Last week, I quipped about president-elect Barack Obama’s recent commitment to video-taping the weekly Democratic radio address.

The more I think about this though, the new presidential over-the-top social viral video strategy brings up some interesting questions:

For starters, as the new administration is keen to leverage the benefits of ubiquitous online video distribution, what keeps the public from possible Obama video fatigue? 

As of today, we are in week five of the elect-president’s weekly video address and already audiences are dropping off faster than a second rate soap opera could on broadcast TV.

As of writing this post, the new administration’s first video address posted to YouTube on November 15 generated 247,600 average weekly video streams.

However, for Mr. Obama’s more recent weekly messages, viewer attention declined noticeably.

Videos published to YouTube in week three and two generated only 174,805 and 115,106 streams respectively - that’s as much as 46% fewer streams delivered compared to Mr. Obama’s first weekly video address.

But then again, last week’s video addressed the nation’s pressing issue of steadily raising job losses, as a result garnering a record 445,613 streams in only seven days. 

Clearly, subject matter matters as audiences have an acute understanding of what they deem important enough to log on, view, and listen repeatedly. 

The other thought I had, the idea of a regular viral presidential video address will capture eyeballs and minds not just among US audiences, but also around the rest of the connected globe.

By design in and outside of YouTube, Web video by nature is shared freely and abundantly. Mr. Obama’s taped messages make no exception.

Thus, from East to West, North and South, the first of these weekly video messages are likely spreading globally and virally as we speak.

Does that mean Germany’s Chancelor Angela Merkel will soon start her own weekly video campaign?

Are any regular video posts forthcoming from the heads of state in France, the UK, Iran, or Iraq?; prepared to deal with the resulting online feedback of citizens everywhere chiming in?

Interestingly, as little as ten years ago all of this would have been unimaginable.

YouTube and its ample offspring of amateur video snack sites simply didnt exist. Neither did the prerequisite broadband lines, nor PCs with processors fast enough to make Web video fun.

Fast forward, in one swoop the US presidential web video address legitimizes how far we have come in democratizing media in the past years.  

This one’s for the history books.

Rather than trying to avoid (undesireable) discourse and debate, the new White House resident seems to signal honest interest in point-to-point dialogue versus the age-old hub-and-spoke system of commercial journalism. 

The question remains whether the idea of open viral dialog can help jointly create something better down the road. 

Or is the Web’s innate capability of cheap and ubiquitous distribution to and by all merely a zero-sum game?

Well, history books might tell.

This doesn’t happen every day.

Rene Obermann, the Deutsche Telekom CEO himself, just pinged me, inviting me to connect to his LinkedIn profile. 

Now, two things came to mind instantly: Who else at DT got pinged? And why so late at night?

As to the former, it seems fair to assume the same invite went out to 200,000 or so of my other Deutsche Telekom colleagues around the globe.  (Because, although a Deutsche Telekom employee, I am certainly not close enough to Mr. Obermann to qualify for a personal one-on-one invite to his social network. More about this later).

As to why so late at night, myself in New York right now, my Blackberry took notice of the invite to connect to Mr. Obermann at a surprisingly late 10:43 PM EST.

Which means someone in Germany - where DT’s HQ resides - got up rather bright and early (4:43 AM to be exact), to get this out to me.

So what does this all mean?

A)  No doubt, when the top executive of a multi-national company pings you via LinkedIn, you know Web-based social networking has hit mainstream.

That’s a good thing I suppose. (Even when you know, it is his PR team that drives the initiative).

B) Driving traffic worth 200,000 individuals (at least potentially) towards a single social network doesn’t happen every day. Not even at such a popular site as LinkedIn has become.

On balance though, I don’t think they’ll mind.

C) My guess is more messages will be forthcoming from my CEO; presumably all via internal PR, all DT-related I suppose, and designed to induce informal dialog, outside corporate walls and a T-branded environment.

Whether this is going to work, let’s see. But I am certainly smitten by this new openness permeating not just inside DT’s CEO office, but in many other places these days.

Then I got really curious.

What if all the CEO’s of other leading European telecom giants have long been on LinkedIn, and I just didn’t know.

Could Rene be late in this, merely following and not leading his peers into the nebula of Web 2.0 ?

