The most popular political weblogs have been able to support their publishers through an intermediary called Blogads. As this election season heated up, most of the top sites saw extreme traffic spikes and have been able to set lucrative- but- competitive prices for ad views (not clickthrough) on their sites.

Echoditto, one of the new Internet strategy firms that rose from the ashes of the Howard Dean campaign, has posted a handy list of "best practices and tips for online fundraising."<!--first--> The firm also has a pretty interesting blog.

The Pentagon has long been one of the most net-savvy of all government departments, especially in its dealings with the media. (Take for example its posting of verbatim transcripts of reporters' interviews with top DOD officials, as a way for the public to judge whether reporters are being fair in their articles.) But this Washington Post article by Thomas Ricks suggests that while the military is trying to convince the public that the battle for Fallujah was a success (using a 59-page Powerpoint presentation called "Telling the Fallujah Story to the World"), a part-time blogger is matching them click-for-click with a far more critical take with a site called "Fallujah in Pictures: The War You Won't See on TV."

Ricks reports:

"As far as the blog site, this is information operations at its finest," said one Marine officer who has served in Iraq. "IO is about influence, and this piece tries to influence people by depicting the human cost of war."

Unfortunately, Harvard restricts access to its students during class hours, so attendees at the "Votes, Bits and Bytes" conference won't have wifi until Saturday's sessions. But, if you ask the conference organizers nicely, they'll give you a pass. So here I am, sitting in the august Ames Courtroom at Harvard Law School, listening to Hossein Derakhshan (Hoder, a leading Iranian blogger) give a fascinating talk about the role of blogs in his home country (he lives in Toronto).

Blogs in Iran, he says, function as a) windows into and outside a closed culture; b) bridges, between men and women, older and younger generations, and voters and politicians; and c) as cafes, where people can talk to each other outside of the government controlled media.

Before him, Pippa Norris of Harvard University gave a talk about the limited impact of e-voting in England (details on her blog). And Tom Sander reported on his research into Meetup attendees.

Scott Heiferman, the CEO of Meetup (and a member of PDF's advisory board, I should add), just gave a terrific keynote address on the future of connected politics. Here's his vision: We're going from flash mobs and bricks-and-mortar organizations to flash, emergent, people-powered, long-lasting, open, influential, agile, chapter-based, institutions/organizations/unions that have card-carrying members and meet regularly face-to-face to act on common concerns. He called this the "Napsterization of organization." (I told Mary Hodder, sitting to my right, that she should ask for a fee--she grinned and said she'd take a nickel.)

We need a "Constitution-wizard," he said, in other words tools that help people create such new kinds of powerful federations. One step in that direction is going to come from Meetup, which starting next week, Heiferman announced, will allow all the members of a Meetup category group (Pug owners, Townhall.com fans, knitters, or the fastest growing Meetup category of stay-at-home-mom's) to talk to members of the same group, worldwide.

It's a little hard to understand everything Oh Yeon-ho is saying about the role of OhMyNews in the transformation of South Korean politics, because he has a strong accent. But the gist is clear: by introducing the new/old concept of "every citizen is a reporter" and creating a Internet-based news site that celebrates c itizen journalism, an authoritarian society and media culture has been turned upside down. (Details on its impact on the 2002 election can be found here.)

He started with about 750 citizen reporters and there are now over 75,000. People are paid for their reporting, but top rate is just abut $20 a piece. Why do they write: for a large audience, a ton of feedback and to change their country. One recent article by a constitutional scholar critiquing an anti-democratic court decision generated $30,000 in tips from readers!

In general, OhMyNews' model differs from traditional New York Times journalism in the following ways, he said:

Old media thinks of itself as a pipe delivering stories to readers; OhMyNews sees itself as a playground for readers.

In old media, "I produce, you consume and leave." In the new model, "we produce, consume and stay."

In old media, feedback is limited. In the new model, readers can write, comment and give money to reporters!

Chris Bowers of MyDD and Bob Brigham of Swing State Project have combined their intellectual forces to make a very cogent point about the state of state Democratic parties and their failure to understand the potential of the "netroots." In the wake of this weekend's meeting of the Association of State Democratic Parties, Brigham discovered that 3/4 of those state parties do not have blogs. Calling this a "sign of incompetence," (after all, you can set up a rudimentary site on blogger in a matter of minutes), he writes,

While almost all of these states have a mechanism for accepting online donations, none of them decided to catapult their online campaigns by having a blog. Likewise, almost all of these websites ask people to volunteer without offering daily reasons why their time is needed.

Bowers adds:

Don't miss the intense and heartfelt discussion underway over at DailyKos between Markos Moulitsas and Zack Exley, formerly the Kerry campaign Internet director, and before that one of MoveOn's brightest organizers. It started with Kos calling Exley an "idiot" based on comments reported by noted net contrarian Andrew Orlowski. Exley's detailed response (entitled "Dear Markos and friends," a far friendlier headline) appeared on the site a few hours later. Many smart comments from people who worked in the trenches are attached to both missives. Matt Stoller has been working this vineyard too on the Blogging of the President, here and here. Many lessons to be studied and learned...And one cool note to consider: we're transfixed by a terrific debate between two guys whose average age isn't even thirty!

More on best practices for online organizing: See Tim Tagaris's article "My ATM Pin Number or Online Fundraising," over at Swingstateproject.com. Tagaris was the spokesman for Jeff Seemann's upstart congressional campaign, which Mary Lynn F. Jones covered for PDF back in October. HIs points are aimed at congressional candidates planning for 2006 who think they can tap activists' wallets without involving them in a larger movement, and while he's talking to progressives, everything he's saying applies to conservative movement types as well. I won't rehash everything he says, except to endorse his core point: "It isn't fundraising requests that breed successful netroots fundraising." It's the relationships, the involvement, the listening and the engagement.

Privacy isn't always a matter of unprotected data or unconstitutional seizures.

The A.C.L.U. is facing new scrutiny for compiling public data about its donors' affiliations. Is there a penumbra of privacy around the lives we live publically, but somewhat facelessly?

In a December article about "dating blogs," author and constitutional scholar Jeff Rosen talks about the growing need for "new social conventions to resurrect the boundaries between public and private interactions."

As technology makes the traces our actions more visible, a new category of data is emerging: the "ripples" we leave behind.

Is this information fair game? Like the stories ex-girlfriends tell about contestants on reality TV shows?

Or do we need new "quarantine"-style rules around who can collect our ripples, and what they can do with them?

Initial response from the A.C.L.U.