Things calmed down a bit on 10Questions yesterday, after all the MySpace/MTV/Obama attention on Monday, with about 2400 unique visits in all. Videos keep coming in at a healthy pace, and participants added another 2000 votes to the tally. Another promising metric: about one in five of our visitors has been to the site before, which shows that an ongoing community of participants has been forming.
We’re continuing to work on making the site more useful and transparent, and starting today added a “History” link to each video that allows anyone to see the daily tracking record of votes for or against a video since it was uploaded to the site. See this link for the voting history on the “Corporate Rights” video as an example: you can see how voting on the question has been roughly balanced in both directions, a sign that our diverse community of participants is keeping an eye on things. As a video moves up due to positive votes, visitors notice and react.
Crooks and Liars has muscled its way into top position among our direct referrers, followed by MSNBC, Conservative Grapevine, the New York Times, Hugh Hewitt, Digg, Google search, and HotAir.
The discussion of the role of organized groups in helping to promote specific questions continues today with a report by Sarah Lai Stirland on Wired News. Stirland talked to Susie Kameny, whose question about warrantless wiretapping came out of her own experience and concerns, but who managed to marshall the support of the Electronic Frontier Foundation for it. See http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/10/astroturfing-in.html for details.
Other links of note:
Co-sponsor Crooks and Liars featured 10Questions on an open thread: http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/10/30/open-thread-617/
Philanthropy blogger Lucy Bernholz writes about the possibility of 10Questions joining with other open platforms to elevate the issue of poverty: http://philanthropy.blogspot.com/2007/10/foundations-and-poverty.html
Brian Russell writes on Yesh.com that he recorded a video question about net neutrality, but liked Joe Niederberger’s question, which was asked of Obama, even better. He writes:
“This is a pretty good example of participatory democracy in the 21st Century. We created our own questions, voted for them, and had them presented to candidates live on global TV. This is how the CNN YouTube debates should have been done. This is only the start of creating a more participatory and just democracy in our country.”
http://www.yesh.com/blog/2007/10/31/obama-supports-net-neutrality/
And word is spreading overseas! (Anyone speak Italian?) http://www.spindoc.it/2007/10/31/10-questions-chi-fa-una-domanda-al-candidato-americano/