Australia: Politics: kevin07 site

I found Kevin07 to be rather sweet. There’s a bit of irreverence about the whole site. No, I didn’t say irrelevance. 😛

The URL – it’s for Kevin Rudd, which I wasn’t aware of when I was directed there by a Facebook person – shouldn’t really use a dotcom. Seriously, he’s Australian, it’s an Australian election, why not use dotcomdotau? Resolve the kevin07.com to an addon domain.

It occurred to me it might be a fansite, but no, this is an authorised site.
Tell Your Friends – a contact form with friends email and yours.
Sign a Petition – I signed the Education petition – carefully making sure I opted OUT of everything but it didn’t tell me what the rest of the community was doing.
Do your bit – *raises an eyebrow* means downloading a wallpaper for mobilephone or PC or post an image in your email signature in either white
or red
*snorts* That’s how we help Australia – and by emailing his pin in our signature and sending out supportive messages to our friends, family and perfect strangers on MySpace (11,000+ friends, nearly 1700 comments) YouTube (24 videos, 118 subscribers, 7,000 channel views) and Facebook.

I couldn’t find the SpringWidget on Kevin07 but I did find it on MySpace.

Now, Priscilla is going to tell you to vote the issues – but I’m going to say: Let he who has the best collaborative site win! *waits for Priscilla to yell at her* 😛 Of course it may not be this one – you don’t see the results of petitions you sign so there is no sense of community there. There’s no way of communicating with the other members who sign up – it’s a portal, come grab your stuff and then go away and market into your own social network. ie. no way to expand your network yourself on Kevin07.com. Of course if you are immersed in YouTube, MySpace and Facebook, you have those social tools. There is also a moderated blog – but it DOES have Digg, del.icio.us, trackbacks, RSS feeds and whatnot. On Facebook there is something wierd:
It says he added the video application but there’s no videos. there was yesterday. He might’ve limited who can see them – but I am one of his FRIENDS *pouts*. Me ‘n 2145 of his nearest and dearest. No, this doesn’t imply I vote labour – just that I will befriend anyone on Facebook that can give me an interesting insight into how it’s being used. He’s got 180 Facebook gifts by the way – and the boxing gloves are from me. 🙂

We will see more of ‘static portal hybrid hosted social networks’ for a while – companies and government distancing themselves from the challenges of social networks by outsourcing to social network platforms. Later on, when a 15 year old western australian boy uses official Labour Party letterhead or whatever to notify YouTube or MySpace or Facebook of copyright issues and the pages are deleted, along with membership information, they might change their tune. 😛

And yep, I smell an election in the air. What’s your favourite political social network/blog/forum in Australia, m’loves?

EDIT: I forgot to say – vote for Kevin Rudd’s Kevin07 on Bloggerati Australia (social networks) or Kev’s widget on Bloggerati Australia (widgets). The only vote that matters… heh.