The Power in your Pocket

The power of a $299 computer, a cell phone, and other inexpensive and common personal electronics is astounding – and largely overlooked as a political conduit until the '08 presidential race. These devices have more communications power than three broadcast television networks, over 500 newspapers, and two news magazines combined.

Today, for example, the social networking internet site Facebook has 36 million American users and an annual visitor growth rate of 153 percent. Half of Facebook's userbase is 18 to 25 years old, and each averages up to 45 minutes spent on the site daily. And the fastest growing demographic for this social networking site is now users 25 and older. Huge, eh? Well, MySpace is even larger – twice the size with 73 million American users.

Add to that 22.6 million American bloggers and 94.1 million American blog readers – and those numbers are growing!

Meanwhile, the three broadcast network evening news programs averaged a combined 23 million viewers nightly. Over the past 25 years viewership has collapsed to half what it was. The median age of viewers is 61 years, and rising.

Newspaper circulation was off nearly five percent in 2008. Average weekday circulation at 507 American newspapers was 38.2 million copies. The New York Times lost 3.6 percent of its daily sales; The Washington Post down 1.9 percent; The Boston Globe dropped 10 percent; and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer is counting down its last 60 days as a printed newspaper!

Where should conservatives concentrate their resources and imaginations? It's obviously not broadcast network television or newspapers. The information paradigm has shifted to other media and a more intimate and interactive message.

Previous essays discussed the expansion of technology and social networking on political campaigns, the need for conservatives to adapt to the non-conflictive communications style used by young Americans, the adoption of “movement” behaviors over campaign tactics, the importance of “social proof”, and how to create “participatory production” to pyramid and outsource campaign tasks.

This is why.