The Tendo View

In a move demonstrating the Obama administration’s commitment to technology to continue possibly the most brilliant voter engagement efforts ever, it was announced recently that the president plucked a product manager from Google to serve as “director of citizen participation.”

The appointee, Katie Jacobs Stanton, formerly a group product manager at Google, worked on Google Moderator, a tool the Obama campaign used to let the public submit questions during debates. What’s the big deal? For starters, it demonstrates how well the Obama administration gets it in terms of understanding Web 2.0 technology and audience engagement.

Secondly, it underscores how critical technology is to facilitating human interaction these days. Notice that they didn’t choose someone with more traditional political chops, such as a community organizer.

The online story I read in MediaPostNews didn’t specify Stanton’s exact responsibilities, but it indicated a focus on moderating online forums and facilitating the administration’s dialogue with the public.

A quote in the story from Forrester Research analyst Shar VanBoskirk sums up nicely the context of this appointment for marketers in the private sector: “If we think about Obama’s administration like a corporation, the smartest corporations are ones that put tools in place to help them listen to, speak with, embrace, energize, and support customers.”

The White House is proving adept at Web 2.0 and conversational marketing. Where are you with your conversational marketing efforts? —Bill Golden, managing editor