified seeing the flames spreading from cell 4 into starboard. (Although there were four newsreel cameramen and at least one spectator known to be filming the landing, they were all recording the actions of the ground crew when the fire started and therefore there is no motion picture record of where it first broke out at the instant of ignition.)

Wherever it started, the flames quickly spread forward. Almost instantly, a water tank and a fuel tank burst out of the hull. At the same time, a crack appeared behind the passenger decks. The airship’s back broke, and the section from the nose to the aft engine cars lurched upwards, while the stern stayed in trim.”

No one really knows for sure what the caused the Hindenburg to explode, weather it was sabotage, electric sparks, lightening, engine exhaust, incendiary paint, hydrogen fuel exploding for some unknown reason, or any other reasons - because it’s not really important what the real reason was - because we’ll never know for sure.  What is clear to me, however, that our understanding of an event like the Hindenburg disaster or the Sarah Palin (…disaster - if so, for who?) is more than just manipulating facts for online reputation management - it’s more like Wave-Particle duality applied to self indentity.

I suppose you can say  9/11 is the same thing - the facts are somewhat “fluid” and leading to multiple interpretations of what actually happened;for example,  9/11 conspiracy theories abound, and some of them are quite plausible.

What I tried to say in my original The Analytics Guru post More on our own narration - is that as we have evolved our means of communications to be much more complex and widespread, we’ve become more self aware - to the extent that, up to a point, we are what we describe ourselves to be - and what other people describe us to be - and that becomes reality - our reality.

If that’s the case, as I believe it is, “self narration” might actually be a positive thing - it may give us all a way out of some very difficult circumstances (but with everything - there are limits to how much one can “shape shift” events .

Lately, I have known several people in my life that are having difficult times - and honestly, some of it is almost beyond an ability for me to see a way out for them - but I’ve also noticed, as I listen to one my friends, as I did today, that they harp back on their story of why life is so difficult for them.

And then I go back and think about “self narration”, or as someone else said once  - “you are what you think you are” (or did they say, “as a man thinkith, so be he” or something like that).

While self narration, as I called it, might not be such a great thing for politicians to do, especially those running for Presidential office, suddenly, it very well may be a good thing for people, in general, to do when they’re stuck in a part of their lives where they can’t see a solution.

Perhaps, in difficult life situations, how we describe our stories, to ourselves, primarily, leads to the perception of reality by ourselves and others.

And as far as the Sarah Palin thing - well, it was obvious that YoungTrigg probably knew an announcement would be made shortly - and edited, or prettied up, aspects of Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin’s life, so that we, the readers of Wikipedia, would see her in a more favorable light.

But the whole thing that got me started into “self narration” was painting - because in nature, there really is not light and shadow - these sensations are interpreted by the mind, by our brains.

I think I’ve said enough here - my point was that we can alter our lives by how we describe ourselves - and are somewhat circumscribed by how others describe us (but we can influence how others describe us by how we describe ourselves).

Will it help my friends?  I don’t know - but you have to start somewhere.

Since I have access to use it to figure out the influential voices online shaping the debate about John McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin as Republican VP Candidate last Friday  - here’s the list of “influentials” though you’ll need Radian6 to pull up the actual blog posts that are being listed) - the file is called sp-2.

And here’s what it looks like in Radian6

However Radian6 lacks something I think they need to add - as it becomes apperant when you try to drill down to find out sentiment for the Palin choice - for me there’s no easy way to create a set of comparision phases that accurately define the current opinions online - nor are Search Engines any help, since they just pick sort and rank phrases, not the sentiment around them.

Also, people often don’t say what they mean - when you’ve got millions of people repeating slang and common terms, it’s often difficult to settle on any set of terms that accurately defines opinion.

Another thing I wish Radian6 had, was a “nearness” or “close to” operator, similar to what Search Engines have had for a while, particularly Google - but most do have it - it looks for how close a word or phase is to another and makes a determination of relevence of the two phrases by their “proximity” to each other - there’s nothing in Radian6 today, that does that.  They should add it - but I imagine, it will add to processing time and make calculations of engagement and relevance more complicated.

Still, Radian6 and other tools like it need “Proximity” operations - saying “inexerienced” directly next to Sarah Palin’s name is different than saying “inexperienced” a few paragraphs away from her name.  In this way, Radian6 needs to incorporate some of Google’s intelligence - but that’s just my opinion - otherwise, it’s too much work to wade through every post to figure out what the sentiment and point of it is.

