Aiming to figure out why America is becoming more politically polarized despite traditional beliefs that societies naturally move toward the middle, a group of Stanford researchers considered how our natural biases affect the way we interpret information. What they found is that people tend to view the world through red- or blue-colored glasses: when we see inconclusive information, we intepret it in ways that support our natural political biases and ignore the aspects that don’t. So if you show the exact same piece of inconclusive information to a group of people, it will likely lead to more polarization rather than to general consensus on the meaning.

It turns out, this phenomenon extends beyond clearly biased media such as FOX or MSNBC and into more objective content sources on the web. When the researchers applied their model to online recommendation engines, they found that pieces of content most-relevant to users are “always polarizing,” whereas pieces of information that are merely similar to something someone already likes are only polarizing if the person is already biased. In short: While they’re able to ignore or at least view objectively less-important stuff, even pretty middle-of-the-road people will take a hard stance on stuff that matters to them.

Of course, how one reacts to research like this largely depends on what one is trying to accomplish. The researchers involved appear to be all about moving people toward the middle on some issues, which is why they created a federal-budget app called Widescope that lets people configure their own budgets and then shows them the similarities with the various budget proposals floating around Washington, D.C. They’ve also looked into creating social systems that counteract polarization by using trusted information sources (a press release explaining the research suggests Rush Limbaugh or Rachel Maddow) to present information that biased individuals might otherwise be inclined to dismiss.

Applied generally to the web, this approach might help mitigate some of the effects of the hyper-personalized experience that’s now possible. You know, the kind of thing that happens when you fill up RSS readers with sources you like, follow like-minded people on Twitter, and  sign up for services that use machine learning to surface even more of the same content based on that homogeneous reading activity. Or when you keep searching for the same stuff on Amazon or viewing the same types of movies on Netflix.

Services that go beyond “injecting serendipity” into their content feeds could actually try to broaden users’ minds by surfacing content that’s in some ways very different or counterintutive to what a simple interest graph might show. I’m not sure how this would look algorithmically, but I’m envisioning, for example, a semi-regular insertion of content from sources or genres considered the opposite of a readers’ norms but that touch upon topics they’re interested in. Or vice versa.

I genuinely believe most web startups trying to tackle the problem of content curation want to be helpful as possible, are aware of issues such as biased assimilation and are at least considering methods for counteracting it in order to give users a broader view beyond just what those users think they want to see.

On the other hand, if you wanna lock people into their current beliefs or their current content-consumption habits, that’s probably a lot easier to do. And sadly, for some politicians and special interest groups, that probably suits them just fine.

Feature image courtesy of Shutterstock user Kutlayev Dmitry.

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All of that legislation and bluster, however, isn’t going to solve the fundamental problem that produced the practice of locking devices in the first place: handset subsidies.

There’s a reason why carriers lock phones. They’re heavily discounting the cost of most devices, which is why you can get a $500 smartphone for $100 and many mid-range and low-end handsets for free. Carriers make their money back through monthly subscription fees that factor in those subsidy costs. For carriers to get the full value of the phone back, subscribers need to finish out their contracts, and locking devices to their networks functions as their insurance policy. It’s a hell of lot easier than repossessing phones.

The bottom line is most consumers don’t really own their phones. They’re mortgaging them. Just like you can’t sell your home without paying off your bank loan, carriers don’t want you selling your phone or taking it to another carrier without finishing your contract and paying off your handset loan.

Thus, we’re left with the locking mess, which leads to all of the problems pointed out by locking’s critics: Having to jump through hoops to get your carrier to unlock a phone when your contract is up, the inability to use another carrier’s SIM card when traveling overseas, and the difficulty of building a resale market for phones when the majority of devices are locked.

Why unlocking phones doesn’t solve the problem

Making it legal and easy to unlock phones might seem like an easy solution to this problem, but I guarantee you carriers will find some other way to protect their investments. Carriers could require deposits, implement some kind of collateral fee, institute more onerous contract restrictions, or they could simply raise prices. If carriers start losing money when customers skip out on the contracts, you can bet the customers that remain will have to make up the difference.

I’m not saying it’s right. I’m just saying that in this messed-up subsidy system, everyone is trying to protect their own interests. Consumers will try to unlock their phones, and carriers will try to stop them.

If we get rid of subsidies completely, though, all of those conflicting interests go away. Once you separate the service from the device, carriers have no interest — and no right — to lock devices. You may still be under contract, but since there is no subsidy recovery fee bound up in your monthly bill, carriers could care less what you do with your device.

