Inside Politics

GooglePMOWatch Update: Some Throne Speech replies...

by Kady O'Malley Posted: March 11, 2010 4:49 PM Last Updated: April 21, 2010 9:30 AM
...it seems, are more livestreamable than others.

In this video, you can hear NDP MP Brian Masse and Liberal MP Gerard Kennedy sound off on the Google-PMO hullabaloo. Masse says that he's not sure if his party was approached by the Google gaggle about participating.

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Turns out that the party did have its come-to-Google meet-and-greet last month, but according to NDP communications director Nammi Poorooshasb, it took a distinctly different tone - and outcome - than the encounter that resulted in today's live streaming prime ministerial Youtube debut. Not only was no offer made to livestream his party leader's reply to the Speech from the Throne, but they were told that the "infrastructure" required to do so wasn't even available in Canada yet -- and when it did go live,  "it would be offered in the context of a paid search advertising campaign," a condition that does not appear to have been imposed on PMO: 

We met with two representatives from Google a few weeks ago - no members of other parties were present. They pitched us on the live streaming technology that Google's American arm used for President Obama's State of the Union and which Prime Minister Harper took advantage of today.

At the time, they said that the infrastructure to support this stream was not yet available in Canada but gauged our interest in making use of it, if and when it was available.

Our party is constantly looking for new ways to connect and have conversations with Canadians and we make regular use of YouTube (Layton's response to the Speech from Throne is up on YouTube now). We made it clear that we would be very interested.

They then said that this technology would be offered in the context of a paid search advertising campaign.

That is where things were left.

The difference seems to be that a paid search advertising campaign wasn't necessary for Conservatives to take advantage of YouTube's live stream.

UPDATE: PMO spokesperson Dimitri Soudas would like me to post the following, in its entirety. It isn't so much an answer to a question -- it's actually more of a response to a series of questions he put to me in a less than entirely genial tone -- but for the record, here it is: 

"40 000 votes and over 500 questions is pretty impressive public involvement.

The cbc lobbies for funding which it receives of over 1 billion dollars a year.

But we always appreciate when the cbc airs the government's announcements live or when we do interviews with the cbc. "

Tags: adventures in branding, blackberry jungle, googlepmowatch