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.

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?

We try to keep it light here at digitalmissive.com: adventures in iPhone home repair, subway advertisements, that kind of thing…  But today’s news of numerous computers at both Barack Obama’s and John McCain’s  campaign offices being hacked earlier this year reminded me of a particularly frightening Business Week article I listened to the podcast of a few weeks ago while practicing my backhand.  So I just now did a little additional research - consider this brief timeline:

November 6, 2008: US Newsweek reports that several computers on the campaign office networks of both Obama and McCain were compromised during the summer - Trojan malware sends an unknown amount of data detailing candidate policy positions to a “foreign entity”.  FBI launches investigation.

June 11, 2008: US Virginia Representatives (and longtime China human rights critics) Frank Wolf and announces that four of his Capitol Hill PCs were compromised by malware which copied and transferred an unknown amount of data.  FBI announces attack originated from China, declines to comment further.

December, 2007:  UK Director-general of British intelligence agency MI5 sends letter to 300 British companies warning that their networks are under attack.  Announcement explicitly names “Chinese state organizations” as source.

December, 2007: US 37,000+ attempted attacks on both government and private networks reported for the year, US Congress is informed that Chinese espionage represents “the single greatest risk to the security of American technologies”.  New 40,000 person US Air Force unit created to combat problem.

September 24, 2007: US FBI announces that the  Department of Homeland Security network had been attacked by malware originating (and communicating with) China.  Although from an “unclassified” network, an unknown amount of data copied and transferred  over the past 2 (!) years.  IT contractor Unisys denies any fault,  FBI investigates.

August 27, 2007: Germany While on a state visit to China, German newsweekly Der Spiegel reports that “many” computers in  Chancellor Angela Merkel’s office (as well as those in several other ministries) were found to be infected with trojan malware communicating back to Chinese-registered URLs. A 160GB data transfer stopped in progress, how much data lost previously remains unknown.  China denies involvement.

Whew.  Nervous yet?    The most common attack method used here is ‘trojan’ malware: software embedded into files of common Microsoft Office applications such as Word or PowerPoint.  The file arrives as an attachment in an email “spoofed” to appear from a trustworthy source, and the malware executes when the user opens the file (under certain conditions malicious javascript can also launch exploits merely from the unsuspecting user visiting a malicious website, although browser and OS upgrades help prevent this).

How can it all be done so anonymously?  What helps hide the actual source of these attacks is a technology called “Dynamic DNS”.  The ‘real’ (internet-wide) DNS system is what allows human-readable names (like digitalmissive.com) to map to an actual IP address - and to geek out for a second here, it is a marvel of a distributed database (it’s really amazing how well it works).  However, most non-enterprise ISPs don’t need to worry about their customers needing URL names, so they just maintain a pool of interchangeable IP addresses that they swap around to their customers as needed - meaning they’re often changing.  How then to publicly contact a computer (i.e. from the internet)  whose address is non-static?  Enter Dynamic DNS (because who doesn’t want to host a website from their home PC? …I kid).  Anyway, think of Dynamic DNS as an additional independent layer of DNS – a private service out on the internet has a valid public name reserved for you, and a little piece of software on your PC (or your home router) regularly calls out to that service and says ‘hey this is my IP address as of right now!’   Problem solved – but that additional layer is entirely private and uncontrolled, and so can be used in a ‘rogue’ fashion.  Add to that China’s non-transparent approach to all things internet, and conditions are favorable for these anonymous attacks.

Rightly, we know little of the highly classified political and technical goings-on to address the issue – I just have to assume that it’s on the good guys’ radar and that they’re on it, even if it’s not quite on the general public’s radar yet.  Something called ‘Reverse DNS’ can help a lot, and I’m sure MS is continuing to tighten up the security of the Office file formats (although there are serious legacy-compatibility issues there) - so we’ll see.

Apologies if this is all a little upsetting - my next post will be on the new colors the iPod Nano comes in.

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.