(I would have promoted this even if it didn’t come from someone running for statewide office. This is fascinating. – promoted by JulieWaters)
Understanding the needs of our state and bringing more Vermonters into the political process are two important ways we can help move our state forward. That’s why yesterday we launched a new interactive application for Facebook that allows people to share, discuss and vote on questions and answers posed by our campaign. We’re also excited to be beta-testing this application with an innovative company that is based right here in Vermont.
Brick Oven Media is a Colchester-based startup that specializes in cutting edge social media technology. When CEO Thomas Bacon asked us to help test and launch their flagship product, Gooroo, I saw it as a fantastic opportunity not only to encourage and support a local Vermont innovator, but also to utilize a new online platform for communicating with Vermonters.
The Gooroo application is available in the “Q&A Game” tab of our Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/mattdu… or directly at http://apps.facebook.com/mattd… .
Gooroo is specifically designed to encourage open and transparent conversation. The application allows Vermonters to answer questions about a range of topics, including policy ideas, news events, and problems faced by our state. While we’re constantly meeting with Vermonters around the state at events such as service politics projects, house parties, meetings and forums, Gooroo provides a great new platform through which we can engage with people online. By allowing voters to actively interact with their political leaders and with each other, Gooroo helps facilitate the type of open, democratic and accessible political process that is part of Vermont’s history.
Additionally, it’s exciting to see this type of cutting edge software being developed right here in Vermont. As a state, we need to continue encouraging exactly this kind of ingenuity. The ability for inventive people like Tom Bacon to freely implement their technology and business ideas is absolutely critical for the future of Vermont’s economy. As a former employee at a small Vermont software company myself, I not only understand the need to build the environment and infrastructure necessary to allow innovators like Gooroo to flourish– I also have the experience to make it happen.
I encourage you to try out the Gooroo application today. You can visit it through the “Q&A Game” tab on our Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/mattdu… or by accessing it directly at: http://apps.facebook.com/mattd… . Check out the application and join us in a conversation about how to move our state forward.
Facebook and ‘open and transparent’ in the same paragraph much less sentence is laughable.
Mr. Dunne, while I appreciate the initiative to try new tools that open up lines of communication between policy makers / office holders / office runners and the public – Facebook would seem to be a poor platform for this. And while I’d agree that we need to encourage the ‘ingenuity’ that comes from social networking / app mashups / internet technology – should we do that on the coattails of one of the most obtuse and un-transparent corporations on the web?
Facebook’s primary objective is to make $$$$$$$$$$$$ through the profitization of the private lives / postings / thoughts / shopping / comments / gaming / messaging / imaging / and etc. of its billions of members.
Yes, it is free and offers some interesting tools for ‘communication’ – but to me it comes at too steep a price to allow the corporation to data mine my life, my clicks, my messages, my posts, my family vacation pictures, etc. etc. FB then ‘owns’ all that content I post, with a completely one sided ‘agreement’ (contract?) that is pages and pages of legalese long leaving users with few to no rights to their content – their lives…
Thanks, but no.
selling off of the forest down the road, or the oil under the sea, or the water from the lake, or the genes in our bodies = bad.
Uncontrolled selling off your life, your friends lives, your writing, your comments, your thoughts, your photos, your preferences, your links, your kids photos = good – because lots of people are on there communicating away…
Artists and musicians sue to protect their life’s work and maintain creative control and some sort of royalties from their efforts. Facebook users sign it away with nary a thought about the ramifications of an increasingly ubiquitous and intertwined corporation that is becoming the gateway and gatekeeper to so many things ‘web’. And they own it. All. Whatever you put up. You give away your rights. Whatever thoughts you post @ 2am to your buddies from college, or whatever insights you place in the notes. And this is before the TOS and privacy policy change with little notice or input from the billions of people happily posting and updating each day.
Please, the gains made by the netroots looked to me to be open and typically not for boundless profit. Facebook is no different than any other corporation – its goal is to extract as much $$ as it can, increase its reach into whatever corners of the web is has not touched, and become the default connection place for folks who are ‘plugged in’. It does this not by directly charging you each month for the wonderful and addictive services that it does provide – but by data mining everything and anything you and your ‘friends’ do whilst within its web. How does anyone think they can stay in business as a free service? Its as if we were having a conversation on Church St. and it was filtered and our very surroundings and local businesses changed with every word out of our mouth – our preferences and language and thoughts parsed and filtered and offered up to the next bidder in line who wanted to have you check out that burrito stand or buy that new car or play some interconnected social app/game that some jock from high school that you haven’t seen in 30 years is playing – so you should too.
The Public Square, the commons = freedom.
Facebook = mall.
True, candidates may need to ‘be where the people are’ – including those ‘young people’. But my original comment was that I had a chuckle when I read ‘Facebook’ ‘Open’ and ‘Transparent’ in the same sentences. IME its anything but – though it offers quite the illusion of transparency – bringing people together… for profit. And therein is its genius.