Thank You Everyone!
I would like to personally thank everyone for their tremendous outpouring of support for and participation in Virtual Rally #1!
We received 76 diggs in less than 24 hours.
By any prior estimation or anticipation of the way that Digg works, this would have been well more than enough to catapult our article to the front page. Unfortunately, despite its wide influence and credibility, Digg.com is also well-known for its lack of transparency and consistency in how stories get selected for the front page.
Several stories in our topic category made it to the front page with 60 diggs. Others made it with fewer, and at least one made it with 70.
Most baffling of all, the OMBFP article was not even given its full 24 hours. I checked it this morning with at least half an hour left in the 24 hours, and it had been taken down from the Upcoming Stories.
While we didn't meet this first goal, I think we can look at this as a trial run for the Virtual Rallies. We clearly came extremely close, and whether we were kept off the front page by pro-war people "burying" our story, Digg's unpredictable algorithm, or just bad luck, our ability to conduct these united demonstrations of support will only get better in the future. So we can make adjustments and move forward, and the movement is constantly gaining supporters all the while!
Please let me know of suggestions you have for both (1) improving the conducting of Virtual Rallies and (2) sites you think would be good for the staging of future Virtual Rallies. I already have a major suggestion for myself, which is to e-mail the whole list earlier rather than just the people who signed up as specific participants in this Rally! My haste to avoid sending many mass e-mails to the list seems misplaced, and the massive outpouring that came from the e-mail to the whole list (once I did send it, about halfway through the Rally) clearly indicated that most of you wanted to participate and were looking for a reminder.
I anticipate we will probably try something through Digg again, despite its fickle nature, especially since so many of us now have registered accounts there! However, I am very interested in branching out to other similar sites where a strong, committed showing can make an impact. Let me know what ideas you have and we can build this movement together!
Thank you all again for your efforts over the last 24 hours.
Labels: Strategy, Virtual Rallies
6 Comments:
I think e-mailing reminders to the whole membership is a great idea. This may be perceived as a bit 'militant', but I would also suggest making participation in all rally activities mandatory for all member blogs that wish to remain on the list. The lack of discipline amongst membership seems abundantly evident when only 76 or 78 diggs are received out of a total membership exceeding 300 blogs. If, say, 200 or 250 out of the total had participated, we easily would have made it without contest or question and thousands more people would now be aware of this movement, possibly resulting in even a quick doubling of the membership. We are not moving at a pace to meet the 1 million goal set out in the mission statement. I think this movement needs to get more disciplined if we're to accomplish that goal.
I appreciate the sentiment Red, and you have a great point about a higher rate of participation. However, I am definitely not going to require people to participate in Virtual Rallies in order to remain part of OMBFP. We are trying to build a broadly based movement that will naturally have people at differing levels of commitment. The only requirements are that one has a blog and agrees with the Pledge.
I can also take some responsibility for what happened, given that I only e-mailed the whole list halfway through the Rally, giving people who were not specifically signed up (most people) 12 hours rather than 24 to act. Given that people have an unsubscribe option for receiving e-mail updates, I will be more active with e-mailing everyone from the beginning about future Rallies and updates.
Finally, while we didn't achieve our top goal, the word was clearly spread by the success on Digg, with or without making the front page. Over 20 people have already signed up this morning, including a huge influx from Bosnia-Herzegovina! So please keep doing what you can to spread the word and let me know where the next Virtual Rally should be held!
Hi again. I'd just like to apologize for my tone before. I was a bit frustrated. Didn't mean to come across as hostile to our members, but in hindsight, I think that could be perceived. It just felt like I should say that. I do think that we're doing a good job, but just need to work on working together a little more to help our common goal become a reality.
Just think of it as 'lessons learned.' To be honest, I consider seventy-six or so active people out of three hundred random signups off the internet to be a very high and encouraging rate of participation.
I was happy to just get a feel for what digg.com was like, and got a kick out of there only being (count 'em) one person posting pro-war.
Don't forget that people can also give a negative digg which adversely affects the total. There are trolls there who go through and give negative diggs to these kinds of stories.
I went to Digg right after I saw the post asking us to go there. Some of the totals were actually negative at that time.
You surely got more support than the final figures would imply.
I don't subscribe to Digg and I have known other bloggers who quit Digg for this reason.
Yeah, Digg has a lot of imperfections, but is also a large enough platform that I think it might warrant another try.
As long as we approach it with level expectations and take nothing for granted, it seems like a good endeavor.
I will be posting about the next Virtual Rally within the next day or so.
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