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S.T.O.R.M.
By punch bowl | May 1, 2008
Three items related to STORM.
First, CR Nation now has a STORM account. Add us as your friend. Invite us to be in your group. STORM is a huge endeavor for College Republicans nationally and we plan on commenting more on it (positively or negatively). As we post, feel free to comment.
Second, the CRNC has issued a spring STORM challenge. The details of which are:
With the end of the semester almost upon us we want to get as many young activists ready for the fall as we can. To help get you moving we are offering some incentives for the top Storm recruiters.
The top 5 individuals who recruit the most people will win a $100 gift certificate to Best Buy.
The top 3 schools that recruit the most members will win $2,000, $1,000 and $500 respectively.
The top State Federation for recruitment will win $3,000.
The contest will run from Friday, May 1st, at 9:00 AM EDT and end on Friday, May 9th, at 9:00 AM EDT. The winners will be announced the following Monday.
Incentive programs work - economic studies prove that. This is a effective way for the CRNC to spend money in order to boost what has been a luke-warm reception to STORM among federation leadership and grassroots College Republicans.
Third, to address some criticisms of STORM, I think it will be worth it in the end. Other writers here will disagree, but in my opinion the criticisms of STORM are shortsighted and focus too heavily on the tremendous up-front cost ($250,000).
But you have to remember massive databases are not built in one day one week or even one year (how long did it take to create voter vault?). Yes, STORM’s up-front cost was huge (as I have said), but its back-end benefit will be 100 times larger.
Think three presidential elections from now, as the chairman of the CRNC in 2016, will the person that holds that position approve or disapprove of the allocation of $250,000 on a College Republican database that can mobilize student voters and volunteers, as well as solicit donations from alum?
STORM, like any endeavor was a risk, but before we call it a failure, we have to get it time to succeed.
READERS: WHAT DO YOU THINK OF STORM, ITS COST, AND ITS LIKELIHOOD OF SUCCESS?
Topics: Uncategorized, S.T.O.R.M. |
May 1st, 2008 at 11:02 am
Sites like STORM are the result of people who don’t understand social networking sites. People too often think they can create them and visitors will magically appear.
There are TONS of social networking sites out there with funding from venture capital firms. Many of which are a lot better than STORM. However, only a few (Facebook and MySpace) attract large numbers.
I don’t care what STORM cost. I really don’t. Sites like that cost a lot of money because they take a lot of time to program.
What annoys me, however, is why the CRNC decided to focus efforts on building the site in the first place.
The CRNC could have just adapted to Facebook early on. For example, the day the global groups feature launched, they should have made a College Republicans group or a CRNC group. Instead, the only CR group for over a year was run by some idiots from the Leadership Institute. The early days of the global groups made the job of admins much easier. We could invite people we weren’t friends with, post invite messages on the walls of other groups with no spam limit, and do a lot of other things Facebook now restricts. People were also using groups a lot more than they do now.
I don’t know what the CRNC was doing (probably nothing since it does very little), but it blew its chance with Facebook. A good global group early on would have taken care of many of the functions that STORM is now seeking to serve - for a cost of $0.
Now, the CRNC is bribing people with prizes to start using a site nobody wants to use. Wonderful.
I signed up for STORM to take a look at it, and there is nothing about that site which would cause me to visit it on even a monthly basis. I’m sure others feel the same way.
This is another indicator that the CRNC is far behind technologically. If I remember correctly, one of the CRNC reform groups in the last national election (as if reform is not a reoccurring theme in every campaign…) proposed that the CRNC start a database of information on all of its members. The fact that such a commonsense activity is part of a “reform” message is a sign that the CRNC is doing a poor job.
Anyway, I’m sure others will disagree with me here, but you’ll see in a year or two. The STORM site will fizzle out and very few people will use it. The CRNC will want it to look like a success and tout the numbers of people who have signed up as an indicator (ignoring the fact that most of those people only signed up to look at it and never came back).
May 1st, 2008 at 11:38 am
Storm will be 100% successful. Give it time. Like stated, the back end feature is the best, which most users don’t get to see. CRNC isn’t replacing facebook–no worries. (It would cost a lot more than what was paid if that was the case.) Think long term for future CRs. We are running a marathon to keep the CR voice loud and strong on college campuses. No reason to sprint and run out of energy.
May 1st, 2008 at 12:47 pm
Could not agree with Tim more.
