Pine Tree Politics

13 Responses to “It Is A Beautiful Thing When A Candidate “Gets It””

1. 

   ChrisCavs
   

   21. Oct, 2009

   Good post. I was witness to the so-called hostilities on Twitter last night. Both sides of this issue are impassioned, to be sure. The Twitter users you talk about who were “hostile” were set off by Jacobson’s singular Tweet that left a lot of speculation hanging in the air. The forum in which Jacobson posted was the wrong one to state something without explanation and then leave it out there with no response, as he did. It’s a practice many politicians have done on Twitter, one which tends to annoy and anger many citizens, and it was safe to assume that Jacobson was going to do the same. It’s a good thing that he’s using social media to interact with the community, but there are user defined rules in that community – as in any community – and he did not follow them. As citizens and voters, they had every right to question Jacobson, and demand a speedy answer. If you’re going to put something out there like that, you must expect to defend that position.

   That being said, Jacobson did eventually respond, and he did back up his tweet. Without actually speaking for those Twitter users, I will say that I was impressed that Jacobson actually did offer a clarification on his position, and offered to meet and discuss in person. While I disagree with his actual position, it is the mark of a good person to offer to rationally discuss a position in the face of criticism.
2. 

   Matthew Gagnon
   

   21. Oct, 2009

   Chris,

   Thanks.

   I do have to, rather strongly, disagree with your first point here. First of all, it isn’t like Jacobson just came out of left field, tweeted “I hate gay marriage” and then ran away. He was responding to a community member who rather impatiently repeatedly inquired to his stance. In what I would consider MORE than a timely manner, he responded with his exact position, a brief reason why, and then offered to meet to discuss it more at length, because it actually IS a complicated issue that not only can’t be articulated in 140 characters, but shouldn’t even be tried.

   Your characterization that he “left it out there with no response” is somewhat unreasonable. It is as though you expect him – or anyone else – to post his statement (which again was in response to a request), and then wait there just in case something gets touched off, and then sit down for an hour or more interacting and responding as though he has nothing else to do.

   He did what MOST reasonable Twitter users do, and that is respond to a request, go back to your life, then later come back to Twitter to see if there was anything else that warranted a response, which he did, and did in a VERY timely manner, and he did so with a detailed response by pointing at his interview with me.

   My problem with the “hostile” community was that they were both unreasonable about their demands to him – assuming he was firmly planted at his computer reading what they were saying and ignoring them(which is absurd) – and overly negative, spiteful and angry.

   They had every right to question him, you are right. He answered them. They had a right to demand a speedy answer. They got one. It might not have been the immediate, momentary response they wanted, but as somebody who sees this stuff daily, his response was 10000000% faster than most public figures.

   I’ve been a rather high profile user of the Twitter platform for more than a year now, and I am fully aware of the non-defined “rules”… and I know them to be fluid and mostly dependent on whatever the person in question THINKS should be the rules.

   Look, to me it was simple. He got asked a question that he knew would be hostile, and he answered it honestly and quite promptly. His answer was apparently unacceptable to many members of the Twitter community, who I think went WAAAAAAAAAAAY overboard, to the point of many of them acting like children throwing temper tantrums and inventing motive and rationale where it was not present, rather than being patient and reasonable. He came back to Twitter – in my opinion VERY quickly, and DIRECTLY answered the people who had just spent a great deal of energy attacking him, often in very nasty terms by addressing EXACTLY what they were asking of him.

   He then spent more time checking in with the community, found the post from Desjardins, and not only responded to it, but gave the guy a call.

   In my book – and I work with public figures daily on this stuff – that was WAY above and beyond, and a CLINIC in “how to deal with the community”.
3. 

   Alex Hammer
   

   22. Oct, 2009

   We answer Mainers also (I do it personally) as a regular occurrence. I could be wrong, but I believe strongly that some of the virulence, if not too strong a word, and double standard in analysis of various candidates, is that many, actually most, perhaps all of the other candidates are deferential to new media press (some even meek or overly flattering) and we aren’t (though I try to be generally friendly, and polite, and we’re quite engaged).

   Not that this campaign is close to perfect (no campaign is but we stack up very well I believe) but I think it is scary to new media types that we don’t adopt that tone, and also that we’re doing activities that “encroach their expertise or turf”. A few of the candidates are starting to become more interactive on Twitter, etc. That’s great (Libby Mitchell, when I checked several days ago, comments even on her Facebook wall seemed to be disabled), many candidates blogs (not all) have given new meaning to the term one-way conversation).