Another example - look at this - Scary - is Sarah Palin going to end up being US President? Somewhere else Hillary Is Smiling

But when you look at the actual posts in the “experience” category I created, you see its’ all over the spectrum - in other words, I could not get down to a filter that was sufficently precise to just those posts that expressed Sarah Palin had enough experience against those that said she didn’t have enough experience.

What would be great is if Radian6 did that for me.  Right …. Take those posts from Blogs, Mainstream Media and break them into phrase combinations - and then - offer to run those through a comparative topic monitor (shown above) for you - that way, at least some of the work of wading through conflicting opinions will be done for us.

And, another source of possible ideas for how to pick the phases you’d run into the comparative topic monitor (let alone Sentiment Analysis - which really isn’t done fully, or enough, today) is tapping into the BlogPulse Key Phrase Analysis for the day - here’s part of the analysis for August 30th, 2008 pertaining to the Sarah Palin VP Choice, the latest one at the time of me writing this post:

If we could get even to the level of content analysis of isolating phases like those above (”disaffected hillary clinton supporters” AND “sarah palin” with “good choice” or “bad choice” or something that works) we’d magnify what tools like Radian6, already very powerful, can do.

Right now, I could probably take those phrases and stick them into the Comparative Topic Monitor - no big deal - so I did that - at least for the top 6 phases - there were quite a few more but this is enough to prove a point.

Of the terms I picked “Palin pick” occured the most often in the last two days - and finally, I get to something I can use today -and can chart over time:

Look at this:

Now we have something - still very crude - but useful - perhaps, even a KPI metric we can monitor over time (were I in the political monitoring business - which I was some time - it feels like “horse racing” - sorta - handicapping the winners - too bad there’s no prize - like a million dollar ticket on a bet - oh well - just wishful thinking.

But here, at least, in the chart above, after a 4 or 5 hours of work - I managed to figure out some way to at least “filter” what Radian6 supplies, out of the box, into a “Yes” / “No” metric.

Of the content that had “Palin pick” in the last two days, about 1/3 also had the phase (experienced or inexperienced) - I filtered those out and today - it looks like twice as many voices (conversations) think Sarah Palin is too inexperienced to be Vice President than those who think she should - again, a  useful KPI (were I John McCain or Barack Obama, or running those campaigns).   If that number gets a lot smaller - if say 20% think Sarah Palin is not experienced enough in 2 months time, vs what it is today - I’d day, that’s very bad news for the Democrats.

But even here - if we ffurther refine this view of who thinks Sarah Palin is too inexperienced to be Vice President - to the top 10 influencers - also offered by Radian 6

.. there’s only one place where the debate is really being shaped, and that’s the Penny Arcade (ha!)

Whereas, for the view that Sarah Palin is experienced enough - we get three top sources where that debate is being shaped:

A lot of it (opinion shaping on weather Sarah Palin has the experience) is on the AOL Message Boards, Go My Town, and Campaign Diaries - I took an except from Campaign Diaries post, below

“…If my first post’s general sense was that McCain had made a strong move, this one is going in the opposite direction. My indecision isn’t surprising: This is a huge gamble and we will have to see how Palin performs in the months ahead, what coverage she receives and whether she can move the female vote before having a better idea of how her presence on the Republican ticket will play out.”

So the metrics, if one wants to pull out of this last statement - for how this all will play out - in some measure, might now be how well “Palin performs” and if the “female vote” of “dissaffected Hillary Supporters” actually moves over to Palin, or not - or how much it does move over to Palin.

This - the movement of the “dissaffected Hillary Supports” would be the main metric I’d suggest monitoring - via polling and Radian6 - provided you can get a decent filtering mechinism into Radian6 that pulls out the noise in the content being crawled - again, not an easy thing to do.

Right now - I’m not too happy with the map I’m seeing below - the electoral collage as it appears today - I think it’s way too close to call - and that scares me -

Let’s hope Barack Obama will use Hillary Clinton to highlight how different they both really are - it’s not just about woman in the White House - its what kind person is there - what their values are - let’s hope - because this map, is scary - I don’t care what anyone else is saying - thre’s not much Blue in the map - way too much Red.

Not good for Barack Obama - he needs to get a lot more Blue in that map -that’s my take on August 31st, 2008.