Shirky, who's about the smartest internet and information tech pundit around, has the (unsurprising) take that Dean suffered from the preaching-to-the-choir syndrome. But, shirky, being shirky, he goes on from there into real insight.
He provides this intro in the newsletter:
An unusual one to start the new year. Last week, I was in the middle of a "State of VoIP" piece, but got distracted by the results of the US Democratic Primaries. In particular, Howard Dean, whose campaign has made the earliest and best use of social sofware, did remarkably poorly, coming in a distant third to two people he was expected to beat.
Much of the coverage has said, essentially "Despite his use of the internet, Dean supporters didn't turn out in force." What I'm wondering, based on other patterns of use in social software, is whether that "Despite" is actually "Because." Did the use of tools to gather the like-minded create an environment where the faithful were more like Dean believers than Dean supporters, when support (and particularly votes) is what he needed.
You know what to do. Read the whole thing
That said, I still think Dean can save himself, if he takes Shirky's argument seriously.