Direct Access to Voters — An Advantage in Politics
A recent news article on PBS.org makes a great point about the value of social media (and directly correlates to one of my favorite talking points about our Campaign 2.0™ iPhone application) — social media removes the filter of the Mainstream Press and puts campaigns and organizations directly in touch with their supporters and with those who want to learn more about them.  It allows the campaign or organization to structure their message in their own words, and to help their supporters d

Here Comes Android!
We’ve been expecting for some time that phones using Google’s Android operating system were going to be serious players in the smartphone market, and sure enough, it’s happening!  The number of devices available is set to jump from just one in August to as many as 30 by the end of the year.  Three of the four major U.S. carriers are now offering Android devices – can you guess which one is not? The fact that AT&T is not (yet?) selling an Android device is no accident – it’s almost certainly a concession they’ve had to make to Apple as part of their agreement to remain the sole U.S. ca

What is “2.0”?
Here at MTB Mobile our core product is called “NonProfit 2.0”.  Our soon-to-be-released product for political campaigns is called “Politics 2.0”.  The “2.0” doesn’t mean these are the second release of the products – it means these products are built on the key concepts of “Web 2.0”.  But what is Web 2.0? Anyone who spends time on the Internet these days will have heard the term Web 2.0 many times, but it’s generally used without explanation.  Broadly, it refers to a new generation of uses of the Internet that make it more

The Democratizing Power of Social Media
It’s been said by many people, but perhaps best by Clay Shirky: “The Internet lowers barriers to action,” he says.  “It doesn’t make people behave differently – it just lets them do more of what they would do anyway.”  (That’s paraphrased, but close.) Shirky is a researcher and sch

Why so few NonProfit iPhone Apps?
(Full disclosure: I work for a company that creates iPhone applications for nonprofit organizations.) As of September 2009 there are more than 85,000 applications in the iTunes App Store, with more than 2 billion downloads in just over a year. The Android Store has passed 9,000 applications, the RIM store is well over the 1,500 mark, and even Palm seems to have found its footing with the WebOS store and is adding applications at an acceler