Of course, paying full price for your phone is an expensive proposition. An unsubsidized iPhone 5 costs between $649 and $849, as opposed to the $200 to $400 most carriers charge with contract. But in the long run buying your phone up front will probably save you money. T-Mobile has been a trailblazer in this area, charging cheaper monthly rates for voice and data if you don’t opt for a phone subsidy. What’s more, once subsidies are gone, handset makers will be able to sell their wares directly to consumers, which could lead to a greater variety of devices and more price competition in the device market.

Ultimately, mobile voice and data rates are so high because our phones are so cheap — artificially cheap. If we reverse that equation, we wind up with cheaper subscriptions, more choice and phones we can do with as we please.

What can you do with an unlocked phone?

Unfortunately, having an unlocked device doesn’t leave you with too many options in the U.S. If you travel internationally with a GSM-capable phone you can plug in a local carrier’s SIM card and pay local rates. But in the U.S. itself there isn’t much mobility between carriers.

U.S. operators are split between GSM and CDMA camps, and while it is possible to activate a Verizon phone on Sprint’s network or bring an AT&T device to T-Mobile, there’s no guarantee that you’ll have to access every network or service they offer. U.S. carriers don’t just use different radio technologies, they use different spectrum bands. The band fragmentation problem got even worse with the introduction of LTE.

But there are signs that things will get better. T-Mobile is in the process of overhauling its network, aligning its 3G bands with those of AT&T. In 4G, we’re starting to see some LTE network convergence around the Advanced Wireless Services (AWS) band. We’re even seeing more dual-mode GSM-CDMA devices making their way into the market.

With emerging smart antenna and radio module technologies, handset makers will soon be able to pack a dozen bands into a single device. Eventually we might even see a universal phone in the U.S. that can work on any carrier’s networks, no matter what combination of technologies and frequencies they use. And if that point we’re no longer weighed down by subsidies, contracts or locked devices, consumers will be able to switch to any operator at their whim. That’s not a bad choice to have.

Mortgage image courtesy of Shutterstock user Stuart Miles; Smartphones image courtesy of Shutterstock user Reno Martin; SIM cards image courtesy of Flickr user mroach

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It’s worth mentioning that Silver wasn’t the only statistician to perfectly predict the presidential race, either. In terms of Electoral College votes, Simon Jackman of Pollster did so, as did Josh Putnam of Davidson University. Save for Florida, Sam Wang of the Princeton Election Consortium fared very well, too, and actually nailed the popular vote split. Slate has a nice interactive chart showing how various statisticians and pundits fared in their predictions; there certainly are more predictions and models floating around that haven’t been included.

The important takeaway, however, is that the people who nailed the outcome didn’t achieve their results by cherry-picking data that served their political interests. They did it because they’re professional statisticians whose success depends on accurately predicting the outcomes of events, not on cheerleading for the outcome they might personally desire or that will drive the highest ratings. Even if the data they’re working with is somewhat biased — as some individuals and organizations suggested to me is the case — the science comes in being able to take the data sources for what they are and accurately weigh their relevancy.

Wrong. Data ALWAYS does, starting w/ collection | Data doesn’t play politics & says Obama win is.gd/piGdIb by @derrickharris

— Liberationtech (@Liberationtech) November 6, 2012

In business, this is the shift in thinking that’s driving the movement toward big data and advanced analytics. Forward-thinking companies want to use data to make the right decisions, not to back up their predetermined decisions based largely on gut instinct. But there’s an unprecedented amount of data at their disposal — some good, some bad — which is why data scientists who can figure out what sources to use and how to use them are in such high demand right now.

So in 2014 and and 2016, pollsters are going to keep polling, statisticians are going to keep analyzing those polls (and whatever other factors they choose to include) and, maybe, pundits and the media will pay some attention to what they’re saying. Probabilities aren’t promises etched in stone, and a vote either way can change the face of close elections like this one. But no one should be surprised when someone whose only job is to get it right does just that.

Feature image courtesy of Flickr user Carolyn Coles.

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Statistical models have been hot topic of conversation (maybe even argument) over the past couple weeks thanks to New York Times’ FiveThirtyEight blog author and statistician Nate Silver. He has become a lightning rod for controversy because of his whirlwind media tour promoting his new book and his model predicting that Barack Obama has a greater than 80 percent chance of winning Tuesday’s election. However, as Princeton University Center for Information Technology Policy Fellow Zeynep Tufekci astutely explained last week, Silver isn’t guaranteeing Obama will win on Nov. 6 — just that there’s a high probability he will — and whatever outcome his model comes to is very likely not influenced by partisan politics.

