Town hall meeting
T
he Internet offers politicians infinite ways to reconnect with the citizens. Some campaign teams go for more classical solutions such as e-mails, websites and online advertising, while most present-day political messages are delivered via alternative wide-reaching channels such as blogs, podcasts, Youtube, Twitter updates or Facebook pages.
Engaging voters, recruiting volunteers, and raising campaign funds via new media is simply a matter of few clicks.
Microsoft jumps on this political bandwagon with its cloud-based TownHall app, which claims “to combine the grassroots appeal of the town hall meeting with the reach of the Web”. Launched at this year’s Politics Online Conference, TownHall works on Microsoft’s Azure platform (therefore, it comes at a price) and uses a badges system to convince its users to vote and answer questions.
As promising as it might sound, TownHall is not build to become mainstream and will probably end up being used by large political organizations. Nonetheless, it shows us that the 2008 US presidential election changed the way big players in the IT sector relate to politics.
