Help us test the socialmedian election widget

socialmedian blog readers:  I wanted to provide you with a first look at http://election.socialmedian.com, a site we are launching with the Washington Post and other partners like The Guardian to help people track and participate in election 2008 coverage.

 

We will formally announce the new site tomorrow (Wednesday)...you can use it now but it is still a work in progress.

 

The http://election.socialmedian.com site aggregates news and user-feeds related to the election and enables users to join in the election coverage and discussion.  We created this site with The Washington Post to enable people to track all the election news from thousands of news sources as well as from Twitter feeds, Flickr photos, YouTube videos, and more all in one place, and (importantly) to join-in and add their own feeds from their favorite sites to provide user reports leading up to and on election day.

 

You can sign up for the page immediately and add your feeds.  Add your Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, blog site etc. and we'll automatically add your relevant contributions on those sites to this page.

 

Starting Wednesday users will also be able to eaisly grab a widget of this page to put on your own websites and blogs.  The WashingtonPost and The Guardian are just two of the first websites that have signed up to use this widget.  The widget will highlight user submitted news and reports --> so this is a great way to get your election day coverage on these and other leading sites.

 

Here's what we'd like you to do now please:

 

1.  Play around with the http://election.socialmedian.com site and add your feeds

 

2.  If you have a blog, please try out the widget code now (below).  Give us feedback if you have any problems with it.  Leave it up on your site if you like it.  AND, let us know if you are using it on your site and we'll promote your site as one of the sites using the widget (send us your logo too).

<div id="smPromoteWidget"></div>
<script>var nos=6;var widget_width=335;var tab = 'rising-fast';var
REF='wpost';var SM_OPEN_NEW_WINDOW = 0;</script>
<script
src="https://socialmedian.s3.amazonaws.com/javascripts/promote-campaign-2008
.js" type="text/javascript">
</script>

*nos: number of stories displayed in the widget.  You can change to 1 to 6

*widget_width: width in pixels for the widget. Minimum is 260 pixels

*tab: the default tab that will be open in the widget. Possible values:'popular', 'rising-fast', 'recent'

*REF: please keep this as-is for now.  If you would like to discuss a custom landing page with you logo on it, please let me know and we can look at doing that for your REF=[site name]

*SM_OPEN_NEW_WINDOW: 0 means links will open in the same window. 1 means
links will open in a new window.

3.  Start spreading the word to your friends

 

4.  On election day, tweet your updates, take photos of the election and upload them your flickr, film a video and upload it to youtube, etc.

 

Thanks!

 

-jason & the socialmedian team