Gavin Newsom produces a high level quality web video to open his campaign for governor of California.

The testimonials from average people, strong economic imagery, and tight positive messaging fits a ‘new kind of candidate’ and campaign for 2010.

I also like the references to his website,  Facebook and Twitter – giving people a place to go to follow the campaign and get involved.

Here I stray from the business of politics:

Recently, I joined twitter.  And like the many other people using this online social networking / information pushing platform, I have an opinion.  

I was hesitant at first to join twitter.  My first taste of this online platform was not inspiring.  I read a colleague’s cross twitter posts on facebook, covering all details of personal travel, fast food preferences, home supply store visits and what they were serving for breakfast and dinner.  Not only could I care less, I was quickly becoming annoyed.  

While I appreciate online social networking for the ease by which I can follow friends, family and colleagues’ lives personal and professional, I really don’t care to receive a running commentary on their every move or the minutiae of their daily decisions.  I was reluctant to join twitter, as I believed this was another online place encouraging useless and time consuming social commentary.

It wasn’t until recently, on an outing with a small group of new media specialist friends of mine, did I get a taste of the type of important and interesting information being produced on twitter.  

I was encouraged so I joined.

At first, admittedly, I was a bit lost.  While, I take pride in my understanding of a vast array of online platforms and new media technology, I was perplexed by the almost bare bones format and feel of twitter.  I was eager to figure out how I fit in with all the other twitterers.  What did they gain by their participation and who cared to read what I was doing?

I turned to my friend, Liz Mair, who gave me a quick tutorial on twitter’s most relevant features and characteristics.  I was making my entrance and I sure didn’t want to trip onto the main stage.  If you do join, I recommend calling someone you know who is on and ask them a few questions…I’m sure they’ll be happy to guide you.

So here’s what I learned.  I hope these tips on initial steps help some of my other friends considering joining twitter.

1. When you join twitter pick a recognizable handle (meaning: one that best displays the closest recognition of your name)
2. Allow twitter to rummage through your contacts, like facebook friend finder, so you can view who else is on twitter that you know.  This will allow you to instantly begin following what others, who you know, are saying.  By doing so, you can quickly pick up on the lingo, etiquette  and culture of the twitter platform.
3. Use the “find people” feature to look up your favorite news sites, blogs, websites, celebrities and anyone else of interest to you  professionally or personally.  You might be surprised to see who is on.  Follow them.
4. Set your preferences on how you would like people to view your tweets (messages).  Some people are open others are more private, choose what fits your personality.
5. Start writing tweets.  These are short messages that allow you to convey anything to the world or to your “followers” (people who have shown interest in seeing what you write). The more you write, the more comfortable you get with the platform.
6. Use good judgement on your posts.  I liken information sharing on social networks to behavior you would expect in any public square.  Most people in a public setting would not choose to say wildly inappropriate or offensive things.  Also, in public settings people tend to not take interest in every minor detail of your existence.  These same truths tend to hold true in the online social interactive domain.  Often times this behavior leads to a lonely online experience…and who wants that?

From my short time on twitter, I’ve found it to be, not only interesting and fun, but very helpful in getting news and information at a very fast  pace.  I always enjoyed learning from collective wisdom.  As a political operative and consultant, I rely heavily on collective wisdom for better understanding news, people, events and cultural implications.

Twitter allows you to be hand fed information, commentary and links to articles on the many things you may find interesting and moving.  I chose people and entities to follow, whom I already knew and trust.  I now surf the web less, because these respected sources are gathering and sharing much of the information that I would normally hunt for on bulky websites.  

I’ll leave this last example of a recent event that really hit home twitter for me.  Earlier this week, I found out about the US Airways flight going down in the Hudson river, by the many tweets of the people I’ve been following.  I quickly went on news sites to find out more details and information.  The news didn’t even make most of the sites I quickly scanned.  The ones that did report that quickly, had no photos and little information.  Then I saw someone on twitter post a link to guy whom they knew, also on twitter, who was on the ferry closest to the plane in the water.

This guy had posted up close and personal pictures that he took from his handheld.  His quick comments also provided a feeling of excitement and concern as he was first on the scene to the crash landing.

See my twitter post: defining moment in twitter history ***http://tinyurl.com/8hj3ru***

This guy, whom I didn’t know had scooped all the media – in NYC no less!!!  It was then, an hour later, did I see his very images on the homepage of drudgereport.  

Not all posts are this exciting or interesting.  Some are funny and some are boring.  But my conclusion: tail is starting to wag the dog.

Find me on twitter…..http://twitter.com/BrianFDonahue.

A few months ago I came to the conclusion that the cable news networks (FNC, CNN, MSNBC, CNBC) would do considerably well during this presidential season – outperforming 2004 and general expectations.  I also made the assumption that the cable news networks would do even better during the course of both Party conventions.  Now, I’m not claiming that these predictions were anything earth shattering, as anyone who pays attention to voter viewing habits, election coverage and ratings probably could have come to the same conclusion a few months ago as well.

However, I was so sure of this magnetic effect of viewership to the cable networks that I made several arguments in the past few weeks to clients and buyers to consider putting much more emphasis into purchasing airtime during nightly convention action.

So it does warm my heart to see hard data reaffirming my prediction.

In a story posted today, Matea Gold of the L.A. Times reported a small piece on the convention viewership draw to broadcast and the cable networks.

The opening night of the Democratic National Convention drew more than 22 million TV viewers, a 20% larger audience than in 2004, according to Nielsen Media Research.

NBC drew the most viewers, pulling an average of 4.71 million viewers for its hour long special anchored by Brian Williams, up 4% from four years ago.

Overall, the picture was even rosier for cable news networks, whose decision to devote nearly all their programming to convention coverage paid off.

CNN averaged 4.27 million viewers, beating the broadcast networks for the first time with its convention coverage.

All three posted major gains over 2004. 

There are a few reasons for the substantial increase that I predicted.  Here are a few supporting points – some are more obvious than others:

Check out after the jump

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