COM 150: Read this YouTube ad post last. But read it!

In an earlier post to this blog, I mentioned the Huffington Post (which is also known as HuffPost, apparently, or HuffPo), as the blog that outed the guy who did the Hillary Clinton mash-up comparing her to Big Brother. And I said I'd get back to you with more on HuffPost or HuffPo.

First, you need to know HuffPo is an interactive blog. It's headed by Arianna Huffington, a kind of leftish author and second-tier celebrity of San Francisco, and it features posts -- which read like newspaper or magazine columns -- by name authors as well as average citizens who are allowed to join the blog and write in. The blurb in the online encyclopedia Wikipedia says "the HuffPost draws a balance between hard news commentary and coverage, popular culture and celebrity opinion features. It is also known for the wide range of opinions expressed by members of the public who are encouraged to comment on the original articles." But most of the opinions are liberal or left-wing.

Today the creator of the YouTube ad, a San Francisco creative who worked for an ad agency retained by rival candidate Barack Obama, posted his confession to HuffPo. And Huffington had a column headed "Who Created "Hillary 1984"? Mystery Solved!" It told how readers of her blog solved the mystery:

For the last two weeks, the Internet has been buzzing about the hottest online mystery since lonelygirl15: who was behind the "Hillary 1984" video mashup?

Some suspected right wing SwiftBoaters. Some speculated it was the work of disaffected Democratic consultants. One blogger even pointed the finger at me.

As the intrigue deepened, the mainstream media joined the fray, with Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama both being asked about the viral smash -- and much talk about the impact user-generated political videos will have on the 2008 race.


Well, today I can end the guessing. Last night, we sent out a challenge to the HuffPost team asking them to hit the phones and contact all their sources. As a result, we have learned the video was the work of Philip de Vellis, who was the Internet communications director for Sherrod Brown's 2006 Senate campaign, and who now works at Blue State Digital, a company created by members of Howard Dean's Internet Team.

Update: He doesn't work there any more. He either quit or got fired. Probably quit just before he got fired.

HuffPost, in my opinion, is a good example of what is sometimes called Web 2.0 because it is interactive. Here's what Wikipedia has to say about HuffPo:

... the HuffPost draws a balance between hard news commentary and coverage, popular culture and celebrity opinion features. It is also known for the wide range of opinions expressed by members of the public who are encouraged to comment on the original articles. The comment section is home to discussions on politics, religion, topical events, world affairs, cultural and social matters. It has an open format, and rarely does a commenter get banned for his or her views or even a verbal attack. Long, pointless, ad hominem, abusive and endlessly repetitious comments are the only sure way to be banned.

And here's how Wikipedia defines Web 2.0: "a perceived second generation of web-based services—such as social networking sites, wikis, communication tools, and folksonomies—that emphasize online collaboration and sharing among users."

So Wikipedia, which relies on readers to submit articles and corrections to articles, is itself a prime example of Web 2.0, right? Cool.

Footnote on lonelygirl15. I had no idea what Arianna Huffington's reference to "lonelygirl15" was about other than a hunch it looked like a screenname, so I did what the old and the clueless so often do these days to get by, I did a keyword search in Google. And here, for my clueless brothers and sisters of all ages (if there are any), is what Wikipedia has to say about it: "lonelygirl15 is an interactive web-based video serial centering around the life of a fictional teenage girl named Bree, whose YouTube username is the eponymous "lonelygirl15". The series is presented through short, regularly-updated video blogs posted by the fictional characters, as well as through an optional alternate reality game." Interactive. More Web 2.0. And it takes something like Wikipedia to keep up with it. (You won't read about it in the Encyclopaedia Brittanica, right? But you can on the Web. Way cool.

We're going to do more with Web 2.0, gatekeepers, Wikipedia and this whole phenomenon of user-generated content between now and finals.