August 15, 2007

BLOGGERS VS BLOGGERS: Getting GOPers Off The Couch

A Politico story on the GOP/Dem online gap didn't go unnoticed. Open Left's Chris Bowers blogs: "Generally speaking, what we are seeing here are online Democrats taking more action on behalf of Democratic candidates than online Republicans taking action on behalf of Republican candidates. To put it another way, even though studies show that Republicans use the Internet at rates equal to Democrats, Republicans are less politically active online than Democrats."

Bowers then quotes Townhall's Patrick Ruffini: "But Free Republic simply could not succeed in the world of the blogosphere, social media, and Web 2.0. The founders made the decision that they were going to hoard as much traffic on their servers as possible ... If you expressed your own opinion when starting a thread, that was a "vanity" and it was frowned upon. And fundraising for candidates was strictly forbidden, except for those pet causes approved by Jim Robinson. Their culture was very anti-blog and anti-original content."

Heritage Foundation's Robert Bluey responds: "There's no question that liberals are more politically active online. However, I find Bowers' assertion that Huffington Post and Daily Kos have excelled because they are driven by a community to be somewhat misleading. Free Republic invented the concept of an online community, and according to Compete, it still tops both in terms of eyeballs. ... Despite all of its success generating traffic and building a community, could Free Republic actually be considered a failure? That's not a question I can answer. ... As it stands now, Free Republic has decided not to evolve. That doesn't mean we don't have the eyeballs. We simply haven't figured out how to activate the community."

Posted by Conn Carroll at August 15, 2007 12:50 PM