RNC LAUNCHES NEW GOP.COM

WASHINGTON – The Republican National Committee today announced a newly redesigned, revamped and reorganized online platform, GOP.com, that links together the RNC’s new website with various social media applications. The new GOP.com will promote increased grassroots participation and innovation, better communication, improved platform compatibility and smarter marketing and fundraising tools for the GOP.

“When I ran for RNC Chairman, I committed to improving the Republican Party’s online ability to inform our grassroots supporters and mobilize them behind important issues, while also electing our great candidates. With the new GOP.com that went live today, the RNC will be able to accomplish exactly that. The new GOP.com embraces the Republican Party’s structure as a bottom-up party by promoting organic activism among Republicans. It takes advantage of various online tools to connect Republicans and concerned Americans across the country to each other and Party leaders, creating a larger, more informed, more organized, and more energized Republican community. The new GOP.com will help Republicans compete in any race, in any state, at any time.” – RNC Chairman Michael Steele

GOP.COM FACTSHEET

GOP.com – The RNC’s New Online Platform

· The RNC has built not just a new website, but a new web platform that is the most interactive the Party has ever presented.

· The web platform provides message and content, while allowing online grassroots communities to grow and flourish.

New Platform Designed To Leverage Social Media’s Increasingly Important Role in Politics

· Never before has social media been used more to get political information than during the 2008 presidential election – 74% of internet users, representing 55% of the entire adult population, went online in 2008 to get involved in the political process or to get information. (Pew Internet and American Life Project, “The Internet’s Role in Campaign 2008,” April 2009)

· One in three Internet users forwarded political content to others in 2008. (Pew Internet and American Life Project, “The Internet’s Role in Campaign 2008,” April 2009)

· Young voters were heavily engaged in the political debate on social networking sites – 83% of those age 18-24 have a social networking profile, and two-thirds of them took part in some form of political activity in 2008. (Pew Internet and American Life Project, “The Internet’s Role in Campaign 2008,” April 2009)

The RNC’s Increased Online Presence

· The RNC’s new web platform will give Republican leaders the ability to engage directly with voters, as well as hear from them and exchange ideas with them.

· It will allow the RNC to provide significantly more customizable information to our grassroots supporters and mobilize them more effectively as a result.

· The RNC’s new web platform is the first major party website to allow people to create applications for it – in the same way that people can create games, widgets and computer code for Facebook.

· Visitors can sign-in securely using their Facebook credentials instead of creating a new account.

· It will enable our supporters to communicate with each other and organize events both through GOP.com and various social media applications such as Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace, as well as the websites of state parties and local Republican organizations, enabling our grassroots supporters and volunteers to collaborate and organize events online like never before.

· We will also rely on our Republican supporters to contribute their ideas and add content to the new GOP.com, increasing their involvement in the Party and making the new website a constantly growing online destination.

New Grassroots Tools

· GOP.com – This is the core website for our messaging and information dissemination. All content created will have a permanent home within the website and RNC principals and division leaders will actively use it as a way to directly communicate with Republicans across the nation.

· GOP.com: The Republican Action Network – This is the RNC’s new ACTION NETWORK and hub for interactions between grassroots Republicans as they work to help the Republican cause by creating groups, organizing events, hosting contests and blogging.

· Microsites – these focused-topic or issue sites are powerful tools for delivering a message to a targeted audience.

· Widgets – GOP.com will have a number of widgets users can deploy on their smart phone, website, blog, or other digital property to showcase content and information created on the new web platform.

· Email footers – Supporters can give the web platform the ability to show a customized email banner graphic around a topic or call to action. This can be customized with the supporter’s information as well.

· Browser bars – By integrating GOP.com into the major web browsers, the browser bar can get critical information to a user about news, content and action items. The browser bar also lets the user provide back important crowd-sourcing information.

· Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn status updates – Users can give GOP.com the ability to push a status update through their account for their friends to see. The user can choose the message types and frequency.

· Text messaging and email – GOP.com can push content through these two channels directly to the individual. While they don’t reach a larger viral audience, they can be personalized to the individual.

New Website Tools

· With our new platform, the RNC finally has the ability to tap into the army of Republican coders who want to build online tools to help us win elections, raise money, and build awareness.

· The RNC’s old website was completely closed to developers, forcing us to rely on contractors to build applications that would work with our infrastructure.

· The new GOP.com shifts to an open platform that will allow our existing developer community to not only make our digital presence more powerful, but will also encourage innovation from the grassroots.

2010 and Beyond

The RNC’s new web platform will provide the RNC with the following key strategic values for 2010 and beyond:

· Smarter marketing and fundraising – Through the integration of multi-channel tools into a marketing-centric database, the RNC can do more effective targeting.

· Increased participation and innovation – The RNC platform encourages developers to create new products and services for the entire community.

· More platform compatibility – The new web platform is built to support the initiatives of our Republican state parties.

· Better communications – Republicans across the nation will have the ability to communicate with each other, educate their friends, organize local events, and collaborate with their state parties and local GOP organizations like never before.