I wonder how long it will take them to sort this one out. Don’t tell… it’ll be our little internet secret.
Observers of this blog will not that in recent weeks I’ve been adding technorati tags to the bottom of my posts. The main reason I do that is so that other people who are interested in what I’m writing about can easily find my blog to read about what they are interested in from my perspective.
So, I have a feeling this little game is going to be exploited in the upcoming election cycle.
What is it?
Let’s say I post about how much I think Al Gore is sexy. Well, in fact Al Gore is an attractive man but I wouldn’t call him sexy because I don’t swing from that side of the plate.
So the mere mention of his name will make a couple people who are monitoring technorati for the search term "Al Gore" take notice. So they may visit my site to see what it’s all about… no big deal in web land. It’s called "ego searching" since you can actually set up an RSS feed for any term on the internet and you’ll be notified as soon as someone posts something with that search term. How do I know? I have a few ego searches in my feed!
But if I use the technorati tag "All Gore" on this post, the post will automatically appear on sites like GoreHub.com. See… sites are popping up all over which are actually publishing links to stuff that people think their readers may be interested in. They can’t moderate what goes on there, only the search parameters which populate the feed. In other words, there are websites about donkey’s where the text about donkey’s isn’t written by a donkey expert… it just populates with blog posts about donkey’s.
How will this effect the elections?
Let’s say you are a supported of Barack Obama for President instead of the former Vice President who never said he invented the internet but people claim that he did say that. (Say "Barack Obama Mama" five times fast, it’s fun!) In order for Pro-Obama supporters to get anti-Gore messages on Al Gore’s websites… all they’d have to do is put a technorati tag for "Al Gore."
Is it really that simple?
Uh… it is. It’s the easiest hack you could ever do.
Does this really matter?
In the past elections were won and lost by controlling the message on television. In 2008, the person who can control the message of bloggers and internet media will be the President of the United States. Don’t believe me? Just ask the people running the campaigns.
Is that the only trick to the election?
Actually, no. Let me clarify and say that I think the person who manages Web 2.0 resources the best will be President of the United States. Allow me to be an active supporter. Allow me to support you with your resources. Make them fun to use. Make them catchy. Design them in a way that allows me to be creative. Allow me to take your logo and tweak it. Allow me to remix your videos. Create that kind of stuff… and you will win the election.
In 1960 Kennedy defeated Nixon after out-using the media during the first televised debates. 47 years later, the candidate who masters Web 2.0 in a way that makes them look like the other candidate has a sore leg and a five o’clock shadow will call the White House home in January 2009.
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