Let’s just admit several things:
1) STORM will never be Facebook.
2) STORM does not have the traffic Facebook has.
3) Why on earth would we want to have less traffic when we are trying to recruit people to volunteer? That makes no sense.
Let’s also not forget that social networking sites have likely seen their peak. This isn’t early 2007 anymore with new people and new groups getting reached all the time while the phenomenon of Facebook plays itself out. But nonetheless, social networking, and action networking, could all be accomplished on Facebook, for $0, and could reach a broader audience as there is far greater traffic. THAT is why STORM is flawed from the beginning. We can give it time, in the mean time, any smart chapter chairman is going to use Facebook for his or her events. Shoot, any State Chairman for that matter.
As far as the $250K thing, I could almost care less…until I realize the money could’ve been spent hiring more field reps or cutting federation grants. Both would be more helpful.
May 1st, 2008 at 1:30 pm
Although STORM looks and feels like a social networking site, that function is just a marketing tool which presents a familiar user environment to facilitate the collection of contact information.
Unless I’m out in left field, nobody at the CRNC thought they were building the next Facebook. If anyone was thinking that, they deserve to be laughed at.
This is all about collecting contact information, and even the biggest STORM detractor must admit that this is more effective than the CRNC sending 80,000 people a request to simply fill out a form.
Now, that would be ridiculous.
May 1st, 2008 at 4:00 pm
A certain state chairman conspired with his girlfriend to hack into my chapter’s email account to cause a myriad of strife issues with our membership. The opposition’s national database idea? Does my club no good.
May 1st, 2008 at 5:26 pm
If STORM is all about collecting data, then it’s no longer useful after people have signed up.
Instead of spending $250,000 for a “social networking” website that only exists to collect data, why not have each CR chapter send the CRNC an Excel sheet with info on their members?
Guess how much that would cost? … $0
By the way, I don’t think anyone here is arguing that the CRNC has tried to replace Facebook. The CRNC may be stupid, but they’re not that stupid. The point I made earlier is that it wasn’t even necessary to do anything other than make a global group on Facebook back when global groups launched in 2006. The only CR group was created by some loonies at the Leadership Institute. The CRNC missed out on a great opportunity and spent money on something that’s pretty much useless.
May 1st, 2008 at 7:08 pm
Incentives might matter, that’s economics 101.
But who are we targeting? Obviously ONLY big chapters and federations! Most CRs are apart of small chapters, 100 and below membership. The only people that will be able to win any individual prize are at CRNC “Super Clubs”, with membership of 400+. And only the larger Federations will be able to compete for the federation prize (most likely won by the state with the most “Super Clubs”, since only their individual members have the incentive to really recruit).
And even if a someone from a small chapter or federation wins an individual prize (or small federation wins the federation prize), that individual or person had to overcome the obvious advantages of the larger chapters and federations.
May 1st, 2008 at 9:39 pm
I was not intending to say that they would replace Facebook, they just created something that has a lot less traffic than Facebook, and therefore, a lot less exposure. What incentive does a chapter chair have to try to coordinate an event or other “action networking” activities if it’s easier and better on Facebook?
In short, I agree with Tim’s sentiment almost exactly.
May 1st, 2008 at 11:58 pm
Chest brings up a good point in writing “what incentive does a chapter chair have to try to coordinate an event or other ‘action networking’ activities if it’s easier and better on Facebook.”
There’s something I should have mentioned as well. Social networking sites are plagued with tremendous barriers to entry. Back in 2004/05, when this stuff was relatively new and people were in a frenzy over them, it was somewhat easy for sites like Facebook to pop up and attract tons of users. Now, most students visit one or two social networking sites at best. Those are generally Facebook or MySpace (Google’s Orkut is huge but more popular overseas). People get set in their ways, visit their usual sites, and don’t necessarily change those habits unless something totally new comes out and catches their interests.
With that in mind, what is going to cause anyone to start using STORM - thereby spending more time on the internet or spending less time on sites they already visit. The answer, of course, is quite clear - nothing will. STORM is neither new nor revolutionary. It rehashes the features of the standard social networking site and has nothing that will attract a large user base.
In other words, STORM is going to be a gigantic failure. I’m sure the CRNC will still try to play it off as a success by touting the numbers that signed up - ignoring the fact that very few of them ever used the site afterwards.