Open up your mind and say, ahh...

Before political campaigns were all over blogs, Meetup.com, YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook, there was USA.gov, cofounded by David Binetti in 2000. The site, which was the platform for the first ever webcast from the Oval Office, is now the U.S. Government’s official portal.

Binetti’s new venture is a Silicon Valley tech startup called Votizen, a social network where voters can campaign for a candidate or a cause. Users reach out primarily to friends or acquaintances, leveraging their own social networks to organize. Votizen was used heavily in last November’s San Francisco mayoral race, which resulted in the election of Ed Lee, the first Chinese-American mayor in that city’s history. With the 2012 campaign heating up, we spoke with David Binetti, Votizen’s CEO and cofounder, about the disruptive impact of technology on the political landscape and the challenges of innovating in the federal government.

FAST COMPANY: Technology is obviously playing a critical role in every part of our politics now. Tell us about how you first got started bringing the power of the web to the political world and what you have seen since.

DAVID BINETTI: In 1995, I created a website that did online campaign finance disclosure. In 2000, I created USA.gov, which is now the official portal of the federal government. Over the first decade of this century, web politics developed quite a bit. In 2008, the Obama campaign took advantage of technology in very innovative ways. Something was qualitatively different in the grassroots nature of the Obama campaign and its use of social media in particular. People were willing to share to a degree that they had not been willing to do before. Those channels allowed people to come together–voter to voter–which is a major departure from the fundamentally one-way, tight-message-control nature of the last 50 years of political campaigning. Social is completely the opposite. It’s about connecting with other people and it’s about having messages transfer organically, shift a little bit along the way, and having the people come to their own conclusions about what they want to say and what they want to share.

Although we’re living in a sharing revolution, certain aspects of politics, specifically who people are voting for, have always been treated as private. What has changed that now allows a platform like Votizen to be built on the premise of actively sharing your political views and allegiances?

I think people realize that to share is to gain. So the benefits of sharing outweigh the potential costs. Mostly it’s people saying “I’m willing to share information about myself in order to have an impact.”
Most people are willing to give up assets that are considered private as long as they are fairly compensated. A club card at the grocery store is an example of that. People are saying to the store, you can watch my purchases, but I want to get a discount. The same thing is happening here. People tell their network who they’re voting for and, as a result, they get connected to people who share their viewpoint and grow that impact for a candidate, a cause, or an issue.

Give us a picture of how Votizen works.

Votizen empowers people to take action directly with the people in their networks. The first thing people do is connect with the voters that they already are connected to in their social networks, reach out to them, and ask them to take an action on behalf of this candidate because they believe it’s important. Votizen is an open platform as opposed to a candidate distributing a call list or dictating what actions you take. In the San Francisco mayor’s race, we piloted a new technology called a “Virtual Precinct Walk.” For a lot of candidates, particularly local candidates, a precinct walk is one of the main things they and their supporters do. You walk through a neighborhood and you knock on doors for your candidate. We moved that online. Instead of walking through streets and knocking on strangers’ doors, you are going online and connecting with your friends. Ed Lee’s mayoral campaign used this tool and found many advantages. You don’t have to worry about whether or not the person is home, you don’t have worry about the weather, you can cover much more ground more rapidly. You can do it on your own time; it doesn’t have to be done on Sunday afternoon. The person who answers your social door is always the person you’re seeking. And of course you’re connecting with friends. That one-to-one connection is really important.

Political campaigns today are waged primarily offline–person-to-person and through traditional media. While online is growing, most analysts doubt it can ever have as much impact as traditional political media.

The difference between online and offline might not matter as much as those analysts think. Is it reasonable that on the presidential level, candidates can have one-to-one connections with 200 million voters? No. But think about where connectedness to voters is going to matter most: Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, the swing states…mobilizing supporters’ connections to their own networks can have disproportionately valuable effects. In the Iowa Caucuses, Rick Perry got 12,557 votes. It turns out he spent $480 per vote, almost all of it on traditional media. Well, if you know two people in Iowa who you can win to voting for your candidate, you are effectively a $1,000 donor to that campaign. Given that money can be a proxy for getting votes, if people are actually able to deliver votes through their connections online that could have a huge impact on the race. In presidential politics today the money is being spent primarily on television, direct mail, and robocalls. Yet those media are losing effectiveness quite rapidly. In the future these social network channels are going to matter more and more. Ultimately it’s going to be much more about “friend-raising,” than fundraising. Candidates will still ask how do I get enough votes to win, but which channels they use to gain those votes will change, it already is changing.

