Comments on: Looking for Web-based Political News Infrastructure

By: jack mardack

jack mardack — Sun, 25 Mar 2007 02:38:30 +0000

One of the new powers that is ours now is the power to both gather the data and to render it visible in ways that make it useful to decision-making. The next election, I predict, is going to be SIGNIFICANTLY influenced by sites like the one you propose. Best of luck with it.

By: spider ninja

spider ninja — Sun, 25 Mar 2007 02:33:32 +0000

Sounds sweet, I think the question is what’s going to get people involved. How about putting together a killer backend database of everything the common man might want to know about those vying to be their elected leaders…lay bare the foundation of the system so to speak. Where’s the money coming from, what did they vote for, etc…and make it super easy to access.

By: ekepler

ekepler — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 04:54:26 +0000

I am working on a site voterslive.com to aggregate candidates rss feeds. Unfortunate few feeds exist. Would be interested in ideas people would have for a political portal.

By: Randall

Randall — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 18:36:11 +0000

Brad,

We’re still in the funding and building stages of our new project, but Politic2.0 (http://www.politic20.com) is an aggregation of social media content and presents trends and analysis. Essentially, it’s a place the public can head to try to sort through all of the blog posts and information, and come away with some sort of idea of what people are talking about, and then point them toward those ideas.

My company, WikiReview (www.wikireview.com), is partnering with TagJungle (www.tagjungle.com) to create the site. We’re providing a way for people to voice their opinion using WikiReview, and TagJungle will provide a reflection and analaysis of blogosphere trends.

We’re both launching within the next month, and Politic2.0 will be launching shortly after.

Email me if you’ve got any questions, I’ll email you within a week or two if we don’t hear from you.

Thanks!

By: Brady

Brady — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 10:23:11 +0000

I’m not sure I fully grasp the project you are looking at. But I second taking a look at civicspace / drupal.

By: Chris K

Chris K — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 20:14:21 +0000

Brad, shot you an email as well. I think that the company I work for would be perfect for what you might be looking for. We

By: Bob Cramer

Bob Cramer — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 16:59:11 +0000

ThePort Network, Inc. could add significant value to this project. http://www.theport.com

By: Sarb Takhar

Sarb Takhar — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 05:17:07 +0000

I’ve been wokring on an idea for a couple weeks now that would be directly in this area. Its targeted more toward community building and tracking the political ambitions and political actions of politicians .. both local and national.

Please email me and I will detail it more fully. I’m currently seeking angle investors.

By: Scott Yates

Scott Yates — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 22:54:59 +0000

It sounds like what you want is something like IMDb, except instead of actors and movies it would have politicians and legislation. The good news: LgDb.com, the Legislative Database. The great news: It's got a working business model and paying customers right now. The icing on top: It's based in Colorado. David Cohen wrote about it. So did the Rocky Mountain News. Check it out!

By: Tim Smith

Tim Smith — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 21:11:22 +0000

Hi Brad – I hereby submit our iyris desktop alert and content management/publishing technology along with a community software vertical market website technology that we are affiliated with for this propject. Perhaps you and I could discuss this offline in more detail? Thanks, Tim

By: Scott Yates

Scott Yates — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 16:48:31 +0000

Sounds like you are asking for something like IMDb, except instead of actors and movies you want politicians and legislation.

The good news: LgDb.com, the Legislative Database.

The great news: It’s operating now, and even has a business model and paying customers.

The icing on top: We’re located in Denver!

David Cohen even did a write-up. Only one thing has changed since that post. Contact me to find out about that change.

By: Greg Cohn

Greg Cohn — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 16:28:12 +0000

Have you checked out CivicSpace? I haven't looked in on them in a while, but they were originally building a non-forking customization of Drupal tailored for political community. It appears that work has been folded into the next Drupal version, but now they seem to have some kind of ASP model. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CivicSpace http://civicspacelabs.org/

By: AlFromChicago

AlFromChicago — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 21:05:40 +0000

Brad -
We need to chat on some other stuff but let’s make this part of the conversation. Check out http://www.buzztracker.com/category/news and http://www.buzztracker.com/category/newsmakers

we’re aggregating mostblogged, latest news, photos and videos across all kinds of granular topics — and as you know i just finished stint as publisher of RCP.

I’ll follow up with Kelly

By: Marc Nathan

Marc Nathan — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 19:52:22 +0000

My brother-in-law has just started development on a very similar concept two weeks ago. I’m helping him with some high-level Web 2.0 design aesthetics and business model advice, and he got a good reception from Michael Arrington at a conference last month. As an angel investor myself (though not invested in this deal yet), I think that it has significant revenue upside considering the perfect storm of the 24-hour news cycle, the explosion of blog readers (as opposed to only the writers of the last cycle), the legitimacy of online advertising in the eyes of the campaigners and most importantly – a fractionated, very contentious Presidential election that has started months earlier than previous ones. I’d of course be happy to make an introduction to him if you’d like to email me.

By: Marc Nathan

Marc Nathan — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 18:34:54 +0000

My brother-in-law has just started development on a very similar concept two weeks ago. I’m helping him with some high-level Web 2.0 design asthetics and business model advice, and he got a good reception from Michael Arrington at a conference last month. As an angel investor myself (though not invested in this deal yet), I think that it has significant revenue upside considering the perfect storm of the 24-hour news cycle, the explosion of blog readers (as opposed to only the writers of the last cycle), the legitimacy of online advertising in the eyes of the campaigners and most importantly – a fractionated, very contentious Presidential election that has started months earlier than previous ones. I’d of course be happy to make an introduction to him if you’d like to email me.