South of Your Comfort Zone

I have been spending a lot of time with candidate websites, Facebook pages, Orkut pages (again, a Google social networking site popular in Brasil), Twitter feeds (which I am yet to understand in their entirety) and other online get-out-the-vote campaigns. There are two that recently have caught my attention.

Dilmabook

So, the leading presidential candidate, Dilma Rousseff, has her own social networking site called dilmanarede. I told a friend here that Dilma had her own social networking site and he immediately said, “It’s Dilmabook” and it stuck. On Dilmabook users can connect with other supporters near by, talk about campaign issues, blog about their positions on the issues, organize rallies and the like. Now, that said, only 2300 people have joined, but they seem active. Below is a screenshot of the site.

+1 Casa de Marina

The next thing that caught my eye was on the Green Party (Partido Verde) candidate’s website. Now, as I have posted before, Marina Silva of the Green Party is far from having a snowball’s chance in Rio de Janeiro of winning this election, but her campaign is dynamic and she appeals to a lot of voters who are unhappy with the two frontrunners. I found the +1 Casa de Marina (1 more of Marina’s Houses) campaign quite intriguing. Not only does it have an online component where people can register their residence a “Casa de Marina” and then access an interactive map that shows them other people near them who have also registered, but it also gives people quick access to easy to make Marina campaign propaganda. It’s real grassroots and impressive. Check out the video below.