And believe it or not, Silver isn’t the only guy around who spends his time building statistical models to predict the outcomes of politcal contests — he’s just the most famous. There are plenty of academicians, predictive markets, hobbyists and others who also do this, all of whom use different data with different methods for assessing the importance of any given piece of it. With a few notable exceptions, most of them also foresee an Obama victory.

Here’s how they (as well as some less-scientific sources, such as Twitter) see the contest playing out.

Who has Obama winning

FiveThirtyEight: Silver’s final (I believe) model is in, giving President Obama an 86.3 percent chance of being reelected. A late-campaign-season bump came as national polls finally aligned with state polls in giving the edge to Obama.

The New York Times: Two of Silver’s colleagues and fellow data junkies at the New York Times, Mike Bostock and Shan Carter, published an interactive version of their own model on Friday. Based on analysis of the states still considered competitive, they see 431 paths to victory for Obama versus 76 for Mitt Romney.

InTrade: Arguably the world’s most popular prediction market, InTrade gives Obama a 67.2 percent chance of victory as of 10:54 a.m. Pacific Time on Monday. The percentages change in real time, but Obama hasn’t relinquished his role as favorite since the campaign season began early this year.

PredictWise: Prediction market PredictWise (headed by Yahoo’s The Signal blogger David Rotshchild and without a real-money investment model like InTrade) gives Obama a 72 percent chance of winning as of 9:48 a.m. Pacific Time on Monday. The president’s chances have risen steadily over the past week.

Twitter: It’s not really a predictive model, but the Twitter Political Index does provide a point for gauging how the social media platform’s user view the candidates. As of Nov. 4, Obama has a positive sentiment rating of 59 versus Romney’s 53, although Romney has closed the gap by 9 points since the index launched in July.

Who has Romney winning

At least six political scientists and/or economists: An October symposium from the peer-reviewed journal PS: Political Science & Politics includes the results of 13 statistical models generated by noted political scientists, of which eight give Obama the edge and five give Romney the edge. One of the those favoring Romney, an historically accurate and economy-centric model from University of Colorado professors Kenneth Bickers and Michael Berry, generated quite a bit of buzz when released in August and giving Romney a 67 77 percent chance of victory. Bickers and Berry have since ran the model again and it showed an even higher likelihood of a Romney victory.

Another model with a track record of success — that of Yale economics professor Ray Fair — also gave a slight edge to Romney (although well within the margin of error) as of Nov. 2.

Source:

PoliticIt (tied): The Provo, Utah-based startup that aims to measure politicians’ online footprint and popularity actually has the candidates tied with It scores of 50. The scores appear to be old (I’m checking with PoliticIt for an answer on how recent they are) and don’t claim to be a predictor of campaign success, but its founders did claim a high correlation between higher It scores and victories in primary campaigns last spring.

Updated: PoliticIt responded with more-recent It scores of 49 for Obama and 48 for Romney. They are now projecting a win for Obama, as they detail in this blog post released Monday.

The NFL: If mere correlations (and superstition) are any indicator, Romney’s chances of victory are high after this weekend’s slate of professional football games. The oft-cited Redskins Rule regards the Washington Redskins’ performance in their last home game before the election — they lost, an outcome that suggests a Romney victory — but Chris Wilson at The Signal has concocted a series of correlations for the other 31 NFL teams, as well. All told, this year’s 19 of this year’s results foretell a Romney victory, 12 foretell an Obama victory and 1 won’t be decided until Nov. 18.

Source: NFL.com

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Won’t be able to watch the debate on TV? No worries, there are plenty of options to follow live streams of it on your computer, iPad or mobile phone. Once the event starts, apps will help you to live-check the statements in real time and voice your support for either candidate. And after everything is said and done, we’ll help you to find sites that host archived versions of the debate.

