3121: The social network for Congress
Leslie Bradshaw and 3121 Featured on Capitol Communicator TV
Originally posted on 3121′s blog.
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Earlier this summer, I had the opportunity to sit down with Paul Vogelzang of Capitol Communicator TV and discuss 3121. Video below, highlights after the jump…
[Video no longer available :( ]
So – what is it like, LinkedIn? Facebook? Amazon?
Paul: By starting small, are you going to, you know, build out profiles? Is it going to be kind of a LinkedIn for the Hill?
Leslie: A lot of people are actually calling it the LinkedIn for the Hill. Local bloggers, Frank Gruber over at Somewhat Frank, Nick O’Neill at Social Times, even Adam Ostrow at the Mashable blog, they were kind of all talking and saying, “you know, this is kind of like a LinkedIn.” But the thing about LinkedIn, you kind of populate with your CV or your resume information and I don’t know about you, but I don’t update it regularly. And I think that’s something that it’s going to be a hybrid between the concept of kind of a stagnant kind of two-dimensional with that three-dimensional social layer. So you’re going to be able to friend up with people, you’re going to find colleagues. It’ll be kind of like Amazon will recommend to you, “Hey Paul, you know, you’re a Press Secretary in the House and you’re a Democrat. Here are people that you might like to meet,” and so it’s going to very kind of inviting in the sense that if you’re a young staffer trying to figure out who’s who and what’s what, and then if you’re a staffer that– you know, you kind of have an established network, this is just going to be an extension of that Rolodex that you already have.
So – what about searching and finding who and what you need?
[...]
Paul: What about searchability by issue? You know, will you have, like, a health care component? Will you have an energy component? Will you have an economy component? Can we actually get in there and look by kind of subject matter by member?
Leslie: Absolutely. Two key features; the first one, on day one is not going to be an empty room. Like I said, there’s going to be 9,500 records and all of that information will be searchable. So you can start typing in someone’s name and it’ll start auto-completing. “Oh, do you mean this individual? Do you mean this staffer?” When you start typing in concepts like budget, military, anyone who services on those sub-committees will have already been pre-tagged and pre-set in a group on the side. [...] and, two, as any social media… Wikipedia user knows, the longer the community’s around and the more people add to it, you can add to your own profile, you can also actually add tags. So if you’re interested in health care or Medicaid or even something more finite like H-1B visas, you know, those are all things that you can tag within your content. And then you hope that other people are then also referencing and kind of tagging their profiles and what they’re doing.
Leslie Bradshaw is a 3121 Community Manager and member of the Public Affairs team at New Media Strategies.
Author’s notes:
Originally posted 3121’s blog and on my WordPress blog, Leslie Bradshaw and 3121 Featured on Capitol Communicator TV [October 14, 2009]
Press at the time help describe 3121 from a few angles:
AdWeek - 3121 is LinkedIn, Just for Congress Members [July 20, 2009]:
National Journal, a site for nonpartisan reporting on current politics, has teamed with New Media Strategies and JESS3 in order to provide an exclusive networking community for members of congress and their staff. This secure portion of the National Journal site will be for work purposes, communication and collaborative efforts between congressional members and staff.The new network is called 3121, and it’s aiming to make life “easier” for the sie members. You’ll need to submit a request in order to access the site, though a public blog is available as a basic resource within the National Journal site. […]
The Christian Science Monitor - 3121: Capitol Hill gets its own social network [July 21, 2009]:
LinkedIn, Facebook, and MySpace, meet 3121.
If the new social network's name (it's the extension for the Capitol switchboard) seems a little "inside the beltway," that's because that's the point. Billed by parent company National Journal Group as "the first professional networking tool designed exclusively for congressional members and staff," 3121 aims to help Capitol Hill staffers stay connected. […]
Mashable - Does Congress Need its Own Social Network? National Journal Thinks So [July 20, 2009]:
Politicians have been taking to social media of late, from tweeting governators to YouTube Presidents. But for the thousands of staffers that work on Capitol Hill for members of Congress, social media is about a lot more than PR – they actually need to get things done. However, they’ve been fairly limited in this respect to-date, as there has been no “LinkedIn for Congress” per se.
That’s changing later this year though, as the influential National Journal plans to launch a social network of sorts exclusive to those with house.gov or senate.gov email addresses. The site aims to solve a few big needs of Capitol Hill employees, most notably establishing a secure online directory of staffers, giving them communication tools, and then letting them collaborate with each other. […]
