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Are Freepers Still Winning the Online War?
Vanity | 7/11/03 | me

Posted on 07/11/2003 6:55:08 PM PDT by Political Numbers Guy

Are Freepers still winning the online war?

I think we still are. But as conservatives, we need to ask what we can be doing better. One area in which we can and do must do more is blogs. What are blogs, you ask? They’re personal web journals run by online pundits, and they’re achieving enormous popularity both online and in the media. Blogs like InstaPundit.com, the Volokh Conspiracy, and Right Wing News are daily must reads where some of the best minds opine on the really important stories of the day, and where upstart bloggers (folks not unlike you and me) can get noticed just for covering the news well. Great blogs are like mini-Free Republics, and they’re growing at mind-boggling warp speed.

Grassroots conservatives have yet to make their presence known in the blogging arena. Blogdex.net tracks the most popular stories in blogs, and the worst sorts of lies about our President and our mission of liberation in Iraq top the charts every day. Today, it’s CBS News’ big lie that “Bush knew” that the Nigerian intel was false – something directly contradicted by its own story (first exposed by blogger Eugene Volokh). Despite a healthy supply of intelligent right-leaning bloggers, conservative stories always linger toward the bottom of the list.

As a longtime lurker and occasional poster, it surprises me that Freepers largely haven’t 1) picked up on the truly brilliant material that is produced by bloggers everyday – the good ones are seriously 10 times better than anything you’ll read on any op-ed page, and 2) struck out into this new medium ourselves by starting blogs to expand Free Republic’s sphere of influence.

Free Republic is a great rallying point for conservatives – but to truly defeat the Left, we need to be bigger than just one website. Bloggers have created value by building a network of thousands of smaller sites that are catching on like wildfire, and unfortunately the Left has taken advantage of it. There’s even talk of blogs becoming the “liberal talk radio.” There’s still time to stop this. By dominating Free Republic, talk radio, and blogs, there is no way Democrats and the Left can win at the grassroots.

There is something you can do right now. Start a blog. Go to http://www.blogspot.com and set up a free site for yourself. Start reading and linking to other conservative-minded blogs and your favorite Freeper threads. You’ll notice your readership start growing right away. Post the best stuff you in the “blogosphere” on Free Republic. Just 50 or 100 successful new conservative blogs can tilt the balance in a profound way and draw even more attention to our efforts here on Free Republic.

The expansion of direct personal publishing by bloggers is something we have to pay attention to. Free Republic could benefit immensely by giving Freepers free and/or premium blog hosting – attracting traffic and links from thousands of other blogs. The liberal rag Salon did this, and this is partly why the Left started gaining traction in blogging. AOL is now rolling out their own blogging product, and this blog piece talks about how it can and will be used to promote AOL content. Hosting blog sites on Free Republic makes plenty of sense from both an activism and a marketing perspective. Case in point: instead of just one fundraising thermometer on top of every FR page, there’d be hundreds more on popular blogs hosted on FreeRepublic.com, each linked to by dozens of outside blogs.

What does everyone think of these ideas? Most importantly, how can we make this happen?


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; Extended News; Free Republic; Your Opinion/Questions
KEYWORDS: blog; conservative; expandingfreepdom; internet; opinion
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To: Political Numbers Guy
Excellent thread, but I'd like to pose a question...Isn't FR itself a sort of uber-blog...is it necessary to post the same stuff in more places...and if it is, who'se got the time to spend more time on-line?
101 posted on 07/14/2003 7:32:45 AM PDT by ken5050
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To: PhiKapMom
Great idea, indeed!
102 posted on 07/14/2003 7:51:00 AM PDT by Bigg Red (Bush/Cheney in '04 and Tommy Daschole out the door)
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To: windchime
That's me windchime. I need all the support I can get. I am a dot org to avoid the pressures of just being an e-tailer (at least in my mind). LOL

Anyone can send me articles, rants, anything. Hopefully, I'll have some kids stuff for sale for the holidays. My launch shirt is in graphic design at the moment.

