Why (most of) Congress doesn't blog

In Molly Chapman Norton's article on Congressional blogs, she notes that "The few pseudo-blogs that are written by members of Congress are taking the first baby steps towards being a part of the real blogosphere." The problem with blogs, from the perspective of the staffers she interviewed, was that:

the difficulty in maintaining spin on a true blog was a hindrance. One staffer, who chose to remain anonymous, said most congressional offices could not incorporate a blog because it was simply too difficult to spin.

In the article, Michael Cornfield lists some good practical reasons why Members of Congress have not yet embraced blogging as a communication tool.

Nevertheless, a few enterprising representatives, such as Rick Tancredo (R-CO) and John Conyers (D-MI), have used blogging successfully. In fact, Rep. Mark Kirk (R-IL) believes that blogs "will be the primary means of communication with the people that you serve," and affirms, "Bottom line — blogs rule."

Do you agree with this point of view, or do you think that blogs are too unpredictable to be widely used as a communications tool for Members of Congress?

Do-it-yourself narrowcasting

Now you can narrowcast your own neighbors, and they can narrowcast you right back. Yes, there's a website, Claritas, that lets you enter a zip code and see which "consumer segments" dominate that neighborhood:

This exciting feature allows you to select from a number of lifestyle segmentation systems that classify people by demographic and behavioral characteristics into "Clusters."

For my neighborhood, it was eerily accurate. How about yours? Run the segmentation look-up tool, and post a comment here to let us know if it was accurate for you, too.

Honoring our three featured bloggers

It has come to my attention that three of our bloggers have risen like shooting stars high into the firmament of the blogosphere:

Stuck in the Middle with Blue
Outside Damage
Right Blog

Here is a modest tribute in their honor.

Update on the Bloomberg campaign

The New York Times article, "Spending More, Major Refines Voter Strategy, describes how Bloomberg is using rivers of cash to develop sophisticated voter lists suitable for narrowcasting.

Mr. Bloomberg's campaign has already spent more than $15 million, more than three times the amount spent by his four Democratic rivals combined. . . [including over] more than $5 million on his voter database, which is being developed by his pollster, Doug Schoen, a former adviser to Mr. Clinton. That amount is roughly as much as Mr. Bush's campaign spent for a national voter list last year.

Mr. Cunningham said Mr. Bloomberg's 2001 campaign used a voter list that was sophisticated by the standards of the time, but technology has improved. "It's the difference between going from X-ray machines to M.R.I.'s," Mr. Cunningham said.

Mr. Cunningham would not share specifics about what personal information the list includes, but Jerry Skurnick, whose company, Prime New York, collects voter data, said the possibilities were nearly endless.

Note that although the Bloomberg campaign is led mainly by seasoned Democratic consultants, it is modeled on the Bush campaign's GOTV strategy, and aims to use new technology to power a tightly-disciplined ground operation:

The volunteer effort mirrors Mr. Bush's campaign, which set out to build a huge network of supporters to counter the Democrats' traditional organizational muscle in getting voters to the polls.

We will compare the narrowcasting strategies of recent campaigns in tomorrow's class.

Monday's Open Thread

Post your comments and questions.

You can also provide links to any class blog entries that you think are especially worthwhile. (How about some suggestions?)

Another kind of synergy

After reading the Text Reader post on Hegemon, I have been thinking about the advantages of making all books available in digital-text format, and becoming more aware of how few are.

You can get audio-only versions of many books, and that is good. But it is rare to find digital text versions that allow you to listen and read at the same time by using a text reader such as ReadPlease. This is an important distinction, because an audio-only version of a book has certain disadvantages for the user — it's harder to go back and re-read passages, for example. Likewise, if you are using an audio-only version, it's harder to read rapidly.

By contrast, if you are using a text reader, you can set the audio to speak at high speed as you skim the text with your eyes. The combined input of visual and audio cues is better than either one alone. That's synergy.

Why aren't more books available in digital-text format? Lawrence Lessig addresses this question in Free Culture, his unforgettable keynote speech at the 2002 Open Source Conference. I'll be playing it for you in class on week 9 or 10. If you want a sneak preview and have a high-speed connection, go ahead. Believe it or not, this lecture on copyright law will knock your socks off.

