Different venues, different audiences, but the same query: Six times in as many months, I stood in front of a group asking (perhaps demanding) that I answer the same question. Audiences can be scary — and the question pointed to the heart of the matter.

In each case, I had been invited —and cheerfully agreed — to talk about web 2.0 and online networks, these new fangled “social” technologies. But, the audiences wanted brass tacks — my academic musings and observations from on high were not enough. The crowd was hungry. They wanted the secret answer.

Did you catch all those folks in white coats at the White House yesterday? The Obama Administration has seized upon the idea that doctors are terrific and trusted ambassadors for health care reform, and they're hoping that LinkedIn might help turn a one-day photo op into a movement. The White House will later today, they say, turn to the professional social networking site to "expand that conversation exponentially, allowing thousands of other doctors and medical professionals to engage, to tell us what they deal with day to day, and to get a real, substantive response from the White House."

LinkedIn estimates that there are 130,000 or so medical professionals already on the network.

For all its upsides, working for the public good as a government employee can be a lonely pursuit. Forget the often stressful office spaces, or the pay isn't going to make you rich, or the general sense that the public sometimes doesn't like you very much. What can really drag you down is the feeling of being isolated from other people who are eager to figure out creative ways of doing the business of government extremely well. When Steve Ressler, stationed at the Department of Homeland Security, launched the GovLoop social network over Memorial Day weekend 2007, he found that there were indeed plenty of "govies," as he lovingly calls them, eager to connect with one another.

In fact, over the last year and a half, the GovLoop community, often explained as "Facebook for Government," has grown to 20,000 members. Through GovLoop, government employees -- from those working for the federal government to local government staffers -- and public policy academics and contractors share ideas on bringing the "Gov 2.o spirit" to their own offices, ask one another for help, gossip, commiserate, brainstorm about how they can help create better government, and even ask one another for advice on the tricky question of what the fashionable governmentista wears today. ("A jacket is a must. Nice shoes are a must. Tuck things in. Comb things back.")

The big news today is that GovLoop has been acquired by GovDelivery, a Minnesota-based software-as-a-service company that provides digital communications tools. According to the company, they work with more than 300 government entities, including the Defense Department, State Department, the Department of Labor, HHS, the states of California and Indiana, and the cities of Washington DC and Minneapolis. Ressler will become CEO of GovLoop, and his passion project will become his full-time gig.

From the press release...

Are you a local elected official looking for advice from your peers on how to make better use of web technologies to relate to your constituents? Or perhaps you're a government IT specialist looking for support in your battles with footdragging higher-ups? Maybe you're looking for perspective from within the system on how government entities are implementing web 2.0 strategies? Or perhaps you are a not-so-tech-obsessed public-minded public servant who is simply looking for mutual support, across the often silo-ed and stultified world of government work?

You can find all of those things and more at GovLoop.com, an eight-month old social network created by Steve Ressler, a twenty-something federal employee living in Tampa, Flordia. Built on the free Ning.com platform, GovLoop has about 4,000 members at present, and is growing, Ressler says, at the rate of about 1,000 a month, almost entirely by word of mouth. The site is getting about 500 to 1,000 unique visitors a day, and about 150 thousand page views a month. Its members come mainly from all over the U.S., working in local, state and federal government jobs, but also include a smattering of good-government public interest types, academics and what Ressler refers to as "government contractors with good intentions." Plus there's an international contingent from English-speaking countries like Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom.

I had a nice chat with Ressler late Friday afternoon, and he gave me a full rundown on how GovLoop came to be and where he hopes it will go...

While I usually cover only the mobile stuff for Personal Democracy and TechPresident I happened to be one of the few PDF/TechPresident bloggers at the TechCrunch 50 event in San Francisco last week. While I was there launching my own company, I came across Politics4All.com while walking around the Demo Pit area on day two of the event.

While I usually cover only the mobile stuff for Personal Democracy and TechPresident I happened to be one of the few PDF/TechPresident bloggers at the TechCrunch 50 event in San Francisco last week. While I was there launching my own company, I came across Politics4All.com while walking around the Demo Pit area on day two of the event.

Not only is turnout at record levels in primaries across the country, but the role the internet is playing in the election is setting records that bury previous high marks. According to the Pew Internet & American Life report issued today, a full "46% of Americans have used the internet to get political news and share their thoughts about the campaign. Online video and social networking sites have taken off, especially among Obama supporters." So let’s stop asking whether the internet will ever elect a president and accept the fact that no candidate can afford to downplay the importance of it.

I hate to risk alienating my new BFF Mark Zuckerberg, but has Facebook's moment in the sun as a hot political tool passed? And if so, what does that tell us about the future of social networking sites for online political organizing, and even about the future of Facebook itself?

I'm taking off tomorrow morning for London, England, where I'll be speaking along with techPresident blogger Michael Turk at "Politics Web 2.0," a two-day international conference hosted by the University of London, Royal Halloway. The conference features 120 papers organised into 41 panels, with more than 180 participants drawn from over 30 countries, and is probably a bit more academic than most of the events I tend to go to these days. My talk is titled, "The Revolution Will Be Networked: How Open Source Politics is Emerging in America." What do you think I should cover?

I was shocked to discover that Mark Penn's book Microtrends has its own Facebook application.