Tweet
The reader blog section of TalkingPointsMemo — often called TPMCafe — will shut down this Friday (September 10). Is there an opening for FDL to attract some of the regulars from that website?
Maybe this has already been discussed here. I only check in at FDL once a week or so, mostly to read the frontpage blogs. I almost never check out the Seminal, and haven’t submitted a diary here in four months or more.
Truth is, I appreciate FDL’s cutting-edge analysis; but the reader blogging function has drawn me to TPM on a daily basis. Their Cafe was fleshed out for bloggers, with avatars to highlight individual identities and a reply function that allowed indented exchanges. They also had a "dashboard" enabling readers to follow favorite bloggers and keep track of replies to comments.
If there are any progressive angels out there, seems to me they could do a world of good by providing the financial means to open a FDLCafe.
37 Comments
Don’t know for sure if the closing of Cafe will steer more people here, but I am wondering: Any chance the Cafe is being shut down because Josh over at TPM is getting skittish about the number of people savaging Obama and/or Josh’s sychophantic sucking-up to him?
I’ve long given up reading at TPM due to the fact that their membership in The Veal Pen pretty much destroyed any cred they ever had.
So, why IS the TPMCafe closing down? Has Josh Marshall said why?
From what Josh has written, and I take him at his word, the decision to shut down reader blogs at TPMCafe is a financial decision. It costs too much to maintain the blogging part of the Cafe using their current software. So they’re shutting it down for a while in order to see if they can figure out how to reduce that expense.
In a broader sense, however, it’s interesting to imagine how online politics might shift if Jane Hamsher were surfing the traffic that’s been going to Josh.
Diary authors can upload an avatar to accompany their individual diaries. I doubt if FDL wants to pay for the extra bandwidth that would be necessary to have the avatar showing for individual comments (and may well be a reason why TPM is looking to cut costs if they’ve had such a functionality)
Back when I first started reading at FDL, the “Reply” function did this to the point where after multiple exchanges/comments, it built a “Ziggurat” and busted the margins, overloading the servers as well.
Seems like your convenience items are things that wind up costing the blogs extra cash.
Thanks dakine. I know next to nothing about websites and just started blogging 9 months ago. Maybe those conveniences are a source of the cost problem, but I think other stuff may be more of a factor.
Cool word — Ziggurat. I always wondered what would happen if the replies busted the margins at TPM. Never saw that happen. Perhaps that says something about the potential at FDL.
The Seminal stands ready for blogging action whenever you and your fellow TPMCafe bloggers choose to post a diary.
Just follow the instructions for registration — as you already have, thank you — hit Post A Diary in the right hand column, and away you go.
As you can see we already have social media tools to help diarists promote their work or other work they find here and wish to share. We expect to continue with improvements to the community here as well.
We look forward to seeing more of you in the near future.
Thank you Rayne. FDL’s site does have a lot going for it already. I wonder what factors will determine whether TPM regulars will migrate here. Functionality, political leanings, or some other social stuff?
It’s really hard to say. By now you know that organizing bloggers is like herding cats, all of them have a mind of their own and operate at their own speed and have highly individual preferences. I’m open to feedback as folks kick the tires, but the site also has economic constraints — not every bell and whistle can be purchased and those that can may take some time.
But as you can see, we do have a community; we do have diverse folks who contribute, from candidates to nonprofit activists to just plain folks, and we do have some conversations here which can be deep or just plain challenging depending on the topic.
And some of the best stuff ends up getting front paged either here at The Seminal, or at the parent site, Firedoglake. This might be a bonus this site offers that many other community blogs can’t or don’t.
Bring friends, kick the tires. Let me and the rest of community know what you think.
drudge report is cutting edge too. but they’re full of shit. No?
Actually I’ve never gone to drudge report’s website. They’ve certainly garnered the name recognition, though, for better or worse.