By the way, you can download a digital-text version of our book, Winning Campaigns Online (PDF: 2.3 Mb, zipped: 1.5 Mb). This is the digital file the book was printed from. Of course, I would not be at liberty to provide this to you if Phil and I had ceded control of our book to a publisher. We're glad we didn't.

Saturday's Open Thread

Post your comments and questions. You can also provide links to any class blog entries that you think are especially worthwhile.

Offline-online synergy in the Dean campaign

As I look more closely at how technology was used to build ground operations in the 2004 campaigns, the most interesting comparisons seem to be between Bush and Dean.

In a November 2003 article, The Marketing of a President, Edward Cone describes the synergistic approach of Dean's director of Internet organizing, Zephyr Teachout, who took the view that:

. .  the campaign is not about the Internet. Online tools are a way to get people to act — to meet in the physical world, to put up flyers and posters, write letters and checks, speak to other people face to face. And ultimately, to get out and vote.

Arguably, that quote could apply equally well to the Bush campaign's effective use of offline-online synergy during 2004. Yet in the matter of "message discipline," the two campaigns took very different approaches:

. . . the lesson of Dean's campaign is that the Web is not for micromanagers. With the Internet, an effective campaign creates a community that will on its own begin to market your product for you. Properly done, you won't be able — or want — to control it. . . "There was a remarkable reaction to the fact that he was running," says Teachout. "We had way too much e-mail to deal with, so we had to empower people in the states, let volunteers handle the e-mail in Oregon. It was very unorthodox."

So the campaign rushed to push away control. "When you build an organization in 17 states, with no money, you give away power as fast as you can," says Teachout of those cash-strapped early days. "We had to let them have control, let them help the campaign how they wanted to help the campaign."

Was the Dean campaign's willingness to "spread the ownership of the campaign" its greatest strength, its undoing, or both?

Two closing observations: the Dean campaign reportedly was influenced by The Cluetrain Manifesto, co-authored by Doc Searles and David Weinberger, whom you may remember from World of Ends.

The second item is strangely familiar:

The weblog must be updated several times a day for maximum impact, and there are hundreds of fresh comments to read. It means running flat out. "You can get to this later today, after you sleep," Gross tells one of the programmers seated in the next cubicle. "Forget sleeping," grunts the programmer.

Thursday's Open Thread

Post your comments and questions. You can also provide links to any class blog entries that you think are especially worthwhile.

At about 5:30pm, I sent you all an email update with information about your Strategic Plans. If any of you did not receive it, please let me know.

A few new articles for next week

Note that I have added a 30-minute radio broadcast and a few short online readings for next week. To compensate, I moved the Vaidhyanathan readings from "required reading" to "optional".

I think you will be particularly interested in comparing the radio broadcast to the information presented in some of the articles. You will hear some of the same things being said, but with very different implications.

Your question about the strategic plans

Separight asked:

Did you say that you were going to distribute revised requirements for the strategic plan, as well as push back the deadline for the draft presentation?

My response: Yes, I will be emailing you the revised Strategic Plan requirements tomorrow.

Drafts will be turned in (not presented) at the week 7 class on July 5.

As I mentioned in class last Tuesday, our next class (week 6) will focus on volunteer mobilization, GOTV, and synergy between the Internet and ground operations. You will need to think about those topics as you work on your strategic plan.

Note that I have added a 30-minute radio broadcast and a few short online readings for next week. To compensate, I moved the Vaidhyanathan readings from the required to the recommended list.

Recommended blog for Wednesday June 22

You have recommended "Meet One of the 50 Hottest Bachelors: A Blogger! on Big Block of Cheese.

In her nomination DelaBlogger explains that the post "is an interesting look at how blogs are becoming mainstream and a part of popular culture." While you are on the Big Block of Cheese site, have a look at today's post on what people actually remember about news stories: Is it all Worth It?

Recommended blog for Tuesday June 21

You have recommended Viral Marketing and the Power of Panties on Meet Justin. (This blog was nominated by Idealist).