Well, turns out, France Telecom CEO Didier Lombard himself is currently not on LinkedIn. But the company maintains a corporate profile, so far with 556 FT employees auto-grouped by LinkedIn under the corporate umbrella.

Telecom Italia Franco Bernabe is indeed on LinkedIn, but so far with zero connections. What went wrong there?

Then there is BT CEO Ben Verwaayen. Yes, Ben does maintain his personal LinkedIn profile. Even better (little did I know), we are only two degrees removed. 

Tuns out, his profile page only shows a single connection so far. And the one connection separating Ben and I is someone with 500+ connections. Hardly a quality contact, I suppose.

And how about closer to (my) home, the US? Are the leading US telco CEOs populating LinkedIn?

As of my writing these lines, AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson is curently not present with a profile.

Neither is Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg. 

Either they (and their PR team) haven’t gotten to it, I am thinking, or they (and their PR team) found it simply not worth their while. Who knows?

Backt to Rene Obermann, unlike his LinkedIn telco CEO peers, he publicly distributes a Gmail address, and has set his profile to allow insight into who else is connecting to him at any time.

This seems to signal a level of engagement interests way above and beyond his telco CEO peers.

But upon my last check (12:03 AM EST), his public LinkedIn profile shows a mere eight connections.

While not overly impressive, heed the time difference, folks. I suppose most of my colleagues haven’t had a chance to accept the invite as they have literally yet to wake up to their CEO’s surprisingly early morning ping.

OK. I admit. I am pretty psyched about president-elect Barack Obama’s recent commitment to video-taping the weekly Democratic radio address.

Psyched because it seems much more than a simple “move-over-radio” battle cry; more than just postulating the World Wide Web as the latest of many presidential (one-way) bullhorns available.

For one, the “YouTube”-ization of the weekly Democratic radio address means that a rather arcane political messaging system is coming of age.

In other words, the good old weekly radio address (finally) preps to going (legitimately) video and viral and social, in the same way as anyone’s video blog out there could.

In a way (unknowingly) echoing this season’s ABC and NBC marketing slogans, Barack Obama and team invite us to “start here” and “chime in” - but this time outside the very TV broadcasting system that for so long determined what we would see, when, and for how long.

It is certainly nothing new that a publicly elected official is unafraid to engage in a form of political messaging that - once out the door - is no longer in his control.

That’s how traditional TV (or radio and print media for that matter), works. In this the Web is no different.

But it is major that aforementioned politician whole-heartedly embraces the collaborative Web and the truly conversational two-way nature of online video given that this is past his election campaign, and that he is none less than the next President of the United States going social on his entire constituency. 

Recently asked by CNN’s Sunday talk show host Fareed Zakaria about what advice if any he would give the incoming president, Al Gore’s response was simple: “Make more expository speeches. … [the] people are downloading”.

The presidential radio address as a viral video message for all to engage with plays right into that, ups the ante for you and me, the White House versus traditional media.

Let’s see if and how this will pan out.

Have you pinged the president-elect lately?

Who knew? Porn on the New York subway. But then again, wasn’t it inevitable?

The place: A crowded afternoon N train from Manhattan to Brooklyn. The culprit: a Sony PlayStation Portable held by a young man sitting and watching in solitude, yet surrounded by plenty other strap hangers trying to get home.

What exactly happened here?

The first thing that got me was the audacity of it. With his PSP packed with genuine XXX fodder, simply put, what he was watching was nothing short of hard core pornographic visual certainly not intended for public transportation.

The next thing I noticed, no one seemed to pay attention. Hence - at least for the duration of my ride - no one seemed to mind.

What about the woman next to him, seemingly asleep? Another nearby busied herself reading, of all things, scripture. There were plenty  of other men and woman immediately around us while others got on and off the train.

Now, I know New York subway commuters have long learned to mind their own business.

But the video that unfolded in front of all of us (the sound was muted) clearly lowered the bar on anyone’s standard of privacy; clearly was so out of the ordinary that for its mere ostentatiousness, I figured someone would have to bring it up.

Above and beyond my own discontent about the young man’s obvious lack of social skills, I quickly found myself rather intrigued by something else in this - the apparent disconnect between device and audience.

What used to be a consumer video experience “curbed” by the lack of technology’s reach, a TV set and a VCR simply didn’t lend itself to any practical use in full public view.

