HW 16A: Scobles' Rules of Engagement versus The Democratic Party Blog

In the novel Blog! David Kline and Dan Burstein did an interview with Robert Scoble who is a Microsoft tech evangelist. Shortly after joining Microsoft, Scoble created a list of rules for the corporate blogosphere called "The Corporate Weblog Manifesto." Scoble's rules consist of twenty guidelines to follow if you are thinking of being a successful company within the world of blogging. One weblog in particular for example is The Democratic Party (http://www.democrats.org/blog.html), that uses some of Scoble's regulations and they can be picked out of this blog. On this blog, multiple posts are written everyday with many more comments to respond to them. Frequent and fast responses are stressed quite a lot throughout the manifesto. Showing that there are daily posts on a blog lets people trust you which helps to maintain and gain more readers for the blog, The blog is very left wing and caters to the audience that is reading it which would be the American Democrats. The site is doing justice to it's Democratic readers with true and consistent information; another key part of Scoble's rules. Keeping with accurate information and not lying is also to adhering to Scobles' manifesto. At the opposite of the spectrum, there is also ways in which this Democratic Party weblog does not follow Scobles' principles. In Scobles' manifesto, he states that it is important to be nice and civil with your competitors but I do not see any of this for the Republican Party on the Democratic blog. Although the site offers a place in it's page for Republican candidates for the 2008 presidential elections, the opposing Republican party is not given the same positive ness and support that it does for the Democratic candidates. While the Democratic candidates' pictures are colorful and bright, the Republican candidates' photos are in black and white and accented with white, black, and red lettering. Since this weblog is dedicated to a specific part of society that it is known for unfair behavior towards each other, some of the principles of the corporate weblog manifesto are applicable to this blog. Also, I believe that these rules should be used for as just guidelines then strict regulations. However, it would be really interesting to see the Republican Party and the Democratic Party actually say nice things about each other on their blogs!