One small post on Kos can get hundreds of responses in a few minutes to a couple hours.... I find it becomes almost too big to keep up with.... Here on RK there is just enough that you don't have to be a full time professional blogger, but enough to get the diversity of perspective with a commonality of purpose as well as a community of “virtual friends”.... While the smaller personal blogs serve as good, usually well focused, sources of personal "Soap Boxes", these small personal blogs pop-up and then fall by the way side from "burn-out" when there isn't at least a dozen or so people to keep up with the need for fresh major topic/diary activity.....

I personally think we will continue to see the national blogs become more and more specific subject matter focused and then linked more hierarchically by the aggregators and search engines…... If it takes more than a few minutes a day to keep up, other than a few of us “addicts” who probably need to “get a life” anyhow, the keeping up with all the detail and issues becomes impossible even now when we are in a quieter time in the election cycle…….

I can only speak for myself, who am mostly a lurker, commenting when the spirit and topic move me but not feeling competent to diary.  I visit Daily Kos and some of the other national blogs every couple of days or so (I especially like Bill from Maine's offerings) but frankly much of what is on there doesn't have much relevance or interest for me and I don't spend a whole lot of time sifting through the many, many entries and to wade through 334 comments...shudder...I just don't have the time or the patience unless the subject happens to be of consuming interest to me. 

I visit national blogs infrequently and usually briefly but I visit Raising Kaine every morning right after I check my email and a number of times during the day.  Most of the topics of the diaries have direct relevance and interest to me, keeping me in touch with local, state and national topics in a format I find useful and enjoyable. It's also a valuable tool to knit together the scattered grassroots groups all over the state, making us more of a virtual community than would be otherwise possible given our geographical distances from each other.  The role of the state blogs is still evolving but a community state blog such as  Raising Kaine can have many roles simultaneously and I think its relevance  will only continue to grow as we go through election cycle after election cycle.  Grow, that is, as long as it maintains its high standards as established and maintained by Lowell, Rob, Eric, Josh  and all the others who labor in the trenches.  They do a splendid job and are directly responsible for the success and quality of RK.  Thanks, guys.

:)

This is pure guesswork but: 

1. I have a hard time imagining that blogs at either the state or national level have reached the top of the S-curve of growth (e.g. slow initial build-up, followed by a period of exponential growth, followed by a levelling off).

2. My guess is that the major growth periods--new members, increased site visits occur during elections.  So the true test will be how things play out in 2007 and 2008.

It would be revealing to have demographic and user-profile data. 

e.g. Who are the blog users? (age, location, education, income level) 
How do users find blogs? (e.g. through print articles, Googling?) 
Do national blogs bring traffic to state blogs, or visa versa? (probably a combination of the two)

Anecdotally, I found out about RK through a Google search for "Jim Webb" back in April of 2006.  I had heard about DK before learning about RK through the MSM (mostly pejorative stuff), but have only recently started following the national blogs on a regular basis.

As far as the future of blogs go, I think they're definitely here to stay.  They're a great organizing tool and information resource.  They offer legislators and prospective candidates a chance to stay in touch with die-hard supporters and to win converts--it's definitely a lot less expensive and less time consuming to have a chat with 100 constitutents in 20 towns and cities on a blog rather than driving to those 20 towns and cities to meet with each person individually.

State and local blogs provide information (and gossip) that are not found on the national blogs or even the local media (depending on who is cozy with who).  These blogs provide an outlet for the "other side of the story" to come out and allow folks to made a decision on who to agree with.  The blogs also provide a discussion forum, which in my view is essential for the political crowd.

As long as there is an audience with an appetite for state and local blogs, I see growth occurring. This all depends on the product, of course. As for national blogs, we could be seeing a maximum saturation point as coverage can be found anywhere and is much more easy to obtain, even with differing viewpoints.  Netroots will allow more folks to communicate who normally would not communicate. Simply put, netroots allows more people to communicate with one another and makes American politics more of a contact sport.

National Blogs track things at the top - like all things at the center of power, it is very crowded.

National Blogs are too big - the volume and scope of the national scope blog overwhelms the ability of most to track and contribute to a specific topic.

National Blogs are the 100,000 foot view - national blogs can track key national issues but cannot (for the most part) track the 10,000 foot state level view. The 10,000 foot state view gets lost in the competition to be heard among so many on a national blog.

State Blogs are more focused for local participation - the 10,000 foot view is low enough for many to track and contribute to discussions that they relate to. State blogs have more individual blogger recognition in discussions and more of a local view to national issues. They also track purely state level issues that are not an interest to a national audience.

State Blogs can impact local political dynamics - state blogs have more local participation and therefore more directly impact the community that can bring about change in a specific election.

State Blogs - are they effective in more local races? Are state blogs to big to have as effective an impact in a given Congressional district or individual state race? 

In the coming year - how will aggregators and newer search engine technology change how people track issues and races of interest to them? Will specific blogs become less relevant as an entry point for bloggers or will people be better able to track and participate in discussions via a search filter? Will information from content sites (i.e. Waldo's new http://www.richmonds... or the DPVA's http://assemblyacces...) get served up with blogging in a single platform and provide a more effective information platform than we have today?

Blogging and the technology that serves it up are in its infancy. The only thing we can be certain of is that it will become more effective in the future because the capabilities will increase and it will change from what we see today. An absolute certainty is that the "information is power" brokers will find it more difficult to operate. I believe we will see a concerted effort on the part of traditional power centers to co-opt portions of the blogosphere - the allure of power is very powerful and subtle when it needs to be.

RK put a shot across the bow of traditional party politics with the Webb campaign. Some are still trying to figure this out and some are still in denial. What is for certain is that it changed politics and demonstrated that it is not static - and that includes the blogosphere itself.

Thanks Greg.

