checks or credit cards?

I was just reading Chapter 10 of Ireland & Nash's Winning Campaigns Online book. The chapter was about choosing an online fundraising system. I know this edition was written way before the 2004 election, but I found it interesting that the authors predict that online checks are going to eventually replace credit cards as the way to fundraise online. According to Ireland & Nash, only 60-65% of Americans have credit cards and more people use paper checks than credit cards. I have a hard time believing those statistics.

I know that I only use checks to pay my rent and phone bill, and use credit or debit cards for virtually every other transaction over 10 or 15 dollars. Pretty much everyone else my generation has the same mentality when it comes to credit card vs. check. In addition, I have never met a person without a credit card. Even my parents and grandparents, who always wrote checks for everything when I was growing up, owned credit cards, and have begun using them much more frequently, especially at restaurants and retail stores. I worked in a retail clothing store in Georgetown a few years ago, and almost every purchase was made with a credit card. Checks came in at a distant third behind cash as method of payment.

I can see how an online check may catch on for people who are concerned about security online. I pay my credit bill with an electric check, but that is only because it's my credit card bill. I can't exactly pay it off with itself. My generation is pretty comfortable with online purchasing and is familiar with the concept of secure servers. Ireland & Nash predict a boom in smaller amounts of money being donated to campaigns because of online fundraising. I agree with this prediction, but one of my own. The people who will be making online donations will skew younger. These people have at least one credit card, and feel very comfortable using it online. I'm not convinced the electric check is going to be the trend in online fundraising.

more on the downing st memo

So basically the Internet stepped in to pick up the media' slack on this topic. The Downing St Memo website contains everything a person need to know about the document and even contains a blog to comment on it and a link to Conyers letter that he plans on personally delivering to the White House when it reaches 500,000 signatures. This site is just one of many that tend to pop up in response to a controversial issue. There are similar ones for the estate tax, Bush' No Child Left Behind plan, social security, etc. These web sites appear, serve their purpose, and then disappear.

This particular site contains a site meter, so I was able to see that it had been visited 429,492 times, with an average of 21,999 per day. The average length of time that a person stayed at the site was almost a minute which is quite impressive in this day and age. With everything that is out there to view on the Internet, it is exceedingly difficult to hold a person's attention span for more than half a second. The site meter has been up and running for less than a month on this particular site.

I think this issue serves as the quintessential case study for how the Internet/blogosphere responds to an issue that was more or less neglected in the mainstream media, and keeps it alive. This case also has the unique angle of involving a well known Congressman, giving it even more credibility and intrigue. I am interested to see where this letter signing campaign goes. I have serious doubts that it will actually have an effect on the White House or its policy on the war, but if anything does come out of it, it will serve to illustrate how John Doe with a computer can make a difference.

the downing st memo

So I've resisted talking about it so far as I've been beating mobile technology to death, but the time has come to put in my two cents about the Downing St Memo. Because I have never been well entrenched into the musings of the blogosphere, I never did know much about it. But I do follow the news, and it most definitely did not get much press. I think this speaks more to the Bush administration than the mainstream media. It appears to me that the Bush administration did all it could to keep the memo out of the press and they in turn respected the request. The press knows that the war is a very controversial topic for all Americans so I am a bit surprised that it got such little coverage. However, this is the media that puts an insane amount of prepackaged news from the Bush administration on the air, and the administration that pays columnists to do their PR work for them. I'd like to think this is an anomaly of this administration, but in reality the media is overwhelmed with budget cuts and are understaffed. With every network owned by a much larger corporation, the stations have much less freedom to make their own decisions.

Ok, so this entry really has little to do with the Downing St Memo and is more about what is wrong with the media under the Bush administration. I plan on talking more about both in the next few entries, so leave me your comments on the topic.

the future of mobile technology...

So I've been talking about mobile technology a lot recently, because it's something I find fascinating. Humor me for one more post, and then I'll move on to different topics. An old Economist article talks about how by the year 2010, it would become commonplace to make purchases from one's mobile phone, as opposed to over the phone or Internet. The reasoning behind this is the extreme convenience of always having your phone with you. You could be walking to the movie theater and buy your tickets along the way, or sitting on a bus wishing you had a book to read and decide to buy one for your next trip. This article was written four years ago when the dot com craze was at its peak. Now we have blackberries and phones with internet access, so a person can conceivably make purchases on their phone through the Internet, but I don't think it will ever reach the level that was predicted in The Economist. There's something to be said for at least seeing an item in full color or on a larger screen if you can't at least see it in person. I cannot see myself buying a dress through my mobile phone. Perhaps that is not the kind of purchasing the Economist is referring to. It's hard for me to put myself in 2001 and remember at what stage the Internet was at. Consumer purchasing online has come very far in five years, but will it take over mobile phones in the next five years? I'm still skeptical.

Conyers

I found myself chuckling while reading Sylvester Brown's piece in the St. Louis paper about Conyers outrage with the media. While I don't agree that the media is too busy with things such as Disneyland and Michael Jackson to report on the "real" news, with the 24 hour news cycle, they need SOMETHING to put on the air. I remember when the Michael Jackson trial story first broke, and my colleagues and I were sitting at work watching CNN, enamored by their coverage of Jacko showing up to court in pjs. And it went on for a long time. I'm sure there were casualties in Iraq that day, and that something was voted on in the Senate, but I was too busy doing work then to pay attention to that. In a world where a quick search on Google or Yahoo news can bring you all the information about your topic of interest, why shouldn't they lead with the "runaway bride?" You just can't make the Iraq war sound that fun. I will admit that when I see the current top 5 headlines, I will click on a review of Coldplay's latest album before reading about another bombing in Israel.

But back on topic, Conyers may be a bit overstating the mainstream media's shift away from hard news. It's still there, you just have to dig a little deeper sometimes. However, at least he decided to do something about it. It's one thing to complain about the media, but Congressman Conyers actually joined the legions of bloggers who love to complain about the media. That's the way to do it!

more on fogg and mobile technology...

B.J. Fogg's observations on how social learning theory can be applied to mobile technology in Chapter 8 of his book, Persuasive Technology, are very intriguing. Social learning theory is a very real concept that illustrates how the desire to either conform or compete can be very powerful motivators. Applying those concepts to mobile technology and hypothesizing that by having a mobile device tell a person how much a peer is drinking or studying will either motivate or dissuade that person from participating is not such a far fetched idea. However, I am not convinced that it would ever truly be very effective. Unless it served as an automated function, ie. the person received some type of call or message relaying the information, receiving such information is not a passive act. The student would have to actively seek out the drinking or studying statistics. I could see students using it as one more procrastination tool, but how many drinkers are going to whip out their phone at a party, look up the information and have it dictate the amount of fun they are having? All of this speculation on the future of mobile technology is interesting to me. But as a person without a blackberry or camera phone, and as someone who rarely even text messages, I can't imagine such advances truly becoming commonplace anytime soon.

now that makes sense...

The chapter on Online Media Relations in Ireland & Nash's Winning Campaigns Online brought up some really good points about how reporters and the media will use a campaign's website to get information about a candidate. It is completely understandable that an easy to use, frequently updated, information rich website would inspire a reporter to give more positive or in-depth coverage to that particular candidate. It is important for a campaign to remember that it is not only voters they are hoping to entice with their website. Websites still have so much potential to transform campaigns. Campaign managers need to remember that their website is one of their most easily accessed and visible sources of information on their candidate and to treat it as such for internet campaigns to truly be successful.