Sorry about the loss of pictures, this article has been transferred so many times. It’s a good review, so I still want it posted.
Original Review of MyMitt on Vote-pedia Blog
The Mitt Romney Action Center, Also known as MyMitt, is a social platform for Romney supporters hosted on mittromney.com. According to the American President Project, the platform (origonally named Team Mitt Action Center) was released in 2007, to be leveraged during the ’08 election.
From what The American President Project’s article (dated 2007) reported, the platform has changed since it’s initial launch. Users have always had the opportunity to modify their profile, make campaign phone calls, invite friends and donate. They have added a store to the dashboard since ’07 and it seems like they’ve removed the ‘social’ aspect of being able to connect and engage other users, as well as the ability to schedule events outside of fundraising.
The Dashboard
The dashboard is fairly straight forward. Metrics on campaigns ran, amount donated and money raised. With a click of a button users may donate, create a fundraiser, invite friends, shop and campaign via phone. Users are able to edit and update their account information, although there does not seem to be any functionality that enables other users to view that information.
Create a Fundraiser
Creating a fundraiser requires the user to enter a fundraiser name, monetary goals, basic information and append a picture. Entering the information and selecting save will take the user to their fundraiser page – as seen below. Users may invite friends, share the link socially, and give 160-character ‘tweet’-like updates – which when attempting to do so I recieved the error: “Validation error, please try again. If this error persists, please contact the site administrator.”
My fundraiser page may be viewed by clicking here.When using email to personally invite someone, the platform will generate a variable invite code unique to each recipient. If the user follows the link and donates, the platform will attribute the donation to that invite.
http://www.mittromney.com/node/614191/6bUZ9Hyg – Example of the variable link for the invite.
Invite a friend
It doesn’t matter if anything is typed into the given text box, as hitting the ‘Send Invite’ will take the end-user to another screen near-identical to the fundraiser email invitation screen. The links included in the email contain the same level of variable as the fundraising links. For the fundraising invitation emails, a variable name was included (in my case nathan hammond, no capitals even though I included them during signup). For the Action Center invite, my email was used instead.
Gear up
The gear up button simply redirects the user to store.mittromney. There consumers may purchase Romney swag, including; shirts, buttons, hoodies, totes, stickers, and pins, among other things. Check out the store for yourself by following that link
Donate
Clicking on the ‘Contribute’ button will redirect users to Mitt Romney’s donation page. Check it out for yourself.
Make calls for Mitt
Clicking on the call button will redirect users to Mitt Romney’s call tool. A separate signup and log-in is required for the call tool. Users may signup for the call tool without signing up for the Action Center. Upon signing up the user will be taken to a page containing three tabs; Home, Tutorial and Begin Calling. The home tab displays a Romney’s logo centered on the screen. This logo is unclickable. The tutorial tab contains the same embedded YouTube video as seen below:
YouTube supplies metrics on most videos. Those metrics are displayed below:
Total views: 4,322
| Ratings: 4 | Comments: 0 | Favorites: 0 | ||||||
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Significant discovery events
| Date | Event | Views | |
|
A
|
07/07/12 | First referral from related video – FLS Volunteer Connect User Tutorial | 2 |
|
B
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07/07/12 | First referral from YouTube search – fls volunteer connect user tutorial | 1 |
|
C
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07/07/12 | First referral from related video – Data Connect | 1 |
|
D
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07/05/12 | First referral from Google search – fls volunteer connect youtjbe | 1 |
|
E
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06/21/12 | First referral from – Google | 1 |
|
F
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05/20/12 | First embedded on – youtube.com | 2 |
|
G
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04/23/12 | First embedded on – mittromney.com | 3,607 |
|
H
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04/23/12 | First view from a mobile device | 330 |
|
I
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04/23/12 | First referral from – mittromney.com | 46 |
|
J
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04/18/12 | First referral from YouTube – /my_videos | 11 |
This video is most popular in:
Darker the green, the greater the interest. I find it amusing that Romney’s video is being viewed world-wide.
There are two scripts available: One for if the recipient answers and one for the machine.
Voter answers:
Voter Name(s)
| 1) | *********** |
Hi, this is ___. I wanted to call to talk to you about the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold Obamacare. Despite the Court’s decision, Obamacare is still bad law and bad for Colorado. If we want to get rid of Obamacare, we are going to have to replace President Obama. Mitt Romney will repeal Obamacare on Day One, which is why we need to do everything we can to get him elected.
1) Can Mitt count on your support?
Yes
No
Undecided
Refused
2) Thank you for your support! I’m actually a volunteer calling from Romney for President. We are working to build our volunteer team in Colorado. Would you be interested in volunteering for the campaign?