   Have the other candidates created an entire social network just devoted to Maine and Mainers. We have (I won’t overpromote by providing here the URL, I try to keep links centrally on target to post). Are they using Digg and other popular social media tools beyond Facebook and Twitter. And a lot more could be said.

   I give Matt some credit because he is intelligent, well-spoken (even if I obviously do not always agree) and allows some dissent. That’s a great start.

   In regard to Matt Jacobson, I’ll keep the comment in regard to his online activities general. Matt has been the most truly engaged candidate online after us. And for that I congratulate him.

   Lastly, if we engage first, and get attacked for it (again, we’re not perfect) but all the other candidates (some quickly, some slowly) also come around to that position, who is showing leadership there, and who is following?

   Thank you very much.
4. 

   Mike
   

   22. Oct, 2009

   You put a period in front of the ampersand so it does not actually show up in their mentions stream. You don’t actually engage anyone.
5. 

   Mike
   

   22. Oct, 2009

   Your creating your own “social network” is a useless gimmmick. You’d be better-served to have a real campaign website and actually discuss state issues once in a while instead of pointless rantings and ill-informed hypotheticals.

   You have not been attacked – you’ve been criticized for breaking every possible rule and behaving more like a ten-year-old than an adult in every online space. Every site you use online, whether it’s Digg, Twitter, or Wikipedia, you mis-use it and annoy everybody. Any candidate would be better off not engaging the online community than engaging in the manner that you have.
6. 

   Matthew Gagnon
   

   22. Oct, 2009

   Alex, I don’t know how many more times I can tell you this – but your behavior here is destroying your reputation and credibility.

   You don’t engage with anyone. You spam to get followers. After I shined the light on what you do, you kept doing it. Then after you spam, you pretend to engage – but you actually don’t. The people you actually DO message with had no interest in talking to you – you insert YOURSELF, without being prompted in any way, into a conversation, or just blast out a one way fish-hook in an attempt to look like you are “part of the conversation”, when you are little more than that little kid tugging at the pant legs of a group of people with which he doesn’t belong, looking for somebody to care.

   Then, as Mike said, you put a period in front of the @ sign, so the message doesn’t actually get sent to the person in question – which is your way of LOOKING like you are engaging with somebody, without actually doing it. In other words, you have something you point at to say “see!! I talk to other people!!” – but you are afraid of being ridiculed for your nonsense, so you can’t even work up the courage to actually message them and risk them seeing what you write.

   There is no “double standard”, Alex. You continue to fail to understand that what you are doing is making a mockery of both political campaigning, and new media engagement. You’ve been told what you are doing wrong… you’ve been DISCIPLINED by some of the actual platforms in question for pissing on the back of the community and telling them its raining (twice, I might add, on Twitter)…

   You are the essence of the opposite of this article. You DONT “get it” – so stop pretending like you do, and stop the incessant self promoting garbage.

   If you want me to notice you, and praise you for quality and innovative online engagement, then start LISTENING (something you claim to do well), and change how you act.

   If you want to keep acting the way you have been, then don’t bother leaving any more comments here, or whining about my lack of “respect” for you.

   Respect is earned – and frankly, you have earned none of mine. Quite the opposite.
7. 

   Garrett Murch
   

   22. Oct, 2009

   My only addition to this piece is that while engaging online is indeed becoming increasingly important, I think some of us enmeshed in the online world tend to overstate its importance. Or if not overstate, then stress it while ignoring traditional grassroots efforts that lead to engaging face to face with thousands of people.

   While being active online is a great way to communicate with supporters and show everyone you’re tech-savvy, at the end of the day I’d still put its importance far below traditional grassroots efforts in terms of which better allows candidates to engage with voters…for now..
8. 

   Alex Hammer
   

   23. Oct, 2009

   Matt, I don’t have time to argue with you (repeatedly, all the time), and this is your site.

   I didn’t know that about the period (.) I was of the belief that that was a way for all followers to see the message, not just the person replied to. I didn’t realize also (if it’s true) that a period prevents the reply recipient from seeing it. That doesn’t make sense but if true then I learned something new (every day we all do, but if a candidate doesn’t engage then how much will they learn?)

   Almost everything else you said I disagree with you. Many have applied a double standard, and a strong one.

   You may agree with this — the voters will decide.

