Who doesn't like shiny new tools to win elections bigger, better, faster, and harder. With the presidential election coming up next year, there are a lot of new companies entering the space and some of them show a lot of promise. These four companies are getting a lot of buzz.
NationBuilder: NationBuilder is a new service but is constantly adding useful features. As the name implies, you can build your nation there. Whether it's a website, donations, blogging, calendar events, text messaging, or volunteer outreach NationBuilder makes it happen.
There is a really strong team behind NationBuilder. It's parent company is 3dna which also operates act.ly, the Twitter petition tool.
I have a sandbox account, and I've been really impressed with the functionality. There are a number of how to videos on their website, which are worth checking out to see the nuts and bolts of the product to see how it can help your campaign.
ElectNext: ElectNext is like a dating site but to help voters pick the candidates that are most in line with their political views. I tried it out and had a pretty good experience with it. Being an informed voter, I knew pretty well which national candidates for president and U.S. Senate I am most in line with and those that I'm not. The results were pretty accurate
Votizen: First, kudos to the look and feel of Votizen. It's user interface is beautiful! Second, it's a great tool to keep tabs on your elected officials, communicate with them using social media, and more recently, to endorse candidates.
It's this last feature that's particularly interesting to campaigns. As Votizen matures, it should be a great place to connect with actively engaged citizens with a strong reach on social media who are supporting your candidacy.
D2D Campaigns: Oops, I held off writing this post because I kept trying to make plans to Skype with one of the founders, Julian Haigh, but apparently I kept forgetting to be on and Skype wasn't the most user friendly thing ever (I use Google Voice).
Anyhow, who isn't sick and tired of data entry from canvasses and phone banks? D2D Campaigns has an online and mobile solution and it looks pretty sharp. Check out this promotional video to see what I'm talking about.
VoterBuzz: According to their website, "The nation's very first social networking app geared specifically toward politics.
I just found out about this mobile application. You can check out all of the features are forthcoming when the service launches, sometime yet this month.
If you're a techie, this is an exciting time to be involved with politics. Campaigns and elections is changing rapidly and we'll soon start to change how we do business not in cycles but from year to year and primary to general partly thanks to innovations from these startups.