Check out our ultimate guide for watching the third and final presidential debate online:

Where to watch it live

• The debate officially starts at 9 p.m. ET/6 p.m. PT. It will last 90 minutes, and it will be moderated by Face the Nation moderator and CBS News Chief Washington Correspondent Bob Schieffer.
• ABC News will be streaming the debate live on its YouTube channel  as well as the YouTube politics channel and ABC’s iPad app.
• NBC will stream the debate on its NBCPolitics.com site.
• CBS News will have its live stream up on Ustream.
• CNN will stream the debate on its website as well as to to its iOS apps.
• Fox News will be streaming the debate on its site and feature some insights into the most popular topics of the evening through an exclusive collaboration with Twitter during its post-debate coverage.
• The Wall Street Journal is providing a live feed of the debate on it site as well as through its WSJ Live apps on the iPad, on Android devices and various Smart TV platforms.
• The Washington Post will stream the debate on its site.
• Hulu will feature live feeds from ABC, Fox and The Wall Street Journal, including pre- and post-debate content.
• Politico’s website will feature a pre-debate show starting at 5 p.m. PT as well as the actual debate and some post-debate coverage.
• HuffPost Live, the Huffington Post’s live video network, will combine the stream of the debate with four themed live chats.
• Univision’s live stream of the presidential debate will be translated into Spanish in real time.
• C-SPAN is going to stream the debate on it site as part of its debates hub. C-SPAN’s live feed comes with closed captions, which can be turned on here.
• PBS Newshour will stream the entire debate on its site as well.
• Microsoft’s Xbox will show the debate through the Elections 2012 app, which will also feature some live polling (Xbox LIVE gold membership required).
• TuneIn will feature live audio streams of the debate on its website as well as within its mobile apps for iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Blackberry and other mobile platforms.

What to do during the debate

• The rules both parties agreed on ahead of the debate can be found here.
• The Peel companion app will allow Android users to digitally cheer and boo during the debate, and see how others like the performance of both candidates.
• Ponderoo does something similar for iOS, but with a more playful UI.
• ConnecTV will poll users of its second screen app (available for iPad, Windows and OS X) in real time about the performance of both candidates.
• Al Jazeera English once again teamed up with Reddit for context and commentary during the debate.
• Twitter is providing curated tweets on its #debates micro-site.
• PolitiFact and Factcheck.org will be fact checking the debate in real time on Twitter — follow their accounts, @politifact and @factcheckdotorg, to see whether both candidates are telling the truth.
• The Sunlight Foundation will again fact-check the debate in real time and provide a live stream with contextual data as part of its Sunlight Live project.
• The Debate Drinking Game is a less serious take on the rhetorics used during the event (please drink responsibly).

Where to catch up on the debate

• Archived streams: Hulu, PBS Newshour, C-SPAN and many of the other sites mentioned above are making an archived stream of the entire event available after it concludes. After the second debate, our readers told us that C-SPAN was one of the first to have an archived version up. Please let us know in the comments which site has a full-length archived version of the debate first this time around!
• Transcript: The Commission on Presidential Debates will host a transcript of the debate on its site.

We will update this post with new links right up to the start of the debate. Let us know in the comments if you come across any other good resources!

For more on how to watch news and other TV programming without paying for cable, check out my ebook Cut the Cord: All You Need to Know to Drop Cable.

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A new study on social media and civic engagement from the Pew Internet & American Life Project released Friday compares social media behavior between Democrats, Republicans and independents. Among its findings it said that while 52 percent of liberal Democrats who use social media have used the “like” button, 42 percent of conservative Republicans have done so. Overall, Pew said that 38 percent of people who use social media “like” content related to political or social issues.

In general, the study, which included more than 2,200 adults of voting age or older, found that 66 percent of American adults who use social media –- or 39 percent of all American adults –- have done at least one of eight civic or political activities on social media. Not so surprisingly, the more partisan social media users are more likely than their moderate peers to use social networks for political purposes. Also (not so surprisingly), the study found that younger users are more vocal about their political leanings online than older social media users over 50.

Even though liberal Democrats tend to “like” more online, Pew reports that conservative Republicans are also quite active in social media and aren’t bested by Democrats on every social media action. For example, while 39 percent of Republicans have reposted content in social media, 34 percent of Democrats and 31 percent of independents have done the same.  In general, 33 percent of social media have used tools for this purpose, the report said. Conservative Republicans (32 percent) also use social media to follow elected representatives in greater numbers than liberal Democrats (27 percent).

You can check out the full report here and see a few more findings from Pew below:

• 35 percent of social media users have used social media to encourage people to vote. Democrats who use social media are more likely to have used social media to encourage voting — 42 percent have done that compared with 36 percent of Republican social media users and 31 percent of independents.

• 34 percent of social media users have used the tools to post their own political or social thoughts and comments. Liberal Democrats who use social media (42 percent) and conservative Republicans (41 percent) are especially likely to use social media for this purpose.

• 31 percent of social media users have used social media to encourage other people to take action on a political or social issue that is important to them. Democrats lead on this action with 36 percent, followed by Republicans with 34 percent and independents with 29 percent.

