Want to get a look at the innards of HotSoup–the soon-to-be-launched new entry in the social-networking sweepstakes? While the site’s homepage will turn you away, just go to any of these links–HotIssues, About, Press, or Contacts and you’re in. They’ve also left open links to several of their “Opinion Drivers”–famous people from the worlds of politics, business, religion, and popular culture who presumably are going to blog brilliantly for the site, which aims to focus heavily on politics. Looking forward to the deep thoughts of cyclist Lance Armstrong, lobbyist Ed Gillespie, veterans activist Bobby Muller, or “political diva” (that’s her online handle on the site) Donna Brazile? You can check them out too.
It’s obviously not fair to judge a site before it’s launched, and we here at PDF certainly welcome more experiments in merging professional and amateur voices, top-down and bottom-up social networks. But it is intriguing to ponder what Ron Fournier and crew are up to. The site clearly aims to draw an audience by tapping prominent writers from across the political spectrum (something none of the major political celebrity blogging sites like HuffingtonPost or PajamasMedia currently do). And readers appear to be slated a larger and simpler role in visibly rating posts with an “agree/disagree” tool that will show how every contributor stands with the community–though it seems those ratings may take the place of raw comments (which might discomfit some of the celebs). One odd choice–bulletin boards for “Issue Loop” discussions. I can’t remember the last time I waded through a forum on a bulletin board!
It’s also hard to see where the social networking features come in. It looks like HotSoup will allow users to create personal profiles and to nominate non-celebrities to be “hot issues panelists.” But at least from the pages that they left exposed, it’s not clear that average folks will find HotSoup are more compelling place to bat around their political views than, say, a lively community blog.
What do you think?
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