Justin describes how "Eyebeam, a non-profit center for art and technology . . . organized the "Contagious Media Showdown" in which contestants were given a month to see how many people they could attract to their site using viral marketing."

One reader commented:

If those numbers weren't enough, I can attest to having received two of those three sites from friends' websites and e-mail.

The Crying While Eating site, in particular, has earned its viral success. . . To summarize, crude or otherwise wacky humor is a surefire way to become a viral success. Now, how do you parlay that into a race for Ohio Supreme Court.

Emi's Caveat
While humor can sometimes encourage people to forward a political message to friends, humor is not the only — or necessarily the best — viral marketing strategy. Humor, by nature, is volatile. Polical humor can backfire. Here's another example. That said, enjoy the post.

Your question about reading

On Monday's Open Thread, jd posted a comment:

I have a question. I can think of three types of posts that are encouraged by you in our class.

1) Posts on the reading
2) Class discussion posts
3) Posts with further research on the topic but not on the reading

What should our balance of these be? Our class participation grade is partly based on blogs about class discussion. Do these count even if the discussion wasn't about the reading? You encouraged a student in class tonight to blog on the program he uses to hear text being read, does this count?

Should we do 4 [blogs] a week on the reading and any class discussion or research beyond are extra credit? Should we do a majority of posts on the reading but a few on the other two? Please clarify. Thanks!

These are all good questions. You can do as many blogs as you like. As long as you meet the basic requirement of four blogs per week that respond to the reading, you can get extra credit for any additional blogs as long as they are directly related to topics discussed in the readings OR the class. Note that the requirement for being on-topic gets more lenient after you have met your basic requirement.

Look — it's a matter of common sense. How can I justify giving you an "A" in the class if I can't be sure you ever did the reading? I cannot give you credit for life experience.

When you become campaign professionals, you must be able to consider the campaign from the point of view of the voter. You must ask yourselves, what can we do inspire the voter to support this campaign? And how can we make it easy for them to do so?

Take this approach with me, your professor. I am the voter you must persuade. You are already halfway there. I am very much inspired by your work so far. If you give me direct evidence that you have done the course reading and thought about it, you make it easy for me to give you my full support.

It's not rocket science. If there are no exams, there must be some system of establishing that you didn't sail through the course without ever cracking a book. I want to give you my vote. Make your blogs user-friendly for someone who must assign grades for academic credit (that's me).

Keep in mind that it is EASY to refer to the readings if you have actually done them. For instance, you mentioned this example in your question: "You encouraged a student in class tonight to blog on the program he uses to hear text being read, does this count?" Yes, it would count if he framed his comments, for example, in the context of class readings on website usability. He could say:

I noticed in our class readings on website usability (Neilsen, Flanders, and Gahran), none of them even mention the importance of creating standards compliant websites that are able to reach more people — including the roughly one-fifth of Americans who have some form of disability. This is a serious oversight, in my opinion.

According to the National Organization on Disability, this represents "an untapped market worth over $220 billion in collective spending power."

While not all disabilities interfere with a person's ability to use the Internet, many do — vision and hearing are the most common forms of disability. What campaign can afford to disregard even 10 or 15 percent of potential voters?

Instead of posting 100 photographs of himself on his website, why doesn't Neilsen mention accessibility issues in his Top 10 Mistakes or his Usability 101?

Although he didn't mention accessibility in the articles we read for class, he did report in another article that when you design websites to be accessible for the disabled, non-disabled users also find it easier to use.

Notice that this post, although it discusses a topic that was not even mentioned in the class readings, shows that the author is thoroughly familiar with the required readings. Bingo! I can vote for that!

If anyone still has any questions about this, send me an email right away. I want your final grades to be the high grades you have earned so far.

Course requirements going forward

Congratulations on exceeding expectations
In the past four weeks, to my amazement, you have exceeded the course requirements for written assignments by nearly 800 percent. You were required to write one short paragraph a day, and so I planned to receive one or two pages a week from each of you.

Instead, you are writing 8-10 pages each week on average. Each week I am receiving almost 300 pages of thoughtful, analytical, and well-written work, in addition to another 70 or so pages of revised assignments. I can read and provide detailed feedback each week on 35-50 pages of work, but not 370.

