Are Political Campaigns Stalking You?

Today on NPR Brian Naylor reports on how political campaigns are using technology to track voters across the internet:

"'If you sign up to use one of these campaign apps on Facebook, you're given a little warning that says this app is now going to find out everything that you've made public about yourself on Facebook, as well as the names and IDs of all your friends,' says [Micah] Sifry."

"The campaigns are very interested in where we go online, whether it's Facebook or a news site. And if you've ever wondered how campaign banner ads seem to pop up on every site you visit, blame one of those little data markers in your browser, the cookie. Visit a campaign website, Sifry says, and you get a cookie, which gets shared with other websites you visit.

'The cookie that they've placed on your site from visiting their website is telling those other websites, "Hey, this is a person who visited the Barack Obama website; let's show them one of those Obama ads,"' says Sifry.

Sifry says there is a danger of a backlash, that voters might feel they're being stalked by a campaign."

The comments from Sifry illustrate the impetus for 121Campaign, which allows a voter to interact with a campaign on a one-to-one basis, while protecting the voter from having their privacy invaded or from being exploited on social media.  

Reflections on Launch Day at Betaspring

Our official Launch Day at Betaspring was one week ago.  Now some reflections...


1.  The twelve weeks at Betaspring were the fastest of my life.  Time flies when you're having fun as they say. I would add that it literally seems to evaporate into thin air when you're having fun, hard at work on a start up.


2.  Accepting a spot in Betaspring and moving to Providence was the right decision.  In Boston, you can easily feel like you're at the center of the start up universe, and I'm sure people out in Silicon Valley feel the same way.  But that's not necessarily a good thing. Being surrounded by other start ups makes it easy to get lost in the crowd.  Companies that are in completely different spaces become competitors because they're vying for time and access to the same mentors and investors that you are. In Providence the start up community is comparatively nascent, yet very solid and developed. You still have an opportunity to meet with other entrepreneurs and share ideas.  There a tons of great mentors which I'd say you have better access to.  If you're in Betaspring, investors will come from Boston just to see you.  More importantly, the entire City of Providence seems to be rooting for you.  Everyone I meet is excited to hear that we're starting our company in Providence.  Here, people are quick to offer help and support in anyway they can, which is great for an entrepreneur.


3.  We are one of the first Personal Media companies.  TechCocktail had a write-up on Betaspring's launch day.  Our company was in the "Other" category.  The category we should have been in is Personal Media.  That's what our platform does, it allows you to personalize media for a specific individual and allow them to get that without requiring them to opt-in.  I believe personal media is the successor to social media.  As the internet becomes increasingly accessed via mobile and as people have various app alerts distracting them from the content they're viewing, it becomes important to make their experiences personally relevant in order to get them engaged.  That's what 121nexus is about.  We're glad to lead the charge.


Betaspring is just the beginning.  We have a lot of hard work ahead of us, but we sure are excited to do it!

The Betaspring Difference

On Monday, April 9th we presented our company to the world for the first time at the Greater Providence Chamber of Commerce's annual Congressional Breakfast with the entire Rhode Island Congressional Delegation: Senator Reed, Senator Whitehouse, Rep. Langevin and Rep. Cicilline. The opportunity came to us from Laurie White, the President of the Greater Providence Chamber of Commerce. I met Laurie at the Betaspring open house on March 8th and just a month later she had me in front of the not only Rhode Island's Congressional Delegation, but also 500 members of the business community. That leads me to the Betaspring difference and why we're excited to be building our company in Providence.

Betaspring is the start up accelerator that brought us to Providence. We were selected along with 15 other teams to participate out of nearly 250 applicants. Getting accepted into Betaspring has been game-changing for us. As I said when I was interviewed for this blog post, “We found a lot of champions here in Providence that helped us get connected and we did in Providence in 12 weeks what it took us 12 months to do alone in Boston. We were a snowflake and now we are an avalanche. It’s fun to build a company when you are excited about what you are working on and you can do it in an environment like Betaspring."

The 15 other teams here are all great. We are constantly collaborating with one another on our projects. We are all focused on our individual success but we also want to see our colleagues succeed as well. Being in Betaspring is like being in a fraternity where everyone is super bright and motivated (note: we do in fact have a ping-pong table and a kegerator at Betaspring HQ).