This kept anyone’s viewing choice a private matter. No matter how sexual, violent, or mundane the footage was, consumption and intent remained locked inside the home.

Fast forward, today’s “anytime anywhere” video consumption capabilities have changed the playing field. The new paradigm: Anyone’s personal video experience is super-portable, devoid of any particular time, place, and for that matter choice of companion viewers.

Think about it.

Sprint Nextel recently started delivering WiMAX-enabled wireless broadband service powerful enough to give you downlink speeds of 25 Mbps or more while driving down the highway.

Essentially an open pipe into and out of the World Wide Web, it’s going to be interesting to see what passing cars are watching in the back seats once content is no longer limited to wholesome satellite subscription services or Disney DVDs brought along for the kids.

And what about in-flight Web access, such as the service recently announced by American Airlines for select domestic trips?

No matter whether on a highway, on an airplane or inside a subway car in New York, what’s OK for the person to the left of you might be unacceptable to the one on the right.

Clearly, with the pervasive nature of digital content and enabling delivery devices, the meaning of “privacy” is undergoing change.

As to my personal opinion, I am in favor of self-regulating one’s public conduct. Anything beyond that might quickly collide with core principles such as net neutrality or freedom of speech.

Still, our old-world definition of privacy seems to be changing as more of our new world trends towards digital and portable at once.

It’ll be interesting to see how this pans out.

While we’re on the subject of record long tail voter aggregation and its impact on democracy, the unprecedented accumulation of small-size incremental financial contributions during the current US presidential campaign marks another success story for the long tail of citizen ingenuity.

According to OpenSecrets.org, over 90% of an impressive $640 million raised by the Barack Obama campaign came from individuals rather than corporations or entrenched interest groups.

And the bulk of that was contributions under $200.

Amazing what a lot of a little can accomplish in its aggreate value - to the benefit of all.

On that note, for all you digital media marketers out there (opportunistically speaking, of course), the current long tail campaign donation phenomenon clearly demonstrates the significant power of consumers’ take on ”motive and opportunity”.

From digital video and online books to for-pay widgets and Twitter posts, monetizing the long tail of any of these things depends on whether they truly matter to people and their lifes.

Meaning, if “the cause” is right, wallets open up.

It clearly worked during the recent Presidential campaign. What does that mean to future branded product campaign designs?

To be sure, way way before Chris Anderson’s pointed Wired article (re)discovered the right side of the curve for us, something as old, tried and proven as democracy knew to utilize the long tail phenomenon all along; to ensure that all, not just a select few partake in shaping government at large.

So, in many ways, we’re only coming full circle here.

Who knew? Democracy as an ingenious grass-root marketing campaign.

Glad it worked so well this time.

As it stands, this country is about to (re)discover the power of long tail voting.

Not since the 60s has the United States seen this kind of voter turnout. Individuals previously ignorant to the democratic process are expected to come out and vote in what clearly is a historic election.

We, members of the digital technology and media industry, have used the long tail idea gladly and often, at least since Chris Anderson’s highly recognized Wired magazine article about “the few that dominate”.

We have since flocked to the long tail concept to describe how the aggregate number of individuals previously ignored by commercial systems can populate and popularize anything from micro blogs to amateur-produced snack-size videos, or en-gross selling of long forgotten books on amazon.com.

The same “saftey in numbers” phenomenon may now be just what it took to change the direction of an entire country.

While the latter remains a promise until proven, no matter who you vote for tomorrow morning, the former is happening as we speak.

Already a record number of those previously discouraged or put off by politics have returned from their voting duties; young, first-time voters, african-americans, hispanics, immigrants, all joined by millions of others in a common believe that its worth standing in line for hours on end, convinced that the time and cause is right.

Of course our industry’s arsenal of lingo would be incomplete if we couldn’t add to the long tail moniker all sorts of related terms.

Think discovery, collaboration, and sharing. Add hyper-targeting and monetization to understand how much the past 21 months of presidential campaigning have benefited from their first dabble with Web 2.0.

Not to mention the unprecedented number of supporting broadband connections that helped to fuel the national debate.

Still, it is not entirely clear whether any side has gained on the other in its particular ability to leverage the long-tail power of the Internet.

It just might simply be a zero-sum game.

But hey. Who’s counting?

For now, let’s go and vote!

PS: For those of you eager to combine your long tail capabilities until the very last second of the democratic process, go to Current TV and fire up your Twitter and your Digg account.