Likewise, from the student's point of view, 80-100 pages of written work is too much for a 10-week course.

Blog four times a week
Because your written output has exceeded my expectations by nearly 800 percent, we must modify the requirements for this course. Instead of writing one blog entry each day, you are now required to write 4 blog entries and 4 comments on class blogs per week. (The requirement to post on one outside blog per week is unchanged).

One blog each week chosen for grading
Each week, I will choose one of your four entries to grade, and the grade you receive on that entry will be your blog writing grade for the week. If your work for the week is not uniformly high-quality, I will choose your weakest entry for grading, and you will have a chance to revise it after receiving feedback.

TIP: You can avoid the extra work of revisions by writing four strong entries each week. That way you'll simply get an "A" for the week and you're done.

Reference to readings is necessary
Please note that you must demonstrate mastery of required readings in every post. Because this class has no exams, you must demonstrate in your blog writing exactly what you have learned in this course.

In the remaining weeks, please don't force me to deduct points for off-topic posts. If you stay on-topic and maintain the high standards you have shown thus far, I can justify a final grade of "A". If I can't prove that you have read and thought about the required readings, I can't justify an "A", even if your work is otherwise excellent.

Reflecting the quality and volume of your written output during the past four weeks, my gradebook currently shows most of the class with "A" and "A+" grades. I want the final grades to be as good as what I see now. I can't do it on a whim — I must have written evidence that only you can provide. Please help me out.

Keep up the great work!

Note: You may still use each of your "Get Out of Blogging" cards once.

Update Wednesday 6:29pm
I've posted my responses to some of your questions.

Monday's Open Thread

Post your comments and questions. You can also provide links to any class blog entries that you think are especially worthwhile.

Recommended blog for Monday June 20

Thanks to El Jorge, who went to the polls and voted, we have a winner for today: DelaBlogger's A Day Off, posted on The Femocrat.

This example of courageous investigation and analysis — of journalism in the community interest — is an inspiring case study of the power of blogs to hold our leaders accountable.

Put these in your wallet

Kathie Legg pointed out that everyone is very busy with midterms this week. Phil suggested you all be given a few days off. That seems fair; everyone has been doing an outstanding job. So here are your passes. You can use them now or anytime during the course (but you can use each pass only once):

To use this pass, create an empty blog entry, give it a title, and paste this code into it.

 

For this pass,
use this code.

 

For this pass,
use this code.

Good luck on your exams!

 

Recommended blog for Sunday June 19

You have recommended My About Face With Subscription Interface on Advise and Consent.

The author points out that "You might have the greatest product ever, but if you can't get people in the door, you'll never sell your product. A successful subscription interface allows you to attract customers and 'sell' your candidate and his/her message. The first step is to get them in the door." One reader commented:

"I completely agree. Several times i have found myself interested in subscribing to several websites, but then I have to confront their subscription interface and I cannot deal with it. They should be simple, they should not waste your time as many of them do. Overall, subscription interfaces should not scare users away."

Also noteworthy
Though not officially nominated, apparently this blog was also judged to be excellent by a discerning jury of peers: A Day Off.

Sunday's Open Thread

Post your comments and questions. You can also provide links to any class blog entries that you think are especially worthwhile.

New one-page required reading for Tuesday

I just ran across this and decided it's too essential to put in the "Optional Reading" section. If you don't read this in time for our next class, it's OK, because we will discuss it.

Amy Gahran provides some compelling arguments in her short article, Why Webfeeds (RSS) Beat E-Mail Newsletters, starting with the simple fact that they are SPAM-proof.

Case in point: our own JD describes his personal experience of having his newsletters blocked in Avoiding the Spam Filter:

"So I signed up for several political newsletters from campaigns I am doing projects on. After receiving nothing from any of them I went into my spam filter. Presto, newsletter after newsletter sitting unread in the equivalent of my trash bin (I use gmail)."

Mike D provided some good comments on RSS pros and cons for campaigns in his RSS Feed Newsletters post.