Amplification was obviously key on an issue like SOPA. What is your power to amplify something perceived as a small issue and make it bigger?

Where I think Votizen is going to have the most impact is on the long tail of politics. A year and a half ago people on our site organized around cabin fees. New rules had been proposed that would raise fees on people who owned personal property on federal forest land. There are only 5,000 people who are directly affected by this issue, but they are all super connected. So one of them started a campaign and within 48 hours, 1,000 of those people had signed on and written letters to the legislators. One legislator in particular took on that issue–because it made a difference to someone in their district, and served as their advocate and so far, they have succeeded in holding off those fee hikes.

Obama talked a lot about innovation in his recent State of the Union speech and offered some promising ideas. But what are the challenges and roadblocks to innovating in government?

People working in the government are amazing, hard working, thoughtful people who want to do good. But the government, as a whole, is not in the innovation business. Individual people are not rewarded for innovation. In fact, they are frequently punished. The system is designed to be stable, so when you actually try to make change, it’s really hard. Private-public partnerships can be very valuable for innovation. These formats allow you to innovate on the private side with a path to become more public. That’s something we pioneered with FirstGov, which became USA.gov. A lot of the innovation happened on the private side when we were a private company. Eventually, it transitioned to a public platform. It took us 90 days to build USA.gov and more than three years to give it away to the government. That was largely a result of the government procurement rules. There was just no system for dealing with what was essentially a donation of services and intellectual property.

One of the concerns about the political process is the need to engage new voters and new communities. How are you seeing new groups use your platform?

In a campaign, members on our site ran in support of Startup Visa an effort to change immigration laws, making it easier for foreign entrepreneurs living in the United States with successful businesses to stay in the country and 80% of the people who used the system had never engaged in the political process before. What brought them in was the fact that they felt that they could actually make a difference. If you look at the SOPA debate in January, online activism made a huge difference–in fact, it made all the difference! Now people see that the actions they take can have an impact. Voters are realizing: I can make something happen. This is where the 2008 Obama campaign nailed it because they realized that by letting people take direct action in the campaign, supporters were encouraged to take more action. Freeing people up to believe that they were participating directly gave them the huge benefit of seeing themselves as involved with something greater and more important than themselves.

Note: This interview has been edited for content, clarity, and length.

David D. Burstein is a young entrepreneur, having completed his first documentary 18 in ’08. He is also the founder & executive director of the youth voter engagement not for profit, Generation18. His book about the millennial generation will be published by Beacon Press in early 2013.

Image: Flickr user Thomas Hawk

Whether you love him, hate him, or are just a little jealous of his newly-minted multi-billionaire status, you have to admit that Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook, has made some visionary leadership moves.

In less than 10 years, Zuckerberg’s taken an idea for an online social network from his Harvard dorm room and delivered it into the homes, offices, pockets, and purses (via mobile phones) of 845 million users around the world. Last year, more than half Facebook’s users logged in every single day, spending a whopping 4 hours and 35 minutes posting, reading updates and “liking” more than 2 billion posts a day.

And how many CEOs anywhere in the world can say the company they founded before they were old enough to drink generated a net income of $1 billion in 2011 on revenue of $3.7 billion, up from $606 million on revenues of $1.97 billion in 2010?

Zuckerberg’s had his share of growing pains, too, but he’s held fast to Facebook’s helm as well as its stock. He currently owns 28.4% of the company, which at a valuation of $100 billion, translates to a stake worth just under $30 billion.

Despite that dough, less than 10% of Americans relished the thought of walking the halls of Facebook in his sneakers, and even fewer (9% to be precise) wanted to work for him.

As Facebook takes its first steps under the glaring klieg lights of its planned public offering, you can be sure Zuckerberg’s management moves will be subject to even more scrutiny, dissection, and criticism. For now though, we want to take a look at the leadership qualities that brought on this dizzying success.

