Last night, Senator Kirk Watson hosted a virtual townhall with Mayor Bill White. What would have been a snap shot event, has turned into a multiple day conversation online. (If you have an hour, watch the full video.)
Funny thing about this event is the lies, mistruths and bad pro-Perry spin that is happening now that the event is over.
If you are on Twitter, you may have seen the back and forth between me and Empower Texas Director, Republican Michael Sullivan. It you read Republican blogs, you may have seen Rick vs. Kay and their deceptive, lying post about the turnout at the innovative virtual townhall.
The Rick vs. Kay post is the most interesting because of the comment, yet to be deleted, at the bottom of the post.
Brewsters Millions said
This is clearly all false. It's one thing to claim that a townhall wasn't a success, it's another thing to throw a bunch of bad data to make your case.
Ustream has a reporting lag. Seriously rookie mistake bro.
Rick Perry's campaign supporters have been fantastic and spinning the press of Perry's effective use of new media. Even though Bill White has more fans and interactions on facebook and twitter, Perry's inept campaign is seen as the online organizing juggernaut. There is clearly something for them to lose if White is effective in the virtual space. Maybe that is why Perry's campaign team and supporters (either organized or not) have quickly jumped up and down to discredit an innovative and effective virtual townhall.
So rather than relying on a campaign source, we got data straight from uStream.
From: Andy XXXXXXXX
Date: Tue, Jul 13, 2010 at 11:49 AM
Subject: Re: Watson / White Ustream town hall in progress...
Yesterday's townhall had 897 unique viewers, a peak of 267 concurrent viewers that happened 31 minutes into the broadcast, and an average of 154 concurrent viewers.
Regards,
Andy XXXXXXXX
VIP Support
Ustream.tv
For early July and being limited to only online promotion, these are solid numbers. And like Bill White's massive following on Facebook, I expect to see a slow and steady increase over the next 100 days.
Update: As I was writing the post, Rick vs. Kay wrote an interesting retraction. They admit they were wrong and didn't post on any facts, but did take some time to attack BOR again. As we have seen a lot today, the latest Republican strategy is, when facts aren't on your side, yell loudly so people will pay attention to you.
