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10Questions Update 10/29/07: Usage Surges!

BY Micah L. Sifry | Monday, October 29 2007

Well, we've had quite a weekend, ever since we announced that the top question as of 10am today would be asked of Senator Barack Obama during this afternoon's live MySpace/MTV dialogue at Coe College in Cedar Rapids, IA.

Participation on 10Questions.com has surged, with the total number of voters topping 15,000 (that's up about 9,000 from Friday), the total number of votes hitting 46,000 (up 19,000) and the total unique visits for the weekend at 17,000, more than ten times Friday's traffic.

What happened? Several different advocacy campaigns, each on behalf of a particular question, joined in the conversation. A new video asking about net neutrality was posted, and from what we understand, MoveOn.org sent out an email to about 60,000 of its member activists urging them to vote for it. Obviously, a lot of people did, as that video rose to the top (with more than 5,000 net positive votes as of now). MySpace/MTV will be playing it for Senator Obama to answer during today's webcast (1:30pm EST), which will also be aired on MTV tonight at 7pm.

But that's not where all the traffic came from or went. The current #2 question on the site, about medical marijuana, has benefited from the advocacy of the Marijuana Policy Project and its grassroots supporters. (See here for one example.) Same with the current #3 question, on warrantless wiretapping, which the folks at the Electronic Frontier Foundation have been telling their activists about.

It's great to see this kind of participation on the site, and we're hoping to see a lot more of it. Remember, if you think a question doesn't deserve to be in the top ten, you can vote it down. And if you think a question deserves more attention, you can use our email and embed tools to tell other people about it and/or post it on your own site. That's what blogger Jamie Bernstein is doing here, promoting a question about atheism and the Supreme Court.

We're looking forward to seeing how Sen. Obama answers today's question, and we'll get his response up on the site as soon as we can.

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