Political Social Networks: Vocal Nation

The next spotlight in the series on Politics and Web 2.0 falls on political social network Vocal Nation. Vocal Nation is similar in concept to Essembly, but they do the political social networking gig much better. In the review of Essembly I discussed the deterioration of the system with off topic issues and skewed results. On Vocal Nation, they seem to have found a way to keep that to a minimum.

Vocal Nation bills their site as an “ecosystem for sociopolitical thought”. Unlike Essembly, which tries to put each user on the political spectrum from left to right and ends up failing because the user generated Resolve system has no checks and balances, Vocal Nation rates the issues themselves. Issues can be posted that are ideological or political or an mix of both, and the issue is then placed somewhere on the liberal to conservative scale.

This allows Vocal Nation users a way to find topics and issues and rate them according to relevance. The Vocal Nation algorithm then rates the issue on a scale of political relevance, which allows the issue to be sorted further. This combination of things keeps fresh relevant content on the front page, and makes content that appeals to each user easier to find.

What makes Vocal Nation unique is the variety of topics it covers. Each topic has a dynamic quality rating and political leaning scale, and each user who posts a story has a ranking as well. The combination of these sliding scales come together to weed out uninteresting or irrelevant topics, most of the time. A few slip through while no one is looking, it seems, but even these are at least well written topics that are more than just the Essembly “I like potatoes!” variety of chaff.

As users spend more and more time on the site, and participate more, they are rewarded by having new topics that they post start off at a higher level of exposure. The site keeps things from becoming skewed toward these frequent users through the voting system. Users can also mark posts as favorites, and you can see more of an author's posted items by going to their profile page.

Vocal Nation also allows you to sort your topics by category, or by region. I liked the regional sort quite a bit. You could view topics from continent, subcontinent, country, state, and city levels. You can also view users posting topics from that region as well, which is nice if you are looking for people who share your political or social leanings from a certain area.

You can add users to your favorites as well as topics, and you can talk to users on a personal level in the forums. Each topic also has a place for comments, and some of the most lively interactions are in those comment sections.

Vocal Nation started off as a much more political site, and frankly, it hasn't remained political enough for me to consider it a true political social network anymore. Its political elements are much stronger than some, but the fact that it has a broad focus that includes such topics as the arts instead of mainly political topics means that it may appeal to some people who want access to political issues without being swamped with them.

It does get a few points for design. One of the first political Web 2.0 sites I've seen that doesn't force feed you the ubiquitous red, white and blue, Vocal Nation has a sleek eggplant colored site that is set out in a fairly easy to surf way. It smacks a bit of Web 1.0 in its lack of widgets and gradients and super sized fonts, but I think in a political or sociopolitical site like this one that's OK. The younger set may still prefer the political concentration, youthful look and and more vibrant Web 2.0 political vibe at 20DC, however. I know I do.