[Infowarrior] - Facebook, Capitol Hill as friends?

[Richard Forno]

Can Facebook and Capitol Hill be friends? Lawmakers climb social- 
networking wall
By Ian Shapira
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, December 29, 2009; 4:00 PM

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/29/AR2009122901436_pf.html
Inside the headquarters of the National Republican Congressional  
Committee, 25-year-old Adam Conner -- registered Facebook lobbyist,  
poster of multiple Obama attaboys and a guy whose Facebook photo is a  
grizzly bear wielding two chainsaws -- sits down to teach a course.  
The subject: How to use Facebook better. His student: Rep. Peter  
Roskam (R-Ill.).

"If we're going to improve our presence on Facebook and really  
maximize it, what would you recommend as tangible steps?" Roskam asks,  
thumbing his BlackBerry.

"It looks like you're very comfortable with your BlackBerry," Conner  
replies earnestly. "Maybe commit to a status message a day? A photo a  
week? Dive deeper. You'll be surprised at how things that seem routine  
to you as a congressman are so interesting and cool to constituents."

Conner is Facebook's evangelist in Washington, a social-networking pro  
summoned by elected officials and bureaucrats alike to teach them,  
free of charge, how to leverage Facebook -- within strict government  
rules and security guidelines. The mere existence of Conner's hand- 
holding lessons illustrates the cultural gulf between Washington and  
Silicon Valley, and spotlights the complex web of congressional rules  
that limit social networking among federal workers.


Lots of help calls
Conner is certainly grateful for his job as associate manager of  
Facebook's privacy and public-policy division. Compared with many of  
his highly educated but underemployed peers in Washington, Conner is  
doing just fine financially, earning somewhere around $75,000 a year,  
with equity to boot. (He declined to give specifics on his salary or  
stock options.)

But striver that he is, Conner, a 2006 George Washington alum who  
worked on Democrat Mark Warner's exploratory presidential campaign in  
2006, chafes at his mechanic's role and the clash of cultures between  
Facebook's open-book attitude and Washington's need-to-know boundaries.

He's impatient for a time when he no longer receives up to 20 help  
requests a day from government officials. "Everyone really wants to  
talk on the phone in D.C., and it's often not a polite request," says  
Conner, who is considering graduate school and entering politics one  
day. "It's often, 'Call me today.' Yeah, we have a 'Help' section on  
Facebook. It's very helpful. At the bottom of the page, it says  
'Help.' "

On his own public Facebook page -- boasting 2,500 "friends," including  
many government officials -- Conner stays true to the transparency-is- 
king credo of the Internet.

One of his status updates earlier this month was this re-tweet -- the  
re-posting of another person's Twitter post: "RT @cjoh: Go outside.  
Feel that hail? That's God being pissed off at Joe Lieberman." Or,  
some days later: "Not a politics party till people start referring to  
previous hookups present by campaign cycle, like 'She was New  
Hampshire Primary 07.' "

His day job requires him to seek inroads with security-conscious  
government agencies and uptight lawmakers -- some of whom are looking  
into limiting Facebook's running room on privacy issues. But off the  
clock, Conner's Facebook page is unmoored from the Beltway ethic of  
caution.

Nor does Conner hold back on his partisan positions, a fact that does  
not seem to poison his relations with those on the right. Last week,  
Conner posted a link to a Web site devoted to mocking Republican  
National Committee Chairman Michael Steele, adding as preface: "this  
one is legendary."

"He'll be sitting in my office and I'll ask him, 'Is your skin  
burning?' " said John Randall, the National Republican Congressional  
Committee's e-campaign director, who has requested Conner's help for  
two "campaign schools" this year designed to help Republican  
candidates improve their Facebook pages. "He just comes back and says,  
'Hey, I am a businessman. I think you guys are wrong on a bunch of  
stuff, and other things not so much.' But I understand what he does.  
Facebook is a business and there are people who want to spend money on  
Facebook who are Republicans."


For a stronger democracy
Conner, who two years ago launched Facebook's Washington office out of  
his apartment and is now one of three employees in the company's  
Dupont Circle office, doesn't believe he's aiding the enemy. Conner  
believes that the savvier politicians become with social networking,  
the stronger democracy will be. "It would make no sense to cut out 50  
percent of the country," he said. "It's better for us to have as many  
points of view. Facebook is not a partisan platform."

Yet, the company has political battles of its own to fight. Facebook  
recently hired Tim Sparapani, a former American Civil Liberties Union  
lawyer, as its public policy director. Sparapani said Facebook's  
challenges in Washington are convincing some federal agencies that the  
site is secure, and overcoming allegations that Facebook is cavalier  
about its users' privacy. "Our mission in this office is helping  
Washington understand this new phenomena of social networking and  
translating Washington back to Silicon Valley," he said. "Adam's been  
a big part of that.

Sparapani says Conner's pro bono teaching will help if and when the  
company needs help dealing with federal regulators. "It is better to  
talk to people when you don't need them than to show up when you're in  
trouble," Sparapani said.

One of the trickier parts of Conner's job is helping congressmen and  
their staffers figure out how to exploit Facebook without breaking  
ethics rules set by the House Committee on Administration. Members of  
Congress and staffers, for instance, may not use a member's "campaign"  
Facebook page at the office, and must instead use a second Facebook  
page meant for official government use. To the average person, these  
pages are nearly indistinguishable.

Despite his affection for transparency, Conner has learned that some  
aspects of Washington life require discretion. Asked about  
restrictions on using Facebook at the White House, he says: "I can't  
go into details, but we're helping them solve some issues there."

Conner sometimes gets emergency calls. About 9 one night earlier this  
month, Lt. Col. Kevin Arata, the Army's director of online and social  
media, discovered that someone was trying to impersonate him on  
Facebook with a fake account and was friending his wife and son. "I  
immediately got on Facebook to write Adam," Arata recalls. "He writes  
back within three minutes and then all the other pages were taken down."

A cautious response
But perhaps the hardest part of Conner's job is persuading cautious  
congressmen to reveal the oddball minutiae of their lives.

In his meeting with Roskam, Conner tries to motivate his student with  
the example set by actor Vin Diesel of "Fast and Furious" fame. "The  
most popular page on Facebook is the actor Vin Diesel," Conner says.  
"It used to be Obama. How did an actor become more popular than the  
president? The answer is that he spends a lot of time putting up  
personal posts. He'll put up pictures from his travels and answer  
questions about his movies."

Roskam, who updates his campaign and official Facebook pages along  
with his staffers, isn't so sure about following Conner's advice and  
posting items about his mundane doings. " 'I am going to the dry  
cleaners' -- that's not interesting," the congressman said in a  
separate interview. "I am trying to think of what is interesting from  
a personal connection. 'Going over to the Ways and Means Committee'?  
You're sensing a little caution in my voice, because you really don't  
want to be that guy."

What about responding to people's comments on your Facebook wall?  
"That is running, whereas I am more at the creeping stage," said  
Roskam, who as of Christmas had not updated his pages' walls with his  
own messages in at least 10 days.

As his meeting with Conner wraps up, Roskam and his chief of staff,  
Steven Moore, recall how Facebook helped secure younger voters in the  
2008 election. "We spent $60,000 on radio ads, and about $3,000 on the  
Internet," Moore says. "If I had known that information going in, I  
would have doubled down."

"Well, feel free to spread the word to other campaign managers,"  
Conner says.

Roskam likes what he sees in the Facebook pitchman, even if Conner is  
a Democrat. "There you go!" he says, extending his hand to Conner.  
"What a closer."