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The latest opinion and analysis on technology, public affairs, and advocacy.
2014 April Fools Roundup
People do a lot of silly things on the Internet to celebrate April Fools Day each year. In fact, we here at Grassroots Online do not launch anything into the world on April 1st, lest the product in question gets mixed up with all of the other madness that pops up online. The tech industry
Report: Canadians Going Mobile Online
Every year, comScore releases their “Digital Future In Focus” report to offer some insight into how Canadians spend their time on the Internet. The 2014 edition can be found here and I recommend it as required reading for anyone who wanted to better understand how Canadians behave in the digital space and what the wider
Facebook Reach: Pay To Play
If your organization or campaign runs a Facebook Page, it looks like the only way to reach your audience is to pay for ads. The truth around how much of your audience can be reached organically (through just posting the content, likes, comments and shares) has been a topic of substantial debate amongst page administrators,
New Tools For Twitter Users
Twitter users can expect to see a few new changes on their feeds, which provide more options for regular users of the microblogging platform. Earlier this week, Twitter announced that users can now post up to four photos in each Tweet. In addition, the new changes will allow users to tag up to 10 other
Barack Obama Goes Between Two Ferns
Over the past few years, I’ve been talking about video and using it effectively to drive people to do things on the web. I’ve never found anything extremely interesting that drives me to do something using video, well not as interesting as what I’m about to write about in this post. This week as usual
If Your Video Looks Like This, Please Stop
If your video looks like this one, you need to throw it in the trash bin and start again.
A Familiar Face
The real lesson from the Obama victories is that the familiar face of a local volunteer at a door or on a phone will pay back all the investment made on it. It just takes a decision to invest in that important natural resource.
Using Facebook Chats To Boost Engagement
In our recent episode of RootsCast, our weekly video podcast, a POLITICO article on a recent social media panel at the 2014 CPAC conference was discussed. Specifically, what advice both Facebook and Twitter were giving to GOP candidates and campaigns in order to increase engagement and (hopefully) voter support. One of the examples given by