For anyone starting up a company I would invite them to do it in Providence. People here will be rooting for you and you can join an emerging entrepreneurial community that I'm proud to be a part of.

When Bringing Voters Online Goes Wrong

In a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, by Amy Schatz, the complexities of interacting with voters digitally is discussed. She starts with Next Gingrich as an example.

"Newt Gingrich has often told voters during the presidential campaign to learn more about him by going online.

But many people who typed "Newt" into Google just before Nevada's caucuses saw more than the traditional search results on Mr. Gingrich. They also saw an advertisement attacking his stance on housing—purchased by the campaign of rival Mitt Romney.

On Twitter, people who used Mr. Gingrich's subject marker #250gas, a reference to his promise to cut gasoline prices, at times have seen an ad from Barack Obama touting the president's own energy proposals."

The foregoing highlights some of the reasons that 121campaign is an important tool for campaigns to use. With 121campaign, you leave nothing to chance. Using the platform's unique codes to establish your one-to-one relationship with a voter, you're then directing the voter to the exact content that you want them to see. Opponents can do nothing to disrupt the process of bringing a voter online using 121campaign. It's the most risk-free and efficient way to bring a voter to your campaign online.

Introducing 121nexus

121nexus is a platform for engaging with audiences on a one to one basis and providing highly relevant and dynamic digital content to them. The vision for this company is born out of months of hard work on the part of myself and my co-founder, Albert Ho.

We began to build this company in earnest in the summer of 2011. It is now officially the spring of 2012 and I'm pleased to say that we're on track to build something special. With what we have learned we decided it was time to rebrand ourselves as 121nexus from our original corporate name, AgileQR, Inc.

The problem with the name AgileQR is that it over emphasized the QR code aspect of our platform. QR codes are just a feature of what we do. They simply embody the unique link that we create in order to provide a recipient of that link with a personal portal into the person or organization that gave it to them. The ability to create a one-to-one relationship through the portals we create and serve dynamic, relevant content is what ultimately makes our platform special.

We chose the word nexus because its definition is: a means to connect, tie, link. 121 (one-to-one) simply convey the nature of the connections that our platform allows users to establish.

With our initial products, 121campaign and 121constituency, we aim to improve the democratic process and empower voters and constituents with the information they need to know in order to make better decisions and contribute to democracy.

The 2012 election cycle provides us with a tremendous opportunity to validate our technology. But it's only the beginning. We will change the way direct marketing is conducted, the way people are brought on to the web, and the way content is personalized for individuals. We are the web's premier Web 3.0 platform.

Check back here for updates as we continue through the second half of Betaspring, the start up accelerator program based in Providence which we're currently participating in. It's a been a game changing experience for us and we will dedicate a blog to it in the near future.

Lessons from Romney Etch a Sketch Gaffe

There’s been so shortage of media coverage on the Romney campaign’s recent “Etch a Sketch” gaffe. But in case you missed it, here’s what happened.

Appearing on CNN's "Starting Point” Eric Fehrnstrom, Romney’s senior advisor, said that the absence of a GOP challenge could allow Romney to "hit a reset button for the fall campaign. Everything changes. It's like Etch A Sketch," he said. "You can shake it up and we start all over again."

This lead to immediate attacks from Romney's opponents. Rick Santorum said, "He will say what he needs to say to win the election before him, and if he has to say something different because it's a different election and a different group of voters, he will say that too."

Romney has since responded to the statement, saying that “The issues I’m running on will be exactly the same. I’m running as a conservative Republican, I was a conservative Republican governor, I’ll be running as a conservative republican nominee, excuse me, at that point hopefully, nominee for president. The policies and positions are the same.”

What Romney and all politicians should learn is that changing your positions within your platform is bad. My impression is that what Fehrnstrom ought to have said is that they will highlight and emphasize different aspects of their platform for the general election.

That's what 121Campaign is all about. It recognizes that different issues appeal to different voters. That's why it makes it easy for political campaigns to customize landing pages for voters to feature the issues that they care about most, in order to get them more engaged in the campaign.

For campaigns to be agile and effective their focus should be on highlighting relevant content for individual voters and driving engagement because to do otherwise it does indeed come off as "flip-flopping."