• 28 percent of social media users have posted links to political stories or articles for others to read. 39 percent of liberal Democrats have done this, as have 34 percent of conservative Republicans.

• 21 percent of those who use social networks or Twitter belong to a social networking group involved in political or social issues.

Image by SFerdon via Shutterstock.

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Not in front of your TV when the debate airs at 9p.m. ET / 6p.m. PT? No worries, we collected numerous options to stream the entire event on your computer, iPad or mobile phone. And this time, we’re adding some other ways to stay engaged with the debate, like options for post-debate analysis. Check out our ultimate guide to watching the second presidential debate live online below:

Where to watch it live

• The debate officially starts at 9 p.m. ET / 6 p.m. PT. It will last 90 minutes, and it will be moderated by CNN’s chief political correspondent Candy Crowley.
• ABC News will be streaming the debate live on its YouTube channel  as well as the YouTube politics channel and ABC’s iPad app.
• NBC will stream the debate on its NBCPolitics.com site.
• CBS News will have its live stream up on Ustream.
• CNN will stream the debate on its website as well as to to its iOS apps.
• Fox News will be streaming the debate on its site and feature some insights into the most popular topics of the evening through an exclusive collaboration with Twitter during its post-debate coverage.
• The Wall Street Journal is providing a live feed of the debate on it site as well as through its WSJ Live apps on the iPad, on Android devices and various Smart TV platforms.
• The Washington Post will stream the debate on its site.
• Hulu will feature live feeds from ABC, Fox and The Wall Street Journal, including pre- and post-debate content.
• Politico’s website will feature a pre-debate show starting at 5 p.m. PT as well as the actual debate and some post-debate coverage.
• Univision’s live stream of the presidential debate will be translated into Spanish in real-time.
• C-SPAN is going to stream the debate on it site as part of its debates hub. C-SPAN’s live feed comes with closed captions, which can be turned on here.
• PBS Newshour will stream the entire debate on its site as well.
• Microsoft’s Xbox will show the debate through the Elections 2012 app, which will also feature some live polling (Xbox LIVE gold membership required).
• Aereo will give New York-based viewers two hours of free access to its TV streaming service to watch live streams of major broadcasters’ debate coverage on their laptops or mobile devices.

What to do during the debate

• The rules both parties agreed on ahead of the debate can be found here.
• The Peel companion app will allow Android users to digitally cheer and boo during the debate, and see how others like the performance of both candidates.
• Ponderoo does something similar for iOS, but with a more playful UI.
• ConnecTV will poll users of its second screen app (available for iPad, Windows and OS X) in real time about the performance of both candidates.
• Al Jazeera English once again teamed up with Reddit for context and commentary during the debate.
• Twitter is providing curated tweets on its #debates micro-site.
• PolitiFact and Factcheck.org will be fact checking the debate in real time on Twitter – follow their accounts @politifact and @factcheckdotorg to see whether both candidates are telling the truth.
• The Sunlight Foundation will again fact check the debate in real time and provide a live stream with contextual data as part of its Sunlight Live project.
• The Debate Drinking Game is a less serious take on the rhetorics used during the event (please drink responsibly).

Where to catch up on the debate

• Archived streams: Hulu, PBS Newshour, C-SPAN and many of the other sites mentioned above are making an archived stream of the entire event available after it concludes. Please let us know in the comments below if you can find the site where it goes up first!
• Transcript: The Commission on Presidential Debates will host a transcript of the debate on its site.

We will update this post with new links right up to the start of the debate. Let us know in the comments if you come across any other good resources!

For more on how to watch news and other TV programming without paying for cable, check out my ebook Cut the Cord: All You Need to Know to Drop Cable.

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An ancient history lesson

We call it big data in the age of the ubiquitous web, but the truth is that politicians have been amassing files on potential voters for at least a decade. Some experts credit the strategy to Bill Clinton’s reelection team in 1996, which decided to focus its efforts on winning over swing voters rather than the entire electorate. George W. Bush took it even further, narrowing his focus down to swing-voter Republicans so as to maximize resources even more efficiently. All of this required a tremendous amount of data mining to figure out who these people were, where they lived and what they cared about.

Fast-forward to 2008, and the Barack Obama campaign took the process to another level thanks to its well-executed web campaign. In the process of raising about half a billion dollars online, the campaign gathered around 13 million email addresses and 5 million friends across the social media landscape. After mining this data and combining this stuff from voter-registration records, the team was able to identify the cream of the crop in terms of potential voters and deliver them a personalized campaign experience — everything from organizing rides to polling places to phone calls addressing specific points people had raised online.

