kos tweeted that he would welcome (4.00 / 1)

Charlie Crist  in the democratic party, so I think you overestimate how revolutionary the community blogs were.  Most kos regulars are probably full time political consultants.  Kos is a centrist gatekeeper blog, and has been for  some time.


My blog  

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by: Dameocrat @ Tue Feb 23, 2010 at 19:07:52 PM UTC

You are looking at it the wrong way (4.00 / 2)

Daily Kos is a partisan democratic blog - Markos has said this before - whose goal is to get more and more democrats elected. Not all of democrats are created equal and while we'd like to see more progressives, the focus of that site is more on the party politics.

Part of the reason I prefer OpenLeft is that the site while most of us are democrats focuses on PROGRESSIVE ideas and policies which at least to me are more important than if you have a D or R next to your name (or G for some of you hehe.)

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by: Jon Niola @ Tue Feb 23, 2010 at 20:31:19 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

I think you're looking at this entirely the wrong way. (4.00 / 3)

I don't think those young people who are moving away from blogging ever used it in the entrepreneural way you describe, trying to become famous or promote an idea or whatever. They were using it to communicate with friends -- LiveJournal and the like. Now, instead, they're using Facebook for that.

Social networking sites "like Twitter" is also a very bad example: other survey(s) have found that Twitter also has very little uptake among the younger crowd compared to older people.

Anyway, when you hear "blogs" and "social networking" in the context of young people, think LiveJournal versus Facebook and Myspace, not OpenLeft versus Twitter.

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by: illissius @ Tue Feb 23, 2010 at 19:15:32 PM UTC

Devolution (0.00 / 0)

I was also going to point out that twitter holds very little interest for younger people.

It's funny how the mass-media devolution caused by the internet -- the slow decline of the powerful TV or newspaper pundit -- is now being replicated on the level of the blog.  Sorry guys -- people seem to prefer interpersonal communication to centralized sources, moving from TV to blogs and now down to Facebook.  I deplore the latter because it's all run by one corporation, but the trend itself is inevitable.  "National media figures," like "must-see-TV," are sliding into the past.

So as others here have said, Chris, you have to figure out how to turn Facebook (and the like) into a useful tool for communication and activism.  You were clever with the Google stuff; time to branch out.

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by: Lester @ Tue Feb 23, 2010 at 21:37:50 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

The meta trend itself is troubling (4.00 / 1)

It does appear that we are moving from a collaborative and open use of open and transparent technologies (TCP/IP at the core) to a series or online properties gated by transport carrier.

Which is one of the reasons of why Google is rapidly moving into consumer devices like the GPhone and has floated the idea of running high-speed networks themselves.

I think the shift from blogging you discuss above and the rise of celebrity twittering is simply a manifestation of this very troubling meta trend.  

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by: northcountry @ Tue Feb 23, 2010 at 19:19:50 PM UTC

Newspapers still suffer, and people will still seek... (0.00 / 0)

...info online.  Outside of political blogs, SBNation is booming in the sports' field.  I think blogs have found their niche that despite plateuing maybe in readership, will endure for a while.

John McCain won't insure children

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by: magster @ Tue Feb 23, 2010 at 19:31:06 PM UTC

Today, new blogs promote the status quo as well (4.00 / 2)

I think you may be confusing the difference between "blogs vs social networking" compared to "modern use versus past use of the internet".  I can't think of any non-mainstream blog that has gained popularity in recent years.  All the popular new blogs are mainstream or have major backing (think Huffington Post, which isn't even new anymore).

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by: Mark Matson @ Tue Feb 23, 2010 at 20:11:54 PM UTC

Chris, just because YOU haven't figured out (4.00 / 1)

how to parlay Facebook into action...

In 6 weeks we built a base of 18,000 following the Wisconsin Residents for Assembly Bill 554 page, generating tons of calls to legislators in support of the Jacki Rickert Medical Marijuana Act. In contrast, readership for the Wisconsin NORML blog never topped a few hundred after 3 years.

The difference is in the ease of forwarding.



This is a Test of the Emergency Free Speech System. This is only a Test. In an actual Free Speech Emergency, I'll be locked up.

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by: Ben Masel @ Tue Feb 23, 2010 at 20:22:13 PM UTC

But what is the level of actual engagement? (0.00 / 0)

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by: northcountry @ Tue Feb 23, 2010 at 20:26:10 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

More than zero. (4.00 / 2)

Assembly offices are getting 5-20 constituent calls a day. (1/99th of the State) up from a couple a week a year ago, when we were seeking co-sponsors, and mostly depending on email lists.



This is a Test of the Emergency Free Speech System. This is only a Test. In an actual Free Speech Emergency, I'll be locked up.

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by: Ben Masel @ Tue Feb 23, 2010 at 20:36:24 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Even in 2006 (4.00 / 3)

i'm confident I generated twice as many of my votes in my Primary challenge to Herb Kohl via MySpace as I did on the blogs, while spending MUCH more time on the latter.

MySpace's format allowed me to search, and then "add" by either zipcode sorted by last login, or such keyword pairings as "Wisconsin + hemp."

I also friended hundreds of bands in the cState, many of whom then promoted my campaign at their shows.

The leftover friendbase has been quite useful turning out votes for our off-cycle Judicial elections. 2nd and 3d places in the non-partisan Court of Appeals race a week ago were separated by less than 200. I'm pretty sure I got mu guy at least 400, and a spot in the runoff.  



This is a Test of the Emergency Free Speech System. This is only a Test. In an actual Free Speech Emergency, I'll be locked up.