First of all, Raising Kaine is not your average political blog.  I've been doing quite a bit of netroots work on different issues lately.  I've done this work on all sorts of blogs, progressive and conservative.  Not many blogs match up to Raising Kaine in quality.  A blog is only as good as it's primary writers, and though I like DailyKos, the quality is up and down, plus it really has grown so much a diary can't stay up long enough to get readers.  Everyone wants to write on DailyKos, and it's a struggle to get work up just to see it knocked off the page by a dozen new diaries that are little more than endless navel-gazing.  I sometimes think there's too many fans of Chris from Northern Exposure out there who have little to do but post every thought that rolls through their head.  For every Kathy Gerber or Lowell Feld, there seems to be a multitude of boneheads who spew out the same old talking points right or left and do little else. I see less of that  here on RK and I think it's because of the quality of the primary writers make all of us think before we write, as we aspire to be as good as Lowell, or Rob, Kathy and the other really terrific writers here.

I also think a blog can only be so big until it gets too hard to maneuver though.  Kos has reached that point.  I wonder if it would work to break the blog down into different sections, but probably not.  We all want to be on the front page.

I see everyone trying to get into the game now.  The '06 election was the first time the blogoshere won a house in Congress for a political party.  Without the netroots effort, especially RK, Jim Webb would not be in the Senate and when Webb won, a wave went through our entire political system, telling everyone there was a new sheriff in town--the blogoshere.  Howard Dean showed us you could raise money online.  Raising Kaine and other blogs showed us you can sell an idea, that you can effect change with the click of your mouse.  That's big stuff, friends, and I'm still trying to wrap my head around it, because we're still in the baby steps part--just the very beginning.

Yesterday or the day before, Mitch McConnell made his move into blogging.  Right now there's a court case going on in Kentucky.  Mark Nickolas of The Bluegrass Report has filed suit against Republican Governor Ernie Fletcher because The Bluegrass Report was blocked from being read on state government computers.  The Bluegrass Report has been pounding at Governor Fletcher for the last 18 months over allegations of corruption and it seems Fletcher was tired of State employees reading about his failures online in the workplace.

At the same time, Republicans are charging Ky Sec of State Johnathon Miller, a Democratic candidate for governor in next year's race is rumoured to have used state funds to help Nickolas get his blog started and though I've seen no proof of such a thing, rumours and suppositions are rampant on conservative blogs.  In an odd marriage, we have a blog called The Rural Democrat, that supports Steve Brashear, Miller's opponent in the primary, joining with a Republican blogger called Conservachick to keep the Nickolas/Miller connection rumours alive.  I don't know quite what to make of it all.  There is considerable chaos, lots of trolling.  The Bluegrass Report is very good and is read by everyone in Kentucky government, but it has a biased point of view, especially during primary season.  Nickolas does not use the diary-based template for the BGR. He generates all the articles.  Reader can comment but can't generate their own articles.  Sometimes it's pretty obvious where Nickolas' sentiments lie and he has written in support of Miller.  Nevertheless, his coverage of all races must be taken with a grain of salt as he only address issues he wants to address--generally bad stories about his opponent and good stories about the candidate he support.  Also Nickolas is a former campaign manager for at least two losing Democrats in the state.  I suppose the cherry on top of this story is the fact Nickolas' girlfriend runs the company raising money for Miller candidacy.  Pretty scary, everywhere I look.

So, I see a difference between Kentucky and Virginia blogging.  RK and other Virginia blogs seem more grownup and are at a different, I think, higher level than most Kentucky blogs.  We're like the wild west in Kentucky and our section of the blogoshere has a ways to go before we start winning elections. Right now, we're still at the dueling pistol stage and I hope more and better blogs surface.  It's not the different biases shown on our blogs.  Most blogs have a political bias.  I'm just not seeing the amount of the good writing I see here, and not one diary based blog--something I think is greatly needed in Kentucky.  The nature of participant readers and writers adds many points of view and makes for more interesting blogs--at least in my opinion.

I think a good state blog like RK will mean more and more as time goes on.  As we can use crossposting, rss feeds, and much more than I'll ever understand to share information across different blogs--it may be the line is becoming blurred as to what is national and what is local.  Macaca was said in front of a small audience in rural Virgina.  Without the blogs keeping the story alive, it would have disappeared in a msm news cycle.  Those days are gone--the day when you could wait out a news cycle and move on to other things are gone.  This new sheriff is town has great power and as local and state feed information to national and back again--the way we get our new and participate in Democracy is changed forever.

Anyway, I've been taking a break from blogging, but I'm starting anew on Monday.  As I love RK, I expect I'll be publishing my own belly-button contemplations here again soon. 

Raising Kaine--Best of Show. 

Thanks - you've given me some ideas...

Excellent, thoughtful comments as always; thanks, and keep writing on RK as much as possible!  Meanwhile, if you ever want to talk about how to crank up the Kentucky blogosphere, drop me a line at lowell@raisingkaine.com.  Another idea: let's talk to the DNC about getting high-quality, community blogs in every single state before the 2008 election cycle really heats up.  Or are they doing that already?

Lowell, if you can knock my first comment off this diary, I'd appreciate it.  The second is the revision.

Thanks.

But you know, that comment was so good it was worth posting twice! :)

I hope Lowell's main point, afout the growth of local/state blogs, is right.  Raising Kaine is the model.  In both the Kaine & Allen race Raising Kaine has had a real impact, real influence, resulting in real change.  I really think Raising Kane is the leader in a trend that will reshape politics -- supporting candidates of various ideological hues who are held responsible by online communities rather than, only, major donors.  I don't participate in RK enough (holidays it's easier to make time, thank you Dr. King!) but what you are doing is really important.

I hope you participate more here, your voice is a welcome one! :)