Yes
No
Maybe
Refused
|
Close:Thanks! A representative from the campaign will be in touch with you very soon.
For more information on the campaign you can visit RomnneyCO.com or email us at TeamCO@mittromney.com.
This call was paid for by Romney for President, Inc.
5 Notes
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Call Response Code
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Instructions:When you are done dialing or would like to take a break, please disconnect your phone line and close your browser. |
Answering Machine
In the event of an answering machine, the platform will prompt the user to click on a button that will broadcast an automated message to the machine. The platform prompts the user not to leave their own voice-mail.
Romney’s calling solution
The platform isn’t whitelabeled very well. Clicking on the Romney logo in the left-hand corner will direct users to FLS Connect, instead of Romney’s site, like one would expect. The companies name is included in the platform footer as well. FLS Connect is a campaigning and data solution exclusive to the conservative party. I quoted their ‘About Us’ section below:
FLS Connect History
FLS Connect has developed into a political and constituent communication company that is accountable to our clients, innovative in our approach and determined to help win elections and further a conservative agenda. We couple state-of-the-art technology with pioneering minds to develop programs that deliver the right message to the right people at the right time.
FLS Connect started with a staff of seven people in 1999 and within a year, had worked with a winning Presidential campaign, multiple Congressional and gubernatorial candidates and state parties and grew into one of the most efficient and effective voter contact and fundraising companies the industry has ever seen.
Today, FLS Connect has opened multiple call centers, built a staff of over 350 personnel and added cutting edge technology, products and processes to create a multi-functional organization that develops partnerships with clients with a focus on excellence, integrity and victory.
But we won’t stop adapting. We know that to win, we can’t bank on the strategies of the past. With unparalleled service and products and ongoing development, we’re a far cry from your basic telemarketing company.
Using Google to do a ‘site-search’ for “Volunteer-Connect”, the platform FLS Connect developed for autoamted calling, will reveal one other client; Freedomworks. I’ve also analysed FLS Connects “backlinks”, or links directed towards their site, but could not determine any other clients through links.
Profile
Users are able to change their personal and professional information. Users are also able to sync their social media’s with their MyMitt profile. The permissions for MyMitt connects are not nearly as invasive as Obama’s Facebook app. The permissions for Facebook and Twitter below. The LinkedIn doesn’t work, and I don’t have any of the other socials (Yahoo, AOL, OpenID) so I didn’t bother checking. The Google only requests email and name. I used Google to signup (synced account but did not sign-in using Google) and even when disconnected, Google will no longer prompt me for permissions, meaning I cannot copy and paste them. Romney app requests permission to change twitter profile. That was the only thing I felt to be somewhat intrusive.
Where the social media?
It would seem that there would be a greater social aspect to this platform. MyMitt had friends lists back in ’07, something that is not available on the newest platform. I do not see anything in the platform that would suggest that users could connect with other users. Without that functionality, I’m assuming that profile information is for data-mining purposes only.
There is also the points (see above) which I see no relevance to. I’m assuming this is either something from back in ’07, or some form of functionality not yet implemented.
My Opinion
It seems as though the platform is not quite finished. It seems as though it was revamped for the 2012 election, and is still in production. There are several things not functioning, such as; social log-in, fundraiser updates, LinkedIn account sync and the email ‘invite friends’ dialog box on the dashboard.
There is no FAQ for the platform. I’d love to review the FAQ and figure out what the points are for. I’m sure the FAQ would contain other relevant information as well.
Everything is setup to have a social aspect, and from the American President Project page, it’s implied that a former version of the platform contained a social element, where users could connect with other users.
It seems as the Action Center consists of the fundraiser creation tool exclusively. All other content and functionality may be used by end-users not registered under the Action Center, and the call tool requires another log-in to use.
By Googling “site:www.mittromney.com “/action/fundraise” (displaying results with the /action/fundraise in the URL) Google reports: Page 1 of 35 results (0.10 seconds). Looking through the fundraisers, it’s apparent that a “black hat ‘search-engine optimization’ service provider” thought that MyMitt would be a great place to build backlinks. Raw HTML shows-up as copy and none of the URLs link. Even if they did link, seeing how the anchor text isn’t appended, it wouldn’t do the SEO’er too much good. Besides, I’m sure there aren’t too many links pointing towards the fundraisers, so I’m doubting Google is spending that much time crawling them.
Browsing the search results will still give a comprehensive list of all the active fundraisers and give some insight into the amount of use MyMitt receives.
My next post will compare the two dashboards – Obama vs Romney, and I’ll be monitoring both dashboards to see if new features get implemented.
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