Of course, webfeeds also have disadvantages, and some critics have claimed that RSS is not ready for prime-time. In any case, until new computers are shipped with pre-installed feed-reader capability, webfeeds will accessible only to the small percentage of users who bother to download and install a reader.

But it seems clear that every political website — no matter how small — should provide a webfeed link, in addition to the traditional newsletter subscription link.

Palmieri made me do it

Yesterday I went out to dinner with Phil and friends, planning to post around midnight as usual. But then the most jaw-dropping jazz performance I ever heard blasted me into a state of blissed-out forgetfulness.

We saw Latin jazz legend Eddie Palmieri at Blues Alley in Georgetown. Catch the last show tonight if you can. Donald Harrison is on alto sax and Brian Lynch on trumpet. They were on fire last night. The band also includes Jose Claussell on timbales, Jose Santiago on bass, and Johnny Rivero on congas.

Maybe you can get a discount: "One-Half admission for Students and Congressional Staff with a valid ID Sunday–Thursday 10:00 pm shows." Apparently that option is not available via online ticketing, so you may need to call the club (202-337-4141) for details.

Will post on-topic later today, after I shake myself out of this trance.

By the way, this means that students are required to post one less blog during the remaining weeks: 62 instead of the original 63, as DelaBlogger very astutely noted.

Open thread: nominate your favorite for today

I ran across a comment El Jorge made a while back in response to The Starbucks Effect, a witty post on A Schwartzenegger Republican. El Jorge said:

"Great post... If we had recommended posts, I would highly recommend this to the entire class."

Politiae made a similar suggestion on her blog. So I've decided to post an open thread each day for any comments you care to post on any topic.

Feel free to nominate your favorite classmate's blog diary for the day.
(Um... please don't nominate your own blog.) If you'd like to suggest a more original icon, please do. (Perhaps this powerful image of unfettered free speech?)

Dean's fundraising bats

Dimmy's post about Howard Dean's fundraising bats prompted me to go into my digital attic and show you this item from my collection of baseball memorabilia.

Thinking about the subscriber's experience

I have posted some screenshots of campaign websites from the 2004 presidential race.

They show some of the web pages that users encountered when they subscribed to campaign newsletters or signed up to volunteer.

Have a look at the screenshots and think about what each interface reveals about the campaign.

Sneezing with fire

When I read about this it reminded me of Seth Godin's marketing strategy of using "powerful sneezers" to spread an idea virus.

Business Week's May 23 cover story, Earthly Empires, describes the pyromarketing strategy used to promote California megachurch pastor Rick Warren's 2002 book, The Purpose-Driven Life, which has become the fastest-selling nonfiction book of all time, with more than 23 million copies sold.

Greg Steilstra, a Christian communications company exec and the marketing director for Purpose-Driven Life, advocates starting a "marketing fire" by focusing the marketing budget on the "driest tinder." Although some Christian evangelicals have criticized the ethics of the way the book was marketed, Steilstra himself is busy marketing his pyromarketing techniques in a forthcoming book.

Here are the powerpoint and accompanying text of a presentation he recently delivered at the WOMMA Summit. (That's the Word of Mouth Marketing Association, in case you were hesitant to ask.) An excerpt:

"Mass advertising's effectiveness, however, has been deteriorating since reaching its heyday in the late 1960's. Today, much of it inundates and annoys disinterested people with irrelevant messages . . . The increase in ads as a "solution" for their decreased effectiveness has actually worsened the problem. The resulting deluge of advertising has saturated the market, but it hasn't improved results. The opposite is true. The rising tide of advertising has fostered a growing resistance and negativity among those it targets . . . A recent Yankelovich survey found that sixty-five percent of Americans feel 'constantly [b]ombarded with too much marketing and advertising.'"

What does this mean for the future of Internet ads in politics? Is Internet advertising a waste of budget, or is it effective?

One last dance

I know I said today in class that we need to leave the topic of blogs behind and focus on other aspects of new media. But Phil just told me about this post on MyDD, and I wanted to get your feedback.

