I loved this story from a Malcolm Gladwell and Tipping Point perspective. [My thanks to @monkchips for tweeting about it].
Whatever your political persuasion, do take part. There is something for all of us to learn from such experiments, so can I encourage you to participate in what Hjortur is doing? Visit IfTheWorldCouldVote.com and do what you feel you must.
Hjortur’s Australian tale reminded me of some of my early experiences after I started blogging ‘externally”. In those days I had a ClusterMaps plugin, and I could actually tell who was lighting up what. That dot in New Zealand is so-and-so who went back there. That one in the Caribbean is so-and-so on vacation. And so on and so forth.
Soon I expect we will be able to do that with far greater ease than we can imagine today. Especially if we keep taking part in experiments that show us how it all works at a simple yet meaningful level.
Thanks for writing about my experiment :)
My pleasure, Hjortur. I found it fascinating.
JP: The Economist is doing a similar experiment at http://www.economist.com/vote2008/ but Hjortur’s site has about 10 times as many votes. A case in point about his approach and style working better :)
Reza, thanks for letting me know. Hjortur, this makes the experiment even more interesting. A mainstream journal using the web “traditionally” versus you doing it virally, different readerships, let’s see how different the voting patterns look. Might blog about it later today.