Have A Strong Personal Philosophy

Amid the astounding numbers of revenue and users, and the cast of characters that reads like an A-list index to the high-roller investors of the tech world, the S-1 document that Facebook filed yesterday also held the personal manifesto Zuckerberg plans to use as a guide for the company after the IPO.

“We don’t build services in order to make money, we make money in order to build better services. Facebook was not originally created to be a company. It was built to accomplish a social mission–to make the world open and more connected.”

Zuck’s trotted out this “open and connected” tenet at various times, most recently in an impassioned post on Facebook opposing SOPA and PIPA. “We will continue to oppose any laws that will hurt the Internet,” and with equal furor in a rebuttal to the FTC touting how much social media has contributed to the government, the advancement of democracy, and the growing cottage industry of social software.

Make It Not Always About The Money

Naysayers were quick to wag tongues and fingers when Zuckerberg turned down Yahoo’s nearly $1 billion offer to buy Facebook in 2006. But the decision to keep Facebook independent was far from a lapse in judgment. In less than two years, MySpace accepted $580 million to join News Corp., and YouTube took $1.5 billion from Google.

As valuations fluctuated between $10 billion and $1 trillion, Zuckerberg stuck to his simple resolution. He’d consider an IPO when it “made sense” rather than make himself and investors rich. “I’m here to build something for the long term. Anything else is a distraction.” Even Cameron Winklevoss agreed.

Know How To Scale In Multiple Ways

Zuckerberg recognized early on that scaling a business was a balancing act. Now topping 845 million members, there’s only so many more users Facebook can add to its base. Instead, he’s focused on increasing the amount of time people spend clicking around the network, so it can serve up even more ads at higher rates.

This scheme has already been in play with a number of Facebook’s features such as games and shopping. Though not all of have been successful (hello, FB email service) it’s clear that the bottom line gets a boost the longer users are on the site.

Support A Culture Of Innovation

Zuckerberg worked with only a handful of developers in the early days of Facebook but when the “snakepit” of angst-ridden, overworked staff got to be counterproductive, he made some important additions. Chris Cox became the evangelical HR executive while newly-installed COO Sheryl Sandberg ushered in an era of stability in 2008.

Things still retain the playful air of a tech development hive, but with an edge. At its HQ, male Facebook employees vanquish distractions even when they go to the bathroom (which is frequently, thanks to all those free beverages).

Recognize You Don’t Have To Be First To Market

Myspace and Friendster both predate Facebook, yet are now virtually extinct. Facebook trumped those earlier social networks because it provides more of a compelling pull, rather than a push. Likewise, when it entered the deals game last year alongside veterans Groupon and LivingSocial, it took their existing model and did it one better by adding polls and encouraging users to share. All of that fits with Facebook’s core mission, “Giving people the power to share and make the world more open and connected.”

Take Pride In Hacking

For Zuckerberg, hacking goes way beyond the allegations that he coded his way into the Harvard Crimson and ConnectU. Zuckerberg’s hacker culture is about using shared effort and knowledge to make something bigger, better, and faster than an individual can do alone. His “hackathons” at Facebook are legendary and help foster innovation in all manner of projects from building better data centers to crowdsourcing urban planning for its surrounding neighborhood.

Jacq and I just watched Adele Live At The Royal Albert Hall (amazon affiliate link), and though every song was just wonderfully done, I found myself fascinated by what Adele was doing in between each song. Because even though most people would be interested in hearing her belt out her amazing repertoire of hits, what I took away from the performance was Adele’s real magical ability: the ability to resonate with her audience.

Facebook’s slew of newly wealthy employees could “significantly impact” California’s economy during the next few years, said H.D. Palmer, deputy director of external affairs for the California Department of Finance.

“The closest analogue is the 2004 Google IPO,” he said. “Its benefit to the state’s general fund was in the neighborhood hundreds of millions– at least $400 million.”

Facebook, based in Menlo Park, Calif., afforded generous pre-IPO stock options to as many as 1,000 of its employees. They now stand to make a fortune when the stock goes public. One of the ways the state will make money is when employees cash out their shares and then have to pay taxes.