The author claims that the right side of the blogosphere is choking off the growth of new talent by not allowing users to comment or post diaries on its most popular blogs:

"Of the twenty-four liberal blogs in the top quintile, Dailykos, TPM Cafe, Smirking Chimp, Metafilter, BooMan Tribune, MyDD, and Dembloggers are full-fledged community sites where members cannot only comment, but they can also post diaries / articles / polls. By comparison, there are no community sites among the top twenty-four conservative blogs. None, zip, zero, nada."

Another post on Kos is discussing the same topic.

When I set up the list of public discussion blogs for our class assignments, I did notice the top right-leaning blogs, such as Instapundit, Michelle Malkin, and Powerline, did not allow comments from the public, much less diaries. I also noted that the DNC has a blog, but not the RNC. Little Green Footballs used to be a community site, but apparently has shut down registration, which means members of the public can no longer sign up to comment. I wrote the editor to ask about this a few weeks ago, but have as yet received no reply.

What do you make of this, if anything?

General Comments on Blogs

After several days spent reading and commenting on your blogs, I have only a few left to grade. Any of you who have not yet received detailed feedback will receive it in the next day or so.

In any case, you are all doing extraordinarily well with your daily writing and analysis. I have made some suggestions to each of you, and we will look at examples of good blog entries during class tomorrow.

Phil will be discussing your strategic plans and answering any questions you may have on that project.

These blogs are so interesting to read. In addition to the blogs themselves, many of you have linked to excellent supporting source materials that I hadn't yet seen. Several times today I have printed things out and handed them to Phil, saying, "Look at this!" It has been a learning experience for us. Thanks again for all your dedicated efforts!

GauRag asks for input from class gurus

He writes:

"I've managed to talk my supervisors into starting a blog for Progressive Majority. Currently, our WA and WI state offices blog about state issues and candidates, and we'd like to set up a blog at our DC Headquarters that syndicates in from the state offices. Anyone know of a good way to set this up with Blogger? The first task is getting posts from the blog to the PM website... and I'm not familiar enough with XML or RSS feeds to set this up. Help (gaurag at gwu dot edu) would be greatly appreciated :) "

If you have some good ideas, let's hear about them in class.

The Death Knell of Rooftop Sunbathing

Last week on Blue State of Mind, dcae's "Big Brother is Watching" mentioned Google's new satellite map tool. I finally got around to checking it out today. Here's a detail from a satellite photo showing our classroom at 805 21st Street NW:



To see the surrounding neighborhood, go to the Google map.

If you want to input the street addresses of some other campus buildings, refer to GWU's interactive campus map.

And stop picking your nose, please.

e-Repression

I came across a fascinating but deeply troubling report on Internet censorship in China released two months ago by the OpenNet Initiative, which is a collaborative effort by the University of Toronto, Harvard, and University of Cambridge:

Unlike the filtering systems in many other countries, China's filtering regime appears to be carried out at various control points and also to be dynamic, changing along a variety of axes over time. . . Filtering takes place primarily at the backbone level of China's network, though individual Internet service providers also implement their own blocking. Our research confirmed claims that major Chinese search engines filter content by keyword and remove certain search results from their lists. Similarly, major Chinese Web log ("blog") service providers either prevent posts with certain keywords or edit the posts to remove them. (p. 3)

If the Chinese have figured out a way to do this so effectively, presumably comparable systems of Internet censorship can be imposed by other governments that may be deeply hostile to criticism from the media and the public. Could such censorship happen in America? Why or why not?

On a lighter note, it is interesting to note which information sources the Chinese censors view as threats to their propaganda machine:

Chinese citizens seeking access to Web sites containing content related to Taiwanese and Tibetan independence, Falun Gong, the Dalai Lama, the Tiananmen Square incident, opposition political parties, or a variety of anti-Communist movements will frequently find themselves blocked.

Despite conventional wisdom, though, ONI found that most major American media sites, such as CNN, MSNBC, and ABC, are generally available in China (though the BBC remains blocked).

Thank God that at least the Beeb is on their enemies list!

More online resources for strategic plans

Phil found these on the Washington Post website:

The Virginia Voter's Guide, and Race to Richmond, the Post's blog on the Virginia governor's race.

Formatting tips for online communications

I will link to this in the "Tips" section and add to it from time to time.