You might have noticed by looking at the names associated with these efforts that running a data-driven campaign works. Managing large teams of volunteers, paying for television ads and otherwise running a major campaign is expensive business (save for those dirt-cheap and annoying robo-calls). Knowing whom to target lets campaigns spend their valuable resources in the right places and avoid wasting money trying to win over individuals staunchly on the other side or unlikely to actually get out and vote.

The age of big data

As it has with business though, particularly on the web, the age of big data has changed political campaigns yet again. Heading in the 2012 election, for example, President Obama has more than 20 million Twitter followers and his Facebook page has more than 29 million “likes.” Mitt Romney lags considerably behind — with less than 2 million Twitter followers around 9 million “likes” — but still has access to a lot digital data.

Thanks to technologies such as Hadoop, campaigns are able to store more data — and more types of data (think of all that unstructured social media data) — than ever before and process it en masse. Not only does this help with targeting individuals or groups, but it could also help with longer-term strategies such as where to schedule rallies and what issues to discuss at them. As feelings toward issues change, regular analyses of ever-expanding data sets should reflect those changes and let candidates shift their strategies accordingly.

This ad created specially for you

Of course, all this additional data means more than just knowing what issues matters. It also means just knowing you, period. What you drink, the car you drive, where you shop — they’re all pieces of a digital profile that lets politicians make sure they put their messages in front of the right people. It’s a process called microtargeting, and it’s very real — especially online.

Bryan Gernert

Bryan Gernert, CEO of Resonate Insights, explained to me recently how his company goes about serving billions of targeted web ads to its growing stable of political customers. In 2008, he said, neither presidential candidate spent very much money advertising online, but Resonate is presently involved in about 100 campaigns, with clients that include campaigns, political action committees and other special interest groups. At present, he said, Resonate has about 250 terabytes of behavioral and opinion data; it runs a 110-node Hadoop cluster and a 300-billion-row database.

All that data feeds predictive models based on mountains of data gleaned from surveys, web behavior, demographic information and other sources to deliver specific ads to specific web users. Resonate’s algorithms take into account 300 million “decision nodes” to in order to model all the attributes of each user, and they deliver each user the best-possible ad from a collection of a client’s pre-manfactured ads. So, a socially conservative independent will see a different ad compared to a fiscally moderate liberal or a centrist independent with a laser focus on job creation as the election’s most-important issue.

Things are only going to heat up. Gernert says he foresees candidates in future election cycles doing a lot more with custom videos targeting specific voter segments, as well as putting a much bigger emphasis on how to deliver optimal ads on tablets and smartphones.

Joe Lichtenberg, VP of edge computing for Mirror Image Internet, sees a lot of his company’s clients implementing what he calls “dynamic creative optimization,” and wouldn’t be surprised to see this approach make its way into politics. Essentially, that means advertisers create templates that can be populated with custom content on the fly to fit each web user’s specific profile. Already, startups such as DataPop and BloomReach have built businesses around this practice for customizing web site content and ads on search engines.

Mirror Image hosts application logic for customers, including Resonate, on geographically dispersed edge servers so it can calculate incoming data and deliver content in real-time without requiring it to hit a centralized server somewhere.

Does it work?

The great thing about doing this type of targeting online is that campaigns can get pretty clear evidence of whether it works. Gernert said his company can track traditional metrics such as clickthroughs and length of time engaged in pre-roll video before skipping it and getting to the featured video. Thanks to the cookie-tracking policies on candidates’ web sites, it could be relatively easy to track whether site visits or other actions follow the consumption of personalized content. Resonate will even engage in some online polling to gauge effectiveness.

And while studies suggest that voters are turned off by the idea of being targeted — some respondents even say they’d be less likely to vote for a candidate who targeted them — it might not matter too much in the long term. For one, these personalization algorithms are complex and marketers are smart, so voters won’t necessarily know when or why they’re being targeted. Another reality is that how voters feel and how they vote doesn’t always go hand-in-hand, which is why negative ads persist despite rather widespread contempt for them.

If the data says microtargeting works, there’ll be no escaping campaign ads without a serious curtailment in the amount of data web sites, mobile apps and other platforms can collect about users. Until that happens, though, all our online activity just creates a smorgasbord of personal data upon which candidates are more than happy to feast. So, you tax-hating, gun-toting, gay-rights-supporting swing voter, get ready to know why both candidates have your back in 2016.

