We’re beta testing RSS feeds into blogads — the blogad’s text auto updates with the advertisers RSS updates. If you’d like to beta test, give us a shout.

Monday morning, new presidential candidate Hillary Clinton joined the ranks of blog advertisers. She’s the first to buy some hi-rise units (150X600 plus 300 characters of text) and the first to cross the aisle.

Some vague wording in the new Senate lobbying bill bears watching.

The ten-watt signal of Blogads’ official radio station, WXYC doesn’t reach our new office, even though we’re half a mile closer to their wire than in our old office. So we went shopping for something to funnel their internet signal into our concert hall. Nicole Bogas came up with the Squeezbox, which we ordered along with a set of Logitech Z-2300 speakers. For <$400, we're thrilled.

I’ve just seen a fantastic study of Congressional readership of blogs that significantly deepens our understanding of blog influence in the US House and Senate.

Conventional wisdom in DC remains entrenched: while blogs can influence Congress, via journalist readers and activist actions resulting from blog posting and advertisements, the influence is only indirect. In fact, the newly public study suggests blogs’ influence is much more direct, with a significant number of Congressional readers looking to blogs rather than conventional media for a glimpse of the future.

In short, “The blogosphere has a much stronger voice being heard by legislators than previously considered.”

Last spring Neil Sroka, a senior at GWU, surveyed all the Congressional offices. Sroka got responses from 90 congressional offices, with a balance of left and right. The paper was just put online today and news of the paper is slowly filtering out. Here’s a link.

Highlights:
* “9 out of 10 Congressional offices read blogs”
* 64% of Congressional staff readers say “blogs are more useful than mainstream media for identifying future national political problems and debates.”
* DailyKos is far and away the most read blog on the Hill, with strong showings also from blogads partners Talkingpointsmemo, Redstate, MyDD, Rawstory, Eschaton, Powerline, and WashingtonNote. (Given the flow of requests we get from DC, I’m very surprised not to see PoliticalWire, Hotair, AmericaBlog and OutsidetheBeltway on that list.)

Bear in mind that Sroka’s survey was done before election ’06, the period that appears to me to be the watershed event for Congressional consciousness of blogs.

Also worth noting that Sroka’s paper also includes a comprehensive survey of past literature on blogs and politics, turning up studies I had not previously encountered. For example, it’s well worth reading this one, titled “How journalists see the blogosphere” which finds that “52% of journalists believe blogs have ‘some to a great deal’ of influence on the way media covers stories.”

Update: Some say bloggers called the shots in the latest Senate vote unhinged by the line-item earmark veto.

We got a slackline at Xmas and tried it out for the first time Sunday. After twenty minutes of practice, I can stand for maybe 10 seconds. Things that help: rhythm, staring straight ahead, breathing.

After ripping out the walls in our new office, we were left with a giant plate of glass. At 5X7 feet, it was too big and heavy to squeeze out the door and down the stairs. Cutting the glass into portable pieces was impossible, because this glass was tempered. So we laid out a tarp, tilted the pane down and started to toss things at it.

Screw-driver.
Brick drop.
Brick lob.
Brick throw.

The final result is here: “>

Well, John Edwards’ ads, launched in late December, have been followed by ads by Mitt Romney, Rudy Guiliani and, yesterday, Barack Obama. Screenshots below.

To date, the Edwards’ ads make the most effective use of Blogads, reaching the most blogs, grabbing the highest placements, running multiple versions, including a video clip image in one version and, in all versions, multiple links to resources on Edwards website.

Yes, other candidates are on their way.

In MediaPost, Shankar Gupta does an excellent wrap-up of the first two candidates:

“Matt Gross, head of online communications for the Edwards campaign, said the candidate intends to use the Web to deliver his message to voters unfiltered. ‘We saw blog ads as an effective way to bring people in the blogosphere directly to the campaign Web site, where they could hear from Edwards directly.'” …

[Romney’s spokesman, Kevin] Madden, said that Romney hopes the blog ads will reach the most influential voters. “The effort is driven by our recognition of a very unique and motivated audience among New Media devotees,” he said. “Our blog ads help reach this audience and drive traffic to our mittromney.com website and provide more information about Mitt Romney, his campaign, his ideas and how they can then in turn join our effort.”

Here are screenshots…

Is it just me, or does Time’s person of the year essay have serious problems with pronoun disorienation? I guess its symptomatic of media’s general problem with disintermediation.

Here’s a pronoun focused excerpt: “He believed… You control the media now… we could blame… you’ll see another story… we are so ready for it…. We’re ready to balance… You can learn more… And we didn’t just watch, we also worked… We made Facebook profiles… We blogged… We camcordered… We’re looking at an explosion of productivity and innovation… I’m not going to watch… I’m going to turn on my computer… I’m going to mash up 50 Cent’s vocals with Queen’s instrumentals… I’m going to blog,.Who has that time and that energy and that passion? The answer is, you do… Sure, it’s a mistake to romanticize all this any more than is strictly necessary. Web 2.0 harnesses the stupidity of crowds as well as its wisdom. Some of the comments on YouTube make you weep for the future of humanity just for the spelling alone, never mind the obscenity and the naked hatred… But 2006 gave us some ideas. … Go on. Tell us you’re not just a little bit curious.”

Go on, tell me, it’s weird, right? This revolution is all about the subversion of the corporate “we” by the “I” and if you’ve spent your whole life writing as “we” its (apparently) nearly impossible to figure out how to write about the new world.

I thought the web bubble 2.0 had another 18 to 36 months to go — since after all, its underpinned by real market growth of 30-40% a year — but apparently some folks think the bubble is already abursting.