revver

A few weeks ago, my friend Dan and I were discussing the possibilities for social networking in 2008 and how the work we were seeing in 2006 was only scratching the surface. I touched on this a little bit in this blog I wrote about niche networks and trusted networks.

In my blog, I noted that smart campaigns will do more with social networks than build big friends lists and microtarget voters - they would use large networks and personal information to find their way into niche and trusted networks. Really smart campaigns would find a way to tap the creative capacity of those networks:

The second option is to go deep - find a way to completely decentralize social networking outreach so that your followers go viral and invade all the niche networks on your behalf. In this model, your FaceBook and MySpace friend are a jumping off point; a baseline pool of social capital that you microtarget by lifestyle and use to create Evangelists who carry your message into "trusted" and/or specialized networks.

The real challenge - the holy grail - will be getting something viral to rise back up to the national level out of the depths of the niches.

Everyone knows what Jib Jab was in 2004; with the rise of the social web, millions of Millenials are out there with the production skills, the tools, and the creativity to repeat that feat. Smart campaigns will use their social networks to tap that creativity. If successful, photoshopped images, machinima satires, home movies like this and this will proliferate - spreading among the niches to which they appeal and out of which they arise. Some will stay in their niches and energize those supporters. Others will go national like Jib Jab.

Some of this will rise organically, but is there a way to incentivize this type of political participation? I think the answer is yes. More after the jump: