Werner Vogels on the Dutch election

Dave, you’ll probably get a kick out of this: today there were parliamentary elections in the Netherlands. It is a multiparty system with about 15 parties competing for people votes. The government is always a collation and it has been christen-democrats + liberals for the past 6 years or even longer. Keep in mind that liberals are considered right-wing in the Netherlands. There are 150 seats in the house of representatives and it is common for the largest party to not have more than 35-40 seats.

Anyway, one of the more popular politicians is Jan Marijnissen, the leader of the SP - Socialistische Partij (Socialist Party). The SP are the hard core socialists, with strong ties to the labor organizations and very principled when it comes to taking care of the disadvantaged in the society. Traditionally the PvdA (Labor Party) was considered to be the representative of the blue collar work force, but they have been too centric and too compromising in the past decade to play this role.

Jan Marijnissen is a blogger (http://www.janmarijnissen.nl/). He embraced blogging 2-3 years ago and will write the entries himself and respond to comments himself also. He motivated the whole party to embrace the internet as one of their main communication channels and they produced a continuous stream of podcasts and videos and used collaboration tools to coordinate the grassroots organization on which the party is built.

Marijnissen’s appeal is mainly that he is a very principled, honest politician. People feel that they can trust him, and his accessibility through his weblog has been a main tool in directly connecting and responding to voters.

Marijnissen’s party went from 9 seats to 26 seats in today’s election, becoming the 3rd largest party. This kind of increase in number of seats is unheard of in the Netherlands and has earthquake like implications for the political landscape. The first reports all analyze this victory 1) people in the Netherlands still care very much for “equality” 2) the SP was really able connect to voters and the internet was an important channel for that. Many talk about that it actually gave them a strategic advantage and that even the were considered a small party, they got equal attention of the old-media because the use of internet channels.

regards, just thought you would enjoy this,

Werner

Blogging is part of life

I agree with the author of the Slate piece that’s getting so much play in the blogosphere, up to a point. The things that called themselves blogs that came from Denton and Calacanis are professional publications written by paid journalists that use blogging software for content management. That’s fine and I suppose you can call them blogs, but don’t get confused and think that their supposed death (which itself is arguable) has anything to do with the amateur medium that is blogging. They’re separate things, on separate paths with different futures.

To say blogging is dead is as ridiculous as saying email or IM or the telephone are dead. The blog never belonged on the cover of magazines, any more than email was a cover story (it never was) but that doesn’t mean the tool isn’t useful inside organizations as a way to communicate, and as a way for businesses to learn how the public views them and their competitors.

Blogs are where new businesses will spring from. Think of blogs as being like dorm rooms, and remember that’s where Dell Computer came from. Blogging communities are incubators. Some communities incubate negative stuff, plenty of those, but occasionally a blogging community serves as the launching pad for something good. There will be a steady stream of those, and they will be on the cover of magazines, and will belong there.