Social media mobs the national conventions

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, right, speaks to reporters at the Democratic National Convention in Denver. With her is Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius. (Photo credit: Associated Press)

Flip on CNN or surf to your favorite mainstream news site — try the L.A. Times for starters — and prepare to be inundated with information from the Democratic National Convention. For the next two weeks as the conventions run their course, you can expect a heavy dose of every minute detail, including what the presidential candidate's siblings have to say and the age-old mystery of whether Secret Service operatives can stop a tornado (hint: They can't).

Social media like YouTube and Fark.com will afford you no escape, either. Let's look at how Web 2.0 is crashing the parties.

Delicious: It's not often that tags unrelated to website development or computer programming will crack the popular list on this pioneer social bookmarking service, and the conventions are no exception. But you can find plenty of links under the "dnc" tag for the Democratic side and "rnc" for the Republican.

Digg: CNN just can't get enough of these conventions, and so its iReport.com citizen journalist arm has paired with the social news juggernaut Digg to bring the most popular user questions to politicians at the convention. In its new feature called Digg Dialogg, Digg CEO Jay Adelson will be delivering the first set of questions in a Web televised event Wednesday to House Speaker Rep. Nancy Pelosi. Digg is also heavily promoting its elections page for the conventions. Digg user and "CBS Evening News" anchor Katie Couric is also asking Digg readers to submit questions while she's at the conventions.

Facebook: Both parties have fan pages, but the Republicans are doing a much better job with upkeep. The 2008 Republican National Convention page has more fans and with good reason: Its updates are much more frequent. The Democratic National Convention page hasn't had a new item posted in more than a week. Come on, guys! Your convention is happening right now.

Fark.com: The bringer of all things "not news" is giving attention to this week's newsiest event. Three of the 43 top stories Monday were related to the Democratic convention. But when that's only one more than the day's stories about Florida — apparently a lot of weird things go down in that state — it's not really that impressive.

Flickr: The Democratic National Convention group has 87 members shooting and uploading photos. Unfortunately some shots don't necessarily fit with the Denver political convention theme — like this one of a wall-mounted bison head — but hey, at least they're trying. The Republican National Convention 2008 group has only four members right now, but perhaps that number will grow as next week draws near.

MySpace: And the award for least ugly MySpace page designs goes to: the new convention pages. Best of all, you can launch the Democratic National Convention and GOP Convention 2008 profiles and not have a techno song screaming in your ear. Is this really MySpace? The pages don't really do much, however. They have links to other websites covering the conventions, and that's about it. But if you want to post a love note on the GOP comment board — according to the profile, he's a 27-year-old male, ladies — that's always an option.

NowPublic's Democratic convention page, featuring not one but two shots of actress Charlize Theron.

Newsvine: The news site that combines mainstream media with citizen journalism and social bookmarking has introduced sections for exclusive coverage of the conventions by its writers. It has interesting alternative views on the DNC, like one writer's piece on the "greenest" convention. You can check out their Democratic coverage, which has seven dedicated writers and a widget on the site's home page, or get a sneak peek at the Republican National Convention group, which already has eight writers lined up.

NowPublic: "Citizen-powered media," as it's called, can provide unique windows into an average Joe's coverage of the political conventions. Unfortunately, it can also yield misplaced photos of Charlize Theron. Oh, well, most of the content on the Democratic Convention page is appropriate. It's obvious the Republican Convention tag has yet to ramp up, with only a single story, a 27-week-old piece about police purchasing tasers for the convention. Don't tase GOP, bro!

Seesmic: Wannabe 24/7 TV journalists need nothing more than a laptop with a Web-cam and an Internet connection. Seesmic is a repository for an array of videos documenting the conventions. One user created an RSS feed anyone can subscribe to and stay up-to-date on the latest convention coverage uploaded to the service.

Twitter: Seeking out political bloggers on Twitter is fun! You get a peek at what potential interviews they'll be writing, and the updates are often more interesting than other Twitters, talking about lunch with their moms — try lunch with Howard Dean! The Twitter Blog advises those looking for updates on the Democratic convention to follow the Huffington Post's account. For Republicans, the GOP has its own Twitter page, and blogger DavidAll will be tweeting his coverage next week.

Ustream.TV: This live video streaming service has partnered with Daily Kos and ProgressNow to provide coverage of the Democratic convention this week and will have a feed next week for the Minneapolis convention. The Alliance for Sustainable Colorado loaned its building, man hours, Wi-Fi and beer to registered bloggers. Right now Ustream is just showing a rooftop feed of people walking in and out of a building, but they plan to broadcast live speeches from a variety of national leaders.

Yahoo! Buzz: Yahoo's social news service doesn't have a category set aside for the conventions, but "Democratic National Convention" showed up as a top search Monday. It's not in the top 10, but searches for Michelle and Barack Obama are on the list.

YouTube: The video site that brought us user-submitted video questions at the presidential party debates is going at the conventions full force. The 2008 Conventions channel has already posted more than 100 interviews and speeches. And Google has its own conventions landing page, with links to news, blogs and YouTube coverage.

Oh, and if these aren't enough for your convention fix, there's always newspapers, news sites, blogs, TV coverage and radio. There's no escape.

-- Mark Milian

Update: Added the Seesmic video service.

Comments

[rsmith]

Digg Dialogg sounds like they stoled ideas from http://www.tervoo.com !!! Sounds like digg isnt a little guy anymore and steals ideas!