Sunday, June 19, 2011

RightOnline ahead of Netroots when it comes to video


One interesting thing I learned at the RightOnline convention in Minneapolis this past weekend is that the right is ahead of the left with investigative videos. The left may have been generally ahead in technology the last few years, but we've now surpassed them on the video side of it. This is mainly due to the efforts of Andrew Breitbart and videographer James O'Keefe, known for their investigative live videos exposing ACORN, Planned Parenthood, and NPR. I found this out talking to an independent reporter who was attending both conventions. I asked her what she thought were the main differences between the two and she mentioned the lack of equivalent investigative videos on the left. Breitbart advised RightOnline attendees to always film anything you see that may remotely end up being relevant. Pull out your cell phone and tape that dorky confrontation between a leftist and someone else.

However the reporter did say that Netroots offered fewer technology training courses at their convention than RightOnline, reflective of their superior overall technological knowledge. Considering one elderly man at the conference asked me to stop using my laptop because it was "bothering" him, I worry there is a grain of truth in what she said (I just went and sat somewhere else).

The other coolest thing I learned at RightOnline from Facebook representative Katie Harbath is that Facebook is now allowing you to have more than 5000 friends, fixing a limitation that has greatly hampered those of us political activists who use it for a tool. It does this by letting you convert your personal account to a (business) "page," where your friends will be converted to "likes" and future friends will need to "like" your page. You will lose all of the content you've posted up until now, and you will no longer be able to add friends the previous way, but otherwise it will still operate like a personal account. Click here for the FAQ.

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