“If it’s as big as it’s advertised, it certainly has the potential to eclipse the Google IPO — but it won’t happen over night,” Palmer said. “While the potential revenue gain is certainly significant, it has to be viewed in the larger context of the legislature having to close a budget gap that we estimate to be $9.2 billion before the state’s new fiscal year begins on July 1st.”

There’s nothing currently built into the state budget, finalized in December, 2011, that reflects any increase in funds related to Facebook’s IPO. At the time, it was unknown when the company’s IPO would be announced. But the state will release a revised revenue forecast in May, which could reflect any Facebook IPO money affecting the state’s General Fund revenue for the coming fiscal year.

Jason Sisney, deputy legislative analyst for the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office which advises the California legislature on state budget issues, said that lawmakers are eager to know how Facebook will affect California’s economy.

Because tax records are private, no one will ever know the Facebook IPO’s precise impact on the state, but Sisney said his office must consider Facebook when they revisit the budget.

“Given the budgetary pressures they (legislators) face, they’re interested in not making more cuts than they have to,” he said. “This is more than a drop in the bucket, it’s a pretty noticeable chunk of money.”

But even the most optimistic estimates of Facebook’s revenue are not enough to cure the state’s mammoth budget woes.

“This is only going to be one relatively small piece of how California addresses its budgetary issues in the next few years,” Sisney added.

It also remains to be seen exactly how much California will benefit from Facebook and where the most revenue will come from — whether it’s from taxes on the IPO filing itself or on executives cashing out stock. When these various taxes are paid will determine which fiscal year California’s legislature can include Facebook in its budget.

Facebook employees with stock options won’t pay taxes until they sell their shares. Once Facebook employees sell their shares, the money will be taxed as personal income. The top marginal rate for personal income tax in California is 9.3%. Individuals whose adjusted gross income is more than $1 million pay an additional 1%, with that money going toward mental health programs under Proposition 63. In the 2011 tax year, about 1 percent of earners generated more than 40 percent of all the personal income tax in California.

“History suggests that a lot of investors will sell some of their stake and diversify their portfolios, to spend, to save, to give to charity and other purposes,” Sisney said.

Comparing Facebook with Google, Palmer said Google’s co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin sold most of their stock over an 18-24 month period.

Richard A. Walker is a professor at University of California, Berkeley, and an expert in economic geography and California. He said that as outside investors purchase Facebook stock, Zuckerberg and employees with stock options will become wealthier.

An influx of wealthy Facebook people buying property could also drive up housing prices in the San Francisco Bay Area. But he said that property buys won’t provide as much long-term help to the economy as purchases of things like cars, food, and hardware.

Walker also said that, while hundreds of newly-minted millionaires could boost the California economy somewhat, their newfound riches will also come with economic drawbacks. “On the other hand, these kinds of super-IPOs contribute to the class of very rich people and to the ongoing problem of class inequality in California, which is already very bad — one of the worst states in the U.S.,” Walker said. “While the tech boom today is a healthy contributor to the local economy, what the state needs more is ordinary jobs with decent pay, not just high-paid or very wealthy techies.”

What’s your prediction for Facebook’s impact on California’s budget? Tell us in the comments.

Facebook‘s $5 billion IPO filing yesterday took the social media world by storm, but if you woke up today and logged into the social network, you probably noticed nothing’s changed — yet.

Yes, Facebook Timeline is in the process of rolling out to all users, so it may actually have looked different to you, but yesterday’s filing won’t create any immediate changes to the service that 483 million of us log into every day.

Contained in the 213-page S-1 document was Mark Zuckerberg’s letter to potential shareholders, in which he wrote that Facebook was “built to accomplish a social mission – to make the world more open and connected.” He also talked about Facebook’s culture of “The Hacker Way,” writing that “the vast majority of hackers I’ve met tend to be idealistic people who want to have a positive impact on the world.”

But the Facebook IPO filing means it will now be beholden to shareholders and a board, and while its offices may be filled with idealists, they’ll still have an obligation to generate revenue. The company already laid bare a comprehensive list of risks that could hamper its ongoing prosperity. Certainly things will change — but the question is how much.

Let us know in the comments and take our poll: How do you think Facebook IPO will affect the social network?