PS II: To be sure, while both campaigns leveraged the long tail power of the Internet, they also knew that a linear TV feed was still a medium key enough to agree to last minute Saturday Night Live appearances or to buy millions of dollars worth of traditional broadcasting airtime to get the message out. Shelly Palmer’s recent post makes several salient points on the deliberate old-school-ness of those decisions. Be sure to check it out.

There it was. Noticeably forlorn between marketing for Dr. Zizmor skin treatments, ConEdison, and the Apex Technical School, a singular display ad for web darling cnet.com - of all places on New York’s subway, the C train from 186th street to Euclid Ave.

What struck me was the seeming lack of context. I have not seen any other c|net ads anywhere since. Not on the subway or outside.

So what’s the genesis of this oddly-placed ad?

Maybe it was CBS’ recent “digital” c|net acquisition that auto-triggered the new parent’s media agency to spend traditional “analog” ad money on what’s essentially a web-only property.

The big picture: To this day, long held dynamics between brand marketers, agencies, and media outlets continue to dictate where budget flows, and how much.

To that end, despite the significant increase in online ad sales (folk, these Lehman Bros. stats clearly are pre market melt down), brand marketers and their media agencies still are much more comfortable buying traditional marketing spots.

This is where the big budgets go, and with that, buyers’ year-end bonuses.

Hence my assumption: Once c|net became “analog”-owned - swoops - “analog” ad money was automatically allocated for, of all places, what seems to have been a single subway car in New York.

To me anyway, it seems as unusual a choice as somewhat misplaced - as I doubt the subway ad in  question will meaningfully spike “click-thru” for cnet.com.

Not to mention the rather “bland” poster design.

But hey.  Another morning on the subway in New York.

UPDATE

With my recent c|net display ad find, I have started paying more attention to seemingly misplaced ad buying decisions inside hybrid analog / digital media companies.

This one’s with McGraw-Hill’s Business Week magazine and their Technology & You podcast series of which I am a long-held fan.

Tuns out, what started with Intel and Audi branded audio pre-rolls, I am now greeted by, of all things, a pitch for Clinique skin products for men.

How did Steve Wildstrom’s decidedly (great) geeky discussion over the ins and outs of tech topics from Android phones and flash memory, to WiFi vs. WiMAX grab the attention of an ad buyer tasked to sell facial creams?

I want to assume that somehow this checked out as a targeted ad buy; that somehow this all made sense as part of a greater marketing mix.

In the meantime, this day and age, I wonder whether beauty cream products sold during a technology podcast are as smart as giving me diaper ads during The Simpsons or The King of Queens.

I am just not the desired target group.

This day and age, there are better, more targeted technologies to connect me with the right ad.

Why not try it?

Interesting! A number of German towns actually started objecting to Google’s Street View cars mapping the country’s streets and roads.

The idea that there is “someone, all the way from America” to photograph local streets, homes, and people for the rest of us to retrieve online (understandably) raises some concerns.

To put things into perspective, imagine someone from Germany - or any other overseas country for that matter - deciding to send black-colored vans with roof-mounted cameras down main street USA.

Remember, there’s still a considerable number of people that have never heard of Google, let alone used it.

To be sure, on both sides of the Atlantic, plenty seem increasingly concerned personal data protection is being ignored as more information is digitally disseminated and stored outside our reach.

From state-side online trolling and Google’s recent Chrome browser launch, to Germany’s scandal over T-Mobile subscriber data theft, these are only a few examples of what might go wrong if digital data gets misappropriated.

Add to that the latest uproar over Skype’s leak of Chinese dissidents information, and it becomes clear why public trust in personal digital data privacy is waning fast.

Of course, the trojan horse of personal digital data capture has been out the barn for years.

Google and other software vendors have long been aggregating civic data sets, to fuel both innovation and commercial interests wrapped in a single free and “viral” application.

Plenty of us have come to appreciate that and gladly use resulting applications to make our lives easier.

Clearly, if we want our location-based services to actually work and function as we would expect them to (ever sat in a car and the GPS system lead you the wrong way?), we will need to let someone collect prerequisite hyper-local information to improve personalized application capabilities to the benefit of you and I.

Even if things don’t quite go as planned?