103 posted on 07/14/2003 8:39:01 AM PDT by floriduh voter (Click On my Name - Visit My Profile)
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To: MeeknMing
Thanks re: my web site and I hope to add very special additional pages. Page one has enough on it already. lol
104 posted on 07/14/2003 9:28:05 AM PDT by floriduh voter (Click On my Name - Visit My Profile)
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To: All
If you've just been too busy, or have forgotten, and if you can.....please go here & take care of business! Thanks!
105 posted on 07/14/2003 9:11:04 PM PDT by Brad’s Gramma (Become a monthly donor to Free Republic)
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To: Political Numbers Guy
Sorry, I'm a Frickn' Freeper.
106 posted on 07/14/2003 11:52:04 PM PDT by Porterville (J Marshall asserted the Court's monopoly on the interpretation of the Constitution, may he burn)
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To: MHGinTN
You've done wonderful stuff here - you're a blue-chip FReeper.
107 posted on 07/15/2003 12:07:49 AM PDT by 185JHP ( Penumbras. Emanations. Fatuities.)
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To: Political Numbers Guy; Cathryn Crawford
Nice idea. I started one today.

www.righteverytime.blogspot.com

Just put up a test page so far but already have topic in mind. Will put up a real-life BLOG in the next few days.
108 posted on 07/15/2003 12:27:41 AM PDT by Tall_Texan (Half the people you encounter are below average.)
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To: Political Numbers Guy
My favorite blog is here. Its God's blog to the human race.

http://bible.gospelcom.net/

109 posted on 07/15/2003 1:19:31 PM PDT by Russell Scott (When Christ's Kingdom appears, all of man's problems will disappear.)
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To: Russell Scott
For those of us not familar with blogs....can somebody tell us more about them? Are they free? Text only, pictures or html? Can anyone post to them to the blog owner only? Are they just one, long rolling series of posts or do they have categories like FR?

What can a blog to that freerepublic.com cannot do?
110 posted on 07/15/2003 1:31:18 PM PDT by Gopher Broke (Abortion: Big people killing little people)
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To: Political Numbers Guy
Mine is a new investments/current market events blog, having to do with very L-O-N-G term investing. It's at:

http://thetaoofthedow.blogspot.com

Frankly, I'd appreciate any readers at this point. Also questions, suggestions.
111 posted on 07/15/2003 4:16:01 PM PDT by Choose Ye This Day (http://thetaoofthedow.blogspot.com)
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To: William McKinley
It is short for web log and all kinds have them. Like Andrew Sullivan for example if you like get getting a conservative spin from a homosexual.
112 posted on 07/15/2003 8:31:19 PM PDT by GranpaVet
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To: Political Numbers Guy; Nick Danger; Gracey; MeeknMing; Slyfox; Cathryn Crawford; floriduh voter; ...
Here it is! My first BLOG!!

http://righteverytime.blogspot.com/
113 posted on 07/16/2003 12:42:59 PM PDT by Tall_Texan (Half the people you encounter are below average.)
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To: Political Numbers Guy; Tall_Texan
Free Republic is a great rallying point for conservatives – but to truly defeat the Left, we need to be bigger than just one website.

I think that we are bigger than we know. If you think of all the people you personally who are not members of FR and who are just as active or knowledgable and concerned about conservative matters. We are like an info specialist within our own sphere of infulence. And that little sphere may consist of 100-200 people.

When you go over to your brother's house, who was never interested in politics, and now he's got FOX playing on the tube as backgound noise and he's talking trash about Hillary and the stupid dems, you know that something good is happening to America. The simple fact that the dems can't figure out how to overpower talk radio, well it makes me think that we are on our way. We may not have a clear 2/3's conservative majority, but we are heading in that direction.

Oliver Wendell Holmes once said that a man's mind stretched to a new idea never goes back to it's original position.

114 posted on 07/16/2003 1:55:41 PM PDT by Slyfox
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To: Tall_Texan
Alright !! Way to go !!


BUG EYED CHAD SEARCH


115 posted on 07/16/2003 3:14:02 PM PDT by MeekOneGOP (Bu-bye Dixie Chimps! / Coming Soon !: Freeper site on Comcast. Found the URL. Gotta fix it now.)
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To: Political Numbers Guy
BTTT for in-depth study
116 posted on 07/16/2003 3:43:23 PM PDT by ApesForEvolution ("The only way evil triumphs is if good men do nothing" E. Burke)
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To: Tall_Texan
2,000-to-3,000 votes were manufactured for the wrong guy.

That still cracks me up, bigtime.

117 posted on 07/16/2003 7:31:53 PM PDT by Slyfox
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thos interested in checking out another right wing blog can view mine at http://www.mattmargolis.com/blog
118 posted on 08/01/2003 5:54:41 PM PDT by jacket (http://www.mattmargolis.com (Political dicussion blog and more!))
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