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by: Ben Masel @ Tue Feb 23, 2010 at 20:47:44 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Do you measure impact by TV, or (0.00 / 0)

passing, and blocking, legislation?



This is a Test of the Emergency Free Speech System. This is only a Test. In an actual Free Speech Emergency, I'll be locked up.

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by: Ben Masel @ Tue Feb 23, 2010 at 20:49:28 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Not all blogs are blogs. (4.00 / 4)

The problem with this Pew survey making the rounds, and why it's not a good idea to draw broad conclusions from it, is that it makes no distinction between types of weblogs. There is a vast difference between political and other topical weblogs, and personal online journals for keeping up with friends and relatives.

While I have no data to back this up, I would guess that most younger people who are/were blogging are/were using their blogs as more of a social network than a way to disseminate and discuss ideas and information. So of course that audience would bleed away to Facebook and Twitter, which are far more convenient and effective social networking tools than blogs.

The Pew survey says nothing about the audience for the kind of blog typified by Kos and Open Left. I suspect that if those teens were asked more specific questions about what kind of blogs they wrote and read, we'd find that the number of younger Americans reading and writing more substantive, issues-oriented weblogs has increased, even if numbers overall have decreased.

Again, I have no data to back this up, but the Pew study is so limited in its undifferentiated, broad scope that it does nothing to support or contradict my assertion. It's really useless as a basis for predicting blogging trends. All it reflects, in my opinion, is a movement in social networking from blogs to dedicated social networking platforms. Which everyone already knew about anyway.

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by: Hoooey @ Tue Feb 23, 2010 at 20:23:07 PM UTC

... (0.00 / 0)

I think you are right and wrong... I do think they will turn back to blogs, but it won't be blogs in the current form.   Instead, we will see a melded site that incorporates nearly all aspects of web 2.0.   At one site you will see twitter like fuctionality, facebook, collaboration software, phone and video, the ability to upload and share video and pictures, blog functionality and many more.   From this portal, the user will be able to publish what they want to a viewable front end, allowing people to follow their tweets, use their message board, read and comment on their blog, etc.   There will most likely be a public and private site for each person.    The biggest key is that the experience will be the same on a computer or on a mobile platform.  

That to me is the future of social networking, along with integration of store and other advertising functions, giving the user a small share of the money, encouraging more user generated content.   But you are right that user generated content will continue to grow and is the future of the web... from politics to gaming to porn.    

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by: yitbos96bb @ Tue Feb 23, 2010 at 21:27:36 PM UTC

Widecasting vs narrowcasting (4.00 / 1)

Social stratification will always happen.  Blogging as you envision is broadcasting to everyone.  That's not what people want.  They want the internet to function as a way that resembles existing social patterns of connectivity.  The main way that the internet has enhanced society is by eliminating geography as a necessary constraint on social relationships.  This has allowed people who used to feel lonely to join online communities and feel like part of a crowd.

The internet and social networking are tools of human beings, not the status quo.  It's just that human beings like the status quo more than we like and the internet has matured in a way to reflect that.  What once was the province of the fringe has become a mainstream.

The promise of the internet as a political tool will be more about influencing people who you have met in real life than in creating a mass movement. Those who were expecting a revolutionary uprising are fools.  The left needs to come up with a more effective way of distributing talking points than the forwarded emails that are often referenced by conservatives when I talk to them.

Things You Don't Talk About in Polite Company: Religion, Politics, the Occasional Intersection of Both

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by: Anthony de Jesus @ Tue Feb 23, 2010 at 23:08:29 PM UTC

is being a national media figure important? (0.00 / 0)

i mean, it's helpful for getting the bills paid.

but if your goal is, for instance, promoting nationwide action like calling Congress about the public option, can't that work just as well through a network of regionally known people? (where "region" can mean geographic - a state blog - or mental - Boing Boing.)

plus, if it's true that most people just don't even want to think about this stuff in their everyday lives, and so they delegate "politics" to someone they know who does pay attention, then what tools most people use in those everyday lives is not so much what matters.

i sure would like to see more data about how people actually make political choices. what do they hear, how do they hear it, how much does it actually affect their vote if they vote at all? hard to get, of course, because people a) lie and b) don't always really know how they know things...

not everything worth doing is profitable. not everything profitable is worth doing.

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by: tatere @ Tue Feb 23, 2010 at 23:56:10 PM UTC

yes (4.00 / 2)

I agree with Chris 100% (how's that for controversy...)

Twitter is yet another celebration of celebrity. I don't think the original twitter programmers intended it this way, but twitter has taken a piece of the web and made it even more "TV" than TV. In hindsight, it is somewhat predictable. The fact that the technology is used mostly to promote celebrity, and thus reinforce the status quo, has a lot to do the centralized nature of the service itself. Twitter promotes celebrity because that is the quickest way to promote itself. They make it easy to find celebrities in order to draw in users.

This suggests an unfortunate conclusion: that almost any technology whose growth path is based on a for-profit, "free market" approach will probably end up just reinforcing the status quo in some symbiotic way.

Revolutionary technologies like TCP/IP and DNS were not conceived as profit-making schemes, and they ended up changing the world for the better. The same goes for blogs. However, when you just try to make bucks by drawing in more eyeballs, the result will not be revolutionary (or even progressive... :-(  )

Imagine twitter as a decentralized technology, like SMS or email. Then all the users would not go to one centralized site to sign up. Then there would be no twitter.com that promotes celebrities on it's front page. Twitter's neo-royalism is no accident.

ec=-8.50 soc=-8.41   (3,967 Watts)

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by: Mark Wallace @ Wed Feb 24, 2010 at 05:25:29 AM UTC