Feature image courtesy of Shutterstock user iQoncept.

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In the past, any truly public analysis of the performance of the candidates had to wait until the event was over, when the usual political operatives and pundits like former Clinton advisor James Carville would be called on by CNN or Fox News to pick a winner, criticize the moderator, or handicap future debates. We’ve always had real-time, horse-race-style discussion of these events, but it has almost always taken place in small groups — in bars, or at local viewing events, etc. Never before has there been a way to eavesdrop on a giant conversation about such a thing as it happens.

Game-time commentary: Good or bad?

That kind of game-time handicapping is great fun when it’s the Super Bowl, or the Academy Awards, or some other event with less at stake (although football fans might disagree about that description). But presidential debates — in theory, at least — are supposed to be important elements in the political process, which help undecided voters make up their minds and therefore can ultimately affect the course of political history. Does Twitter help or harm that process?

Hey Obama -- TRAIN WITH HILLARY. This is ROCKY III and she's your Apollo Creed. #eyeofthetiger

—
Patton Oswalt (@pattonoswalt) October 04, 2012

Some would argue the political process is something of a circus anyway, and that carefully stage-managed events like the debates are already a sideshow with little political value — and therefore the additional theatrical element added by real-time commentary isn’t going to have much effect. Many parts of the process are probably also ephemeral, and likely to die out relatively quickly: will there be long-term political repercussions from Mitt Romney’s mention of shutting down PBS, fueled by all of the parody accounts devoted to Big Bird and other characters that Twitter produced? Unlikely.

An optimist would say there is something very real to be gained by having people watch such debates for any reason — even if it’s just to follow along with the wisecracks on Twitter — because then at least there is a chance they might accidentally become more informed about political issues. According to Twitter’s graph of discussions during the debate, some of the biggest peaks in tweets-per-minute came when the two candidates were discussing Medicare. Were most of those jokes or partisan attacks, or did they actually contribute to anyone’s understanding of the issues? That’s hard to say.

The spin cycle is now measured in minutes

The rise of Twitter as a political force has definitely accelerated the metabolism of a campaign by orders of magnitude, to the point where political analysts now talk about a news cycle that is measured in minutes or hours instead of days or weeks. Is that ultimately a good thing for politics or democracy? Some have argued that it is beneficial in part because trumped-up stories or blind alleys can be defused much more quickly, or burn themselves out rather than dominating the spin cycle. But a chorus of Twitter responses can also add fuel to something that might not actually be meaningful.

“I can’t watch a debate anymore without having my iPhone in my hand. I don’t feel like I’m having the full experience if I’m not reading the reaction in real time.” — NBC News chief digital officer Vivian Schiller

On the plus side, some pointed out that Twitter users watching television and following along with the real-time discussion were clearly better off than the professional journalists who were attending the debate — and theoretically were supposed to provide some kind of expert analysis later — since all of those reporters were stuck in a separate room with a balky audio and video feed. And as Alex Howard at O’Reilly noted, it might have changed the debate in some interesting ways if some of the smart commentary and questions from Twitter users had actually made it into the debate itself.

During the debate, even some Obama supporters (at least the ones in my stream) seemed to quickly come to the conclusion that the President was off his game, that he was tired or even uninterested, and that Romney gained the upper hand by being more forceful. BuzzFeed’s Ben Smith actually declared Romney the winner only 42 minutes into the event. Those impressions were then reinforced by the pundits on the post-game talk shows. Within an hour, the story of the debate seemed to be that Obama had “lost” and Romney had “won,” even though some said the Republican candidate contradicted himself at a number of points.

Is any of that going to have a lasting effect on voters’ decisions, or the way that the campaigns react? Or is it just ephemera that will be gone in a matter of days, as Twitter users become infatuated with some other celebrity event or perceived injustice? It’s clear that for both voters and politicians, and the political operatives who run their campaigns, the Twitter-sphere’s instantaneous reaction to events is a reality they have to take into account — and it could be changing the way we engage with political issues in some important ways. Whether that’s good or bad remains to be seen.

Post and thumbnail images courtesy of Flickr user Aih and Shutterstock/iQoncept

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On Tuesday, MIT Technology Review reporter David Talbot wrote a post titled “The Real Debate Will Take Place on Twitter and Facebook.” It’s not an uncommon sentiment, as pollsters, marketers and anyone else whose job entails discerning public opinion is trying to use Twitter to find out just that information. And Talbot is right — on Thursday morning, probably earlier, analysts of all stripes will be poring through Twitter data to see who users thought won and lost the presidential debate, and what talking points struck a nerve.