In a recent conversation with a European friend of mine, he mentioned his ability to discern from Google Earth images that it was his very own neighbor that had rudely parked in his spot the day his area was “data captured”.

He then went on to tell me about a female resident nude-bathing on the rooftop of an Amsterdam apartment building, only to be camera-captured, you guessed it, by Google Earth.

Clearly, on the user-side of the discussion not everything is perfect in geo-tagging land, but most of us have long and willingly participated enjoying the mostly productive advantages from actual usage of such application and the underlying data harnessed.

In fact I wonder if we could ever again live without?

But brand and user perception differs among cultures. Any company seeking to expand and succeed beyond its own boarders needs to be able to address local idiosyncrasies first.

In other words, what is felt productive and OK in parts of the US can easily be misconstrued outside.

Unless you adopt to the local “lingua franca” of regional acceptability, people will have a harder time understanding you and the products you seek to offer over time.

Who knew? A Twitter feed, large on a flashy screen, during a live conference workshop Q&A.

While attending the recent Web 2.0 Expo software love fest in New York, what struck me, those Twitter posts came from audience members right in the same room, only steps away from a microphone and free to pose the same questions to everyone “organically”.

Rather than raising their “analog” hands and voices, they opted to type questions into a digital device.

Afforded seeing everyone’s “twittered” questions come in live, this seemed info overkill, distracting from the verbal live discussion unfolding at the same time.

Later, walking past the Web2Open area (set up for free-wheeling “anti-conference” discussions among peers), more participants seemed tied to their handhelds and laptops then actually talking to each other face-to-face.

All in, to get real people to engage in real meetings was never easy.  With the advent of Web 2.0, could we have added yet another layer of complication?

No doubt, despite its relatively short existence, Web 2.0 (the trend, not its name-sake conference) has had fundamental, positive impact on consumer digital life.

But during this industry conference, the community of evangelist and software architects seemed surprisingly stuck between “old world” idiosyncrasies and “new world” paradigm. (In all fairness though, some Web2Open discussion certainly did take place).

In his most recent testimonial ad,  Sprint CEO D. Hesse makes a valid point. ”Technology is only great when you know how to use it”.

Web 2.0 Expo attendees certainly know how to “use technology”.

But even to the best of us, it seems still somewhat awkward to navigate both analog and digital worlds simultaneously - especially if both are “anywhere, anytime” and “always on” to reckon with.

So, what is the right mix of “synthetic” communications and “organic” conversation at the dawn of the 21st century?

For anyone with interest in the bigger picture behind all of this, during the conference, Intel social scientist, Genevieve Bell, gave an impressive to-the-point presentation.

Wanna’ discuss this further?

Please no analog “old world” calls.

Instead, post a digital “new world” message right here.

Oh wait, why don’t we talk AND twitter ;-)

Just off a subway ride on the 6 line, from 38th street to Time Square.

While on the train and others prior, I notice again and again, people don’t seem any happier since jumping on the consumer gadget band wagon.

Although plugged into countless iPods, Kindles, and Zunes, typing into Blackberries, and watching videos on PSPs and iPhones, if New York subway riders are at all indicative of the larger mass - despite all our digital consumer innovation might - it just doesn’t seem to have made anyone genuinely more content compared to, let’s say, reading the newspaper or a hard cover book (as many might have in the past).

If that’s true, what user experience element is it that our consumer digital technology industry keeps ignoring?

Asking the experts might help.

Just back from this week’s Web 2.0 Expo in New York, Intel’s Director of User Experience, Genevieve Bell, gave a purposely simple but rather powerful talk about the art of truly matching our every day lives with the appropriate digital technology.

Amazing how different a role consumer digital innovation plays depending on where you go around the globe.

Back to the us, the New York subway, in all fairness, the news these days must add to anyone’s level of discomfort. I concur.

From political battles and hurricanes, to mortgage woes and banks collapsing, OK, so maybe there’s good reason to stay somewhat bleak and subdued while hasting from one hectic place in Manhattan to another, never quite “catching up”.

Still, isn’t it exactly right here where the US consumer electronics market is making substantial money? In large cities like New York, rich with affluent first adopters and technology aficionados looking to buy into personal devices designed to make it all easier, more bearable, dare I say it - more fun!

Looks to me, mission yet to be accomplished.

Off I go, my Blackberry in hand, trying to catch the next train out.