• Check spelling.
• Break up long paragraphs into shorter ones.
• Make headlines easy to scan. As with newspaper headlines, shorten your title, if possible, to get it to fit on one line. If it must wrap, be sure you don't leave one solitary orphan word on the second line.
• Use underlines only for links. Otherwise readers will click on your underlined text and wonder why the link is broken.
  
  If you want a book title to appear underlined, you can make the title a link to a review of the book or a place where readers can obtain it.

Peer-to-peer problem-solving

If you are scratching your head over an annoying code problem, Kathie Legg of Kathie's Politech has graciously offered to look at your code and try to help. She wrote me this just before I distributed the email list to the class on Tuesday:

My classmate . . . had an error in their code for their last post. I offered to help them with that (I am good at finding errors) but they seem to have taken down the blog post. Can you just make sure they know I don't mind helping them fix it and they did not have to take it down?

When I asked whether she wanted to offer her help to other classmates, as well, she replied:

Feel free to let them know. I LOVE looking at code!

Local boy makes good

Earlier today, our own Justin Cole (meet justin) had the No. 1 of the top five most commented-on political posts at Blogcritics.org. It's still at No. 3 as I write.

11:15 AM: Uh ... correction. Justin now has TWO articles in the TWO top spots. What did he have for breakfast?

See for yourself.

Why is this a big deal? Knowing how to get "earned media" on the blogs can be a very useful skill. Blogcritics.org is among the top 25 of all weblogs ranked by traffic, with an average of over 15,800 visitors a day. Great job, Justin! (Presumably the traffic on Justin's own blog spiked today.)

Note that the traffic ranking stats are via SiteMeter. While the free version of SiteMeter provides only a few basic kinds of information, its widespread use allows apples-to-apples ranking among sites. So no matter what else you may happen to use for your traffic data, it's probably a good idea to use SiteMeter as well, especially since it's free. more

P.S. When you write a top recommended post on certain blogs — such as those with highest "ecosystem ranking" (incoming links from other blogs), you can assume that your post has been read by at least some people on the Hill. When we talk to Sr. Legislative Asst. Joel Segal during Class 7 (New Media on Capitol Hill), let's ask him which ones he regularly checks. more about ecosystem ranking

Flirting as online collective action

If you liked "Read You Me" posted today on Kathie's Politech, you may also be interested in this interview of cyberculture chronicler Howard Rheingold: "Is That a Computer in Your Pants?" In a free-wheeling discussion of modes of online collective action, he mentions gaming, riots, elections, political demonstrations — and flirting:

"Hundreds of thousands of young people in Brazil have a group called Blah! that they use to flirt with. You get a screen name, which protects your real identity. You get a profile, which describes who you are. And you can search for profiles and send them messages. They can reply to you through their handle or through their real identity, or they can block communications from you. It's almost entirely about flirting, and it's mostly young people, and it's popular — 400,000 people joined it in the first three months it was in operation. They have face-to-face parties with people standing around texting each other, looking around to see if the people who are texting are the ones they’re talking to."

There's a lot of other interesting stuff online about MoSoSo and flirting, such as this Wired News story: MoSoSos Not So So-So.

Peer-to-peer research

SEPARight of Right Blog asked me to pass on this information:

I'm having a hard time finding websites with polling information for the VA Governor race. I finally found this. It shows polls in March, April, and May. March and May have demographic breakdowns. They were done by Survey USA. I don't know polling, so I'm not sure if they're credible. This is only for Kilgore, Kaine, and Potts. Fitch is not included.

Can you pass this on to whomever has these three candidates?

Survey USA also has results for many other cities in the US.

If you find information that might help your classmates, why not post it on your blog? Strategic Plan background research is certainly on-topic, and it's a good way to increase classmates' interest in your blog.

You might also post a list of specific information you are looking for. That way, classmates may be able to return the favor.

Google Search is now working on my blog

Search is also working on iammeblog. I tested a few of the other blogs and did not find any that were search-enabled yet.

If you haven't done so already, you may want to submit your blog URL to Google to speed things up.

I also linked to your blogs from a little static page on my server. Sometimes spiders don't index everything on dynamic pages.