Twitter itself will probably get into the act, too. The company has taken to posting tweets per minute during big events as a way of gauging their popularity, and it likely will supplement its regularly updated ranking of public sentiment toward President Barack Obama and challenger Mitt Romney with stats about how many tweets the debate generated.

Not so fast

However, in a column and subsequent blog post on Friday, Wall Street Journal “Numbers Guy” Carl Bialik laid out a convincing case for why Twitter is probably not too good an indicator of how excited the populace is about a given topic, or even how it feels. The difficulty in assessing the value of Twitter data really boils down to knowing what you’re looking for. Bialik serves up a litany of reasons Twitter might be ineffective at predicting, for example, elections or other broad issues of national concern, including:

• It’s a large sample size, but still just a fraction of the population.
• Even among internet users, Twitter skews toward a younger, more-connected demographic.
• Twitters undercounts total tweets when the system can’t make a link between tweets and a given event.
• The number of tweets per minute on any topic will naturally rise as Twitter’s user count rises.
• Tweeting may be a sign that someone is less engaged in an activity (e.g., watching a presidential debate) than someone watching intently.
• Sentiment analysis can be skewed by who’s tweeting about an issue (e.g., ardent supporters only, adversaries only, or the public at large).

Those are all good points, and it would be fair to call a fool anyone thinking Twitter alone is the answer to their data needs. For Twitter data alone, it might be true there are only a few uses cases where it might be better than more-traditional methods of assessing public opinion.

For example, if there’s one thing Twitter users appear to be great at, it’s consuming products and commenting on those experiences. Telephone surveys and focus groups take time and effort (and think about the demographic biases inherent in people who’ll take the time to do them), but a tweet only takes a few seconds and those opinions are often unsolicited and unfiltered. I rarely tweet about politics or things not related to my day job, but even I will chime in if my experience with a product, service, movie or airline has been particularly good or bad.

Damn, the Virgin America terminal at SFO is nice.I fly Southwest too much it seems.

— Derrick Harris (@derrickharris) March 23, 2012

And if you’re someone trying to reach a demographic that uses Twitter heavily, activity and sentiment on Twitter might be a good measure of how effective your message or product actually is. As Bialik’s column points out, a Pew Research study found that more than 30 percent of internet users between 18 and 24 years old are on Twitter, while others have found the average Twitter user is a 37-year-old woman.

Variety is the spice of life — and tweet data

What smart companies do today, though, and what anyone looking to derive meaning from Twitter data should do, is analyze it against other data sets that actually have meaning to them. Without context, tweets are just tweets, but part of what makes big data so big is the variety of data now available to analyze. Tying tweets to other data gives them, and the other data sources, meaning beyond their surface value.

A lot of insights might be gleaned over time by studying the correlation between Twitter activity and particular marketing campaigns or campaign strategies, or perhaps spikes and dropoffs in sales. Adding in some advanced sentiment analysis, one could find how users’ feelings change with those increases or decreases in activity, and perhaps how strongly based on the intensity of their language.

Going forward, I think the real value of Twitter will come from analyzing using Twitter to actually gauge how specific demographics or types of individuals are feeling about certain topics. One could limit analysis of Twitter activity or sentiment to users by geographic area, or who identify themselves as “father,” “mother,” “Java programmer” or whatever. It’s the sort of micro-targeting political campaigns already engage in today, only digital.

Taking a page from the Klout playbook, pollsters or marketing managers might actually look for trends among influential Twitter users (however their algorithms score influence) whose voices have a broader reach than some random 20-year-old from Miami. As the Technology Review‘s Talbot points out, this is already happening to some degree, even if firms are just identifying influential users and not yet targeting them with messages.

Services such as Gnip and DataSift already provide much of this information as part of their social data offerings. At our Structure: Europe conference later this month in Amsterdam, I’ll actually be speaking with DataSift Co-Founder and CTO Nick Halstead about how a company can go about setting up an infrastructure that lets them take advantage of Twitter data successfully and in real-time.

Is data on how many people are tweeting or how they feel really telling about who’ll win an election or what will win Best Picture? Probably not. But seeing the rates of tweets pick up and the sentiment sour every time you espouse a certain opinion, update a certain product or, say, place more limits on how developers can use your API could be truly meaningful information.

Feature image courtesy of Shutterstock user Pavel Ignatov.

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