The Dean Space people have been doing something very similar to this for a while. They're using Drupal rather than Scoop, but the idea is fairly similar.

The building of political communities is definitely the heart and soul of the Dean campaign and I am glad to see Clark doing this as well. I have my doubts about whether he has enough time to pull this together to make a difference in this election, but the prospects for the future are positive.

I've been saying for the last few weeks that, regardless of the outcome, the Democrats would be foolish to just let the Dean campaign operation fade into the ether. If he wins then it should become the vehicle by which he sells his plans to the American people. If he loses then it should become the foundation for the opposition and the organization tool for the next round.

"but they are missing the key aspect of online community, which is a sense of ownership to a group or affiliation -- geographic or special-interest -- providing a little bit of ownership of the campaign to every person who wants it, and providing a robust set of communities online that allow people to talk and plan events and do grassroots campaigning,'"

I've got to disagree with this part of the article. I'm part of Libertarians for Dean, Virginia for Dean, Tidewater for Dean, and the local college Dean group (WMD, William and Mary for Dean). There are geographic and special-interest groups out there for Dean, they just aren't specifically created by the campaign. Edwards already has geographic blogging, IIRC.

I think Dean already has special interest groups like this, but they are harder to start and maintain and harder to find and integrate into the campaign. The Dean interest groups (blogs, yahoo groups, discussion boards, state organizations) all started independently of the campaign, which is why they are all of such differing levels of quality and activity. Again, the idea that Dean didn't pick the Internet, the Internet picked Dean.

Clark had some of that going on, and they want to bring it together under one umbrella and make it easier to start your own group. I think that's pretty cool and will get them a lot of activity. Giving everyone a "yourname.forclark.com" blog is neat. But you lose some of the variations of the independent efforts -- everything looks the same.

What should Dean do to counter this? Integrate the tools they have more closely and provide a "Dean news" portal which aggregates the RSS feeds of all of the various Dean sites plus upcoming events and so forth.

Color me extremely skeptical.

The components to a successful community building strategy are not just technology, but messaging. Matthew Gross is a writer, not a technologist. Look at the Edwards blog, which has some of these components already. It's nice and empty, and very slick. You can do exactly what you talk about here on the Edwards blog, but no one does it.

Dean's message is about inclusion, about space, and about opening up politics. The grassroots response to that drives the technology. Clark is using the technology to drive the grassroots, rather than messaging.

I have serious doubts as to whether this strategy will be effective. Since the campaign started, grassroots excitement has really slowed, and I don't know who's going to whip up the supporters in a positive frenzy. We were doing something like this during the draft Clark movement, but I don't think it will work now, because the messaging is so muddled.

The new 'Southern strategy' is part and parcel of the shift towards old politics. Clark is cutting out parts of the country, just like Gore in 2000 and Clinton in 1992. Dean is trying to go South, he's trying to nationalize the election. It breaks my heart, because while I don't think Dean can nationalize the election, it doesn't look like Clark is nationalizing it.

I'm also a notch skeptical. This can be interpreted two ways. First Ezra's take. Then there is the "top down' take. By utilizing scoop to bring all the diverse groups in house, you take a lot of the independence away. Who exactly will now be in charge of "Left Handed Hairdressers" for Clark? Obviously, whomever the official campaign allows to be, since they ultimately control the Scoop based mega-site. And since it's all under one system, the official campaign also has total final control over everything posted.

Say they want to pass along a message. Instead of having to ask various groups, they can do a universal post to everyone's sub-blog. If a sub-blog posts something they don't like, they go in and delete it.

It just seems more of the same half hearted net grassroots bit. Really love the revenue channel and the visible public support, but the chaotic freedom and independent voices? Er...not so much.

I have to piggyback on the comments of MattS and Chris Anderson that all the technology in the world is pointless if the message is not there to bring people to using that wonderful technology. I am not saying that Clark has a bad message, it is just that he is having trouble building the communities in the real world.

I have shown at my blog that Clark has not achieved growth in the number of his Meet-Up venues. Instead his campaign has reduced the number of venues by 30% from October to November.

He is achieving roughly similiar numerical growth in his Meet-Ups when compared to Dean, but the metric that I am using to measure his growth is flawed as it is not a Meet-up to Meet-Up metric.

I am jazzed that Clark wants to build a community and build off the ideas that Dean has introduced for self-organizing. I want every candidate to do the same, but I am just not convinced that he'll be too successful here.

"Dean's message is about inclusion, about space, and about opening up politics. The grassroots response to that drives the technology. Clark is using the technology to drive the grassroots, rather than messaging."

MattS, you got it exactly.

The more control you apply, the less community you have. Decentralization is the magic word. Decentralization is the reason the Internet encourages community building. Decentralization gives each person involved the sense that what he says or does matters.

Decentralization means that you accept ideas from wherever they come. Everybody that participates is included. Of course you cannot use everybody's ideas, but as long as each person knows that his ideas are considered, he is happy.

This is what Dean seems to be doing.

Too little, too late.

1. Hlinko should have had this ready to go to capitalize on the campaign launch.

2. The campaign has to show willingness to listen to their supporters.

3. People who support Clark most often cite his "electability." These types of supporters are not the type to get all worked up and put in a lot of time for their candidate.