Go ahead and post comments on all blogs

Starting now (Wednesday 7:38 AM) you can post comments on all class blogs without having to send me links to them in your weekly reports.

From now on, your weekly reports will contain only your name, your link(s) to your public blog comment(s), and your screenname used for those comments. No more links to comments in class blogs.

A few blogs are not yet sending auto-emails, but I will collect comments manually from those blogs until kinks are worked out.

Be sure to do this now (please)

Make life easier for everybody by setting up your blog to report blog entries and comments to me automatically via email.

Everybody must do it before it will work as a reporting system. It's easy and should take you two minutes or less.

Once everybody sets it up, no one will have to send me links to their comments EVER AGAIN!

If it's not set up today, then people will still have to send me their links next week. Let's not go there.

Here's how you can do your part.

Using Blogger's spellcheck

A good blog, like any good publication, is well-edited. I have been seeing some otherwise great blogs that have spelling errors. When that happens, I will ask you to correct the errors before I grade the work. So you will save us both time if you edit your work before you post it.

Blogger's spellcheck is easy to use. When you are ready to publish your blog entry, simply click the spellcheck button. Here's a screenshot.

Tech note:  Certain browsers do not support Blogger's spellcheck:

Spell check does not work in Safari. We recommend using Mozilla Firefox for Mac users.

In the Camino browser, text cannot be entered into the posting field. We will be making some changes to handle this browser better.

In recent versions of Mozilla browsers, the image upload and spell-check windows may be blocked as popups. You can fix this by changing your preferences to allow popups from blogger.com and www.blogger.com.

How to spellcheck your comments
Here's some helpful advice posted on Stuck in the Middle with Blue:

"I know you can use the spell check function whenever creating a post on blogger, but the same option isn't available when posting a comment. . . [I] did an online search for spell checkers and came up with Spellcheck.net. No registration, no downloads, just cut and paste. It identifies misspelled words and gives you a drop down box to correct them, up to 5000 words."

Other Post Editor Tools
To learn about other features in the Post Editor, see "All About the Post Editor" in Blogger Help.

Please confirm project assignments

I have posted the project assignments for the Strategic Plan.

Please let me know if this information is not correct.

Some of you have asked about the format for submitting the draft Objectives document that is due on Tuesday, June 6th. Please bring a printout and turn it in at class on Tuesday.

See you then.

A way to automate reporting and backups

Automatic reporting
I had an idea and I think it will work. If it does, it will make things much easier for all of us. Every week the only thing you would need to send me is the link(s) to your comments on public discussion blogs. Everything within Blogger would reach me automatically.

To set this up, I'd like each of you to configure your blogs to automatically send me an email containing any blog entries or comments that are posted on your blog. I'll explain how below.

Automatic backups
Another major benefit of this system is that your work would be protected from accidental loss or deletion. I would have a copy of everything via email.

You may remember that during our last class, we discussed ways to make backup copies of your work. One of you suggested that we could simply set our blogs to do daily archiving. But I looked into the issue today, and apparently the archives are simply a way of organizing the presentation of what is currently in the database, and not a method of creating a separate backup copy of the data that would survive if the blog itself — or even part of it — were somehow deleted.

Although it's very unlikely that your blog would be deleted accidentally or otherwise lost, "unlikely" is not good enough. You need a way to create backups easily.

How to set it up (it's easy)

• Log into Blogger Dashboard, and on the Settings Tab, click Email, and enter this email address in the BlogSend Address field: blogbackup@nashinteractive.com
  
  This will automatically send me an email whenever you post an entry on your blog.
  
  If you want to see screenshots, here's the Blogger Help page. (To send emails to both your address and mine, refer to the footnote about Google Groups.)
• Next, on the Settings Tab, click Comments, and enter the same email address in the Comment Notification Address field: blogbackup@nashinteractive.com
  
  This sends me an email whenever anyone posts a comment to your blog. (more info.)

Please set this up as soon as possible an send me an email when you're done so I can test it. Thanks!

Note: For tomorrow's report, you still need to manually send links via email. As soon as everyone adds the blogbackup address to their blogs, we should be able to do it automatically.