La Tribuna

Politics are not my first love, and I find the whole subject extremely discouraging. However, if people who hate politics don't get involved, the active politicians are the ones that think it is fun. That's a really frightening thought!

At this point, few politicians really get the web. That will change. Until it does, outsiders who understand the web are in a position to have a disproportionate impact on the political process.

Politicians are used to ramping up activity and advertising just prior to the election. That doesn't work very well on the web where the sandbox effect and other lags mean you have to plan far in advance.

For the 2004 election cycle I thought a site which offered free evaluations of political websites might be popular. That turned out not to be the case. I think I have finally found the replacement subject to use for the 2006 election cycle.

The long tail concept is the subject of a popular book and featured on the authors blog. He tracks other sources which look at ways to apply the concepts to a variety of subjects, including politics. A good starting point would be a Seth Godin article which has links to a variety of other sources.

When I read the paragraphs above, which I wrote some time ago, I see observations which fit very well into the long tail concept. More and more I find registration of domains for which I had no immediate use was valuable. I once had a domain in this state abbreviation followed by GOP format for more than 40 states. I gradually let most of them lapse since I could never find anything useful to say which I cared about enough to work on. If I want to watch fighting, the WWF choreography is much better than what is seen on political debates. I don't want a representative who is always fighting for me; I'm looking for a statesman.