   PS A better website is in progress (the first one, as a beginning holding site, I designed myself and I think my web 2.0 skills are good but my design skills are poor). Before we more recently went to more of a distributed model (there is debate across the web, just starting to percolate a bit more now, whether a distributed versus centralized approach is ultimately more effective), we were consistently receiving more web traffic (only one sign voters are responding, repeatedly over time, to our campaign and its messages) then either Steven Rowe, Peter Mills, Libby Mitchell and most of the other candidates for Governor as well.

   That’s a documented fact!!

   PPS Earning respect is a two way street. While I do respect your intelligence, and productive work ethic, the frankly arrogant way in which you make judgments incredibly selective in your utilization of facts has not won my respect either (long way to go for you, my friend).

   And also, if I hadn’t pushed the issue to bring front and center, none of the candidates would have been likely to have significantly engaged (a few may have a natural tendency to a degree, but the baseline engagement was so low until recently). The fact that the candidates are opening up recently to a degree, and that a coddling relationship with the new media press seems to be just beginning to appropriately distance, are a further few examples of this campaign’s already found success across the dialogue and actions of this race.

   Thank you.
9. 

   Alex Hammer
   

   23. Oct, 2009

   “Than” either, not “then” either (grammar mistake I wrote above).
10. 

    Matthew Gagnon
    

    23. Oct, 2009

    For somebody who “doesn’t have time”, you sure do seem to have plenty of time to troll the entire internet looking for stories with only ancillary relevance, so you can drop your typical swath of uninvited personal promotion for your faux campaign, and your “book”.

    You have this ridiculous habit – which just betrays the weakness of your argument – of saying things like “Almost everything else you said I disagree with you. Many have applied a double standard, and a strong one.”, and then not backing it up with any kind of real facts or logic. You just throw that out there, and then go on a tangent.

    If you are going to accuse me, or anyone else, of maintaining a “double standard”, then you need to actually bring the facts, and bring a real argument to the table.

    I have one standard – and that is serious, thoughtful, honest and well intentioned engagement by a candidate. The other candidates, to varying degrees, show that. You demonstrate the EXACT OPPOSITE of that with your online behavior.

    I have provided a laundry list of all the ways you do it wrong, all the ways you flaunt the rules and intentionally break them, all the ways you ignore the standards of new media engagement. You have not rebutted a single one – all you ever say is that you are yourself a leader in the new media space, which you are not.

    I challenge you to rebut anything I’ve accused you of. Go back to the main article I wrote about you, and the individual accusations I made, and refute them.

    Do you know why you never do? Why you always say you don’t have the time (right before writing a mammoth post)?

    Its because you can’t rebut it.

    You know damned well you spam the hell out of Twitter users, that you employ the mass follow and hope they follow you back strategy, followed by unfollows and then re-follows. You know damned well you ignore the rules. You know damned well you got in a petty, ridiculous fight on Wikipedia in which you attempted to ego stroke yourself and inflate your own importance. You know damned well that you blatantly ignore the rules, best practices, and even the common sense of using these technologies.

    And please, hearing you lecture me about “earning respect” is like hearing Steve Phillips lecturing somebody about fidelity to marriage and professionalism in the office.

    Have you noticed that, besides yourself, you do not have a SINGLE defender… ANYWHERE? Not here, not other sites… NONE.

    Ask yourself why that is. Ask yourself if that would be true if you were TRULY the innovator you fancy yourself as.
11. 

    Matthew Gagnon
    

    23. Oct, 2009

    By the way, your traffic rankings are garbage. You use Alexa to track that, and Alexa is wildly inaccurate. Alexa ranks sites based on tracking information of users of its Alexa Toolbar for IE and from sidebars in Firefox. Its samle is flawed, and its results are laughable much of the time.

    For example, PTP shows up quite low in Alexa rankings, but when you use compete, we are basically even with Maine Politics. Alexa also shows rougly 30% of Tipping’s traffic coming from India – and I think its safe to say that is ridiculous.

    Your rankings are nonsense, and even if they are “high” – it is likely some of the lowest level conversions I’ve ever seen… probably a factor of you spamming the living hell out of every website known to man.
12. 

    Alex Hammer
    

    23. Oct, 2009

    We don’t have the Alexa toolbar (nor do I know anyone who does). It’s not as reliable as subscription services but it is part of Amazon, not a bad company.

    Call me (Matt or any Mainers or those interested in Maine) at 945-5240 if you wish to speak further.

    PS We have a lot of repeat traffic, shows not one timers, and we have a lot of people following us from Washington DC (and area)!!

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