soapblox

I've been meaning to write about this for a week, but work commitments beckoned. Nonetheless, it is still worth noting that something stunning almost happened last week: a huge piece of lefty online infrastructure nearly collapsed, when Soapblox sustained hacker attacks and was nearly shuttered by the developer who ran it part-time. Seeing the danger, the progressive community online has rallied to Soapblox's aid, vowing to raise the money necessary to defend it from further attack.

What is Soapblox? It's a self-service tool to build a community blog with user diaries and a recommendation engine out of the box, and runs most of the influential progressive state blogs in the country, in addition to influential national blogs like Open Left and Swing State Project. It's also another thing that they have and we don't -- though it's a little known fact that Soapblox is actually open to conservatives (see Red Mass Group).

I don't think it's any secret that the conservative blogging scene at the state level is woefully inferior to its lefty counterpart. Technology is only part of it; the bigger issue is a lack of willing bloggers with the political sophistication to drive unique and compelling content (this is an issue I'll have an announcement on in the coming days). This isn't to say that there aren't great conservative state blogs: Minnesota Democrats Exposed (run by Michael Brodkorb, a former communications director at the state party), Sound Politics (raised up in the crucible of the WA-GOV theft of 2004), Right Michigan (run by former campaign staffer Nick De Leeuw), and the aforementioned Red Mass Group (run by Rob Eno, a former research director for GOP campaigns in the Bay State). While I could mainly pinpoint this handful of excellent righty state blogs, virtually every state has a thriving progressive hub that the political class in that state looks to and which drive left-of-center storylines with the statehouse media.

This is really unfortunate, because we know works on state and local blogs: great content, usually driven by former campaign operatives who know exactly where the bodies are buried, combined with a great community, which Soapblox enables by automating the process of standing up user diaries. Counterintuitively, diaries and comments are even more important on a local blog despite its smaller scale because most of the participants actually know each other, leading to vibrant backchannel discussions and a watercooler effect. Occasionally, this incestuous environment leads to things getting super-vicious as when threats of outing shuttered the anonymous Caucus Cooler and Krusty Konservative blogs covering the Iowa caucuses in 2007.

However essential Soapblox may be to fostering the local liberal blogosphere, how they did it shows the danger to conservatives who may be looking to stand up and/or fund similar technology projects in the wake of Obama opening our eyes to this years too late.