Featur e
that RIM left the market open for devices that could be heavily personalized by applications that were easy to find and designed to be useful versus what apps the office wants you to use.
Enter Apple and Android. With that
in mind, if your campaign is running an effective email campaign, most likely you have your BlackBerry users covered, at least until BlackBerry reboots its application store and strategy.
Facebook tells us that their average user has 130 friends (Twitter is 126) so this means that at least 13 of them will be media movers who will share interesting information you post.
Android is another story; it is surging in popularity in
the US, but hasn’t hit home in Canada yet. That should change as more devices are introduced into Canada. The trick is that Android application development isn’t as cut and dried as Apple. When you build for the iPhone, it also runs on the iPod Touch and iPad and you cover 25% (Source: Gardner) of the Canadian smartphone market- place. When you build for one Android device, it runs on that device, and additional work may be required to adapt it to another device. This is because these devices are built by different vendors (ie: Samsung, Motorola), and partly because the operating system varies by device.
information, but it really boils down to a choice between a lowest common denominator approach and a compelling user centric interface design. It’s the difference between buying a suit off the rack or getting fitted. As recognition of this standard of quality, note that none of the party apps in the British Election went down the web-optimization route, and no apps that ever broke the top 10 in the iTunes store have ever used this approach.
Build for iPhone, Consider Android and Skip the BlackBerry (This year) Once you have your design approach down, how many platforms are you looking to support? There are a num- ber of ways of looking at the mobile market, but if you are looking at building applications the key figure is app downloads per platform. Here Apple is the clear market leader where iTunes users download 13x more apps than Android (Source: Flurry) and over 20x more apps than BlackBerry (Source: BlackBerry). It may shock you that BlackBerry users don’t download
many applications, given it is the dominant smartphone platform in North America with over 40% market share. The reason largely stems from what BlackBerries are best at: email. They are ultra-secure email devices, but beyond
54 Campaigns & Elections | Canadian Edition
Leverage Social Media to Spread your Message The next thing to look for in the design of your app is the ability to have your supporters, donors and activists share your information with their friends. When you tell your friend on Facebook you like a particular candidate, that has an influen- tial effect. Pew Internet Research studied information shar- ing and found out that 10% amongst us are “Media Movers.” These are people who when they receive a piece of informa- tion, they like to share it with their friends. Facebook tells us that their average user has 130
friends (Twitter is 126) so this means that at least 13 of them will be media movers who will share interest- ing information you post. This creates the exponential spread of information that has been proven to outpace radio and television from sharing news on everything from the Iranian riots to the exaggerated rumor of Gor- don Lightfoot’s demise.
Engage your Donors, Supporters and Advocates Broadcast and social media integration help spread the word, but what really creates results for your campaign is engagement. Engagement is the ability to reach out into your mobile connected base and achieve offline goals for donation collection and vote capture.
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