I received an e-mail last night after the Senate vote on the Bailout Bill from one of my Senators, Jim Inhofe (R-OK), to let me know he’d voted “No!” on the bailout bill. I was encouraged in the e-mail to go to his blog, and let him know what I thought.
Of course I wanted to thank the senator for listening to the voters, and standing up to do the right thing, casting the unpopular vote among his peers.
So I visited the blog, joined the site, left my comment, and started exploring. The Inhofe web site and blog have incorporated some great Web 2.0 features. There’s a place for bloggers to join the blog roll, and a place for members to contribute blog posts. There are various ways to share the content including e-mail, and a few social book marking and social news sites (Digg, reddit, del.icio.us). There are feeds to the various sections of the site, a newsletter sign-up, a Youtube channel and Flikr photostream, and (naturally) lots of opportunities to contribute financially to the campaign.
Kudos to the Inhofe campaign for venturing into this wild, wild world of Web 2.0!
I would recommend one fairly implementable step – the “Connect” section in the lower left column of the site is a great feature, but all of the links there need to be to Senator Inhofe’s profile on all of those sites, not just to the home page of those sites. Some are configured correctly, and some are not. For example, if I click on “YouTube” in that section, I am directed to the Inhofe channel on YouTube (that’s good!). But if I click on the Digg or reddit links, I’m just taken to the main page of those sites. (I love that widget, by the way – we need to see if we can find one of those for Ft. Hard Knox – ideas, anyone?)
Overall, however, this is an excellent step in the right direction for a campaign to take, in a world that is becoming increasingly digital. Congratulations to Sen. Inhofe and his campaign staff. (Oh – and thanks, again, for voting “no!” on the bailout bill.)
Michelle Malkin has information on what to do next about the Bailout Bill, on Kill the bailout: Operation Hold The Line
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October 2nd, 2008 - 11:02 am
I too was lured in by his message and then found myself tweeting his campaign and leaving comments. It did help though that he voted against the bailout bill and Coburn voted for it. I was feeling pretty good about Inhofe last night.
October 2nd, 2008 - 12:25 pm
I hear you, Sid. I really like Coburn, but I’m disappointed with his decision to run with the pack on this one.
October 2nd, 2008 - 6:42 pm
What widget are you talking about?
October 2nd, 2008 - 7:43 pm
That little “Connect” widget in the bottom left sidebar with all of the social networks listed.
October 3rd, 2008 - 8:49 pm
[...] for Inhofe. As some of you know, I’m a bit of a Web 2.0 junkie, and yesterday, I wrote Sen. Inhofe gets all Web 2.0, over at Ft. Hard Knox. So far, these are the bloggers who are on Inhofe’s Blogroll, and [...]
October 6th, 2008 - 11:18 pm
I looked at the widget code and it appears to be home grown, not something that’s a plugin or anything. I’m afraid it’s a little beyond my coding ability. It’s pretty involved. It’s definitely cool though!
October 6th, 2008 - 11:20 pm
LOL. Ok, well, thanks, Ron. We’ll put that on our “list.”