Meow…! ;-)
You’ve got a great community here. I honestly can’t say what factors latched me onto TPM. I’ve been writing columns for small newspapers for over a decade, but haven’t started up the learning curve when it comes to blogging. Heck, I even forgot to hit the “reply” button here for the first few responses.
That said, I’ve really enjoyed reading some of the writers at FDL and have posted links on several occasions over at TPM. Been called a “firebagger” on more than one occasion.
Thanks for the welcome and cheers for your work with stray cats.
What do you think of AlterNet?
We should talk. Drop me a line. ;-)
I don’t know much about TPM. I end up there once in a while. And I’m not a techie but I have operated a web site in the past and I find it very very hard to believe that the bandwidth required for avatars has anything to do with or indeed that that this had anything whatsoever to do with software cost. I know nothing about Marshall, but here is the problem with taking him at his word in this instance. Let’s just imagine for a moment that the decision was purely political. 1. He is not going to say that. 2. He will have to come up with an excuse. (One could also add 3. Cost is just about the only excuse available.)
Here is a little test. As I don’t know much about TPM, let me ask you more knowledgeable folks: Is the Cafe to the left of the main blog? I bet it is. Maybe I’m wrong.
Money’s a big part. The amount Josh mentioned is enough to pay 3-4 people to do election coverage and tweak code at the main page to accommodate more content.
Hence my guess: he’ll bring back community blogging after the election.
[edit: and in the mean time, we have a community blog here ready to go for folks who have things to say and talk about. Easy - just register and post a diary.]
How do I get over the feeling that if I started posting diaries, I would be banned?
I’d rather lurk and comment than be banned entirely like I was over at Huffpost. I am afraid the same thing would happen to me here if I ever really came out of the closet. I’d like your comment on that.
In terms of partisan politics, I’d say a chunk of the reader bloggers at TPM were to the left of Josh and other featured writers. Most of what I’ve read on TPM’s main page is tilted toward exposing the absurdities of the Republicans and Tea Partiers. But I think Rayne’s guess in her last response is good.
Clarification: a chunk of the reader bloggers at TPMCafe were more vocally pissed off at the Democrats for selling out than the writers at TPM’s main page. I’ve appreciated the coverage at TPM when it comes to blasting the extreme right-wing thugery. Yet often I’ve wanted to pair that with FDL’s unabashed critique of the broader political establishment.
If more TPM regulars hang out at FDL for a while, there could be some productive cross-fertilization. And we’re going to need all the hybrid-vigor we can get, it seems, considering our future prospects.
Well, one of the TPM folks here. We seem to be scattering to a few places, some of them created at places like wordpress in order to give the community a place to engage with each other.
As far Josh’s financial decision to shut down the blog, it boiled down to traffic. The people over in the reader blog section amounted to about 1% of the traffic to the site as whole, but for whatever reason the reader blogs as they were designed were taking up about 75% of the server costs. There may be reader blogs there again in a couple of weeks, but no one is I know is holding their breath.
I was like a number of the bloggers there that spent little time elsewhere on the site outside of the Cafe section. I landed there during the ’08 election like a number of people, got to know a number of folks and then hung around for the conversation. It is human nature to want to go where everybody knows your name, or the song tells us.
Any how, the closing down of the Reader blogs for me has turned into an opportunity to venture out and check out (and kick some tires) of other blogging communities.
The TPM Cafe was the biggest exercise in enforcing groupthink and impotent bitching I’ve ever come across.
Except for this entire site, of course.
LOL. Not sure what you mean, but sounds pretty funny. Don’t enforcement and bitching tend to oppose each other? Please please elaborate.
Maybe you and I should fire up our own site cause I feel the same damned way. I won’t post for three reasons. One, I basically believe all editors should be burned at the stake (video editors to be hung upside down first). (Don’t take that personally Rayne as I felt that way long before I encountered you.) Two, they wouldn’t let me say what I REALLY think anyway. Three, I wouldn’t want my brilliant extended thoughts to be owned (in any sense of the word) by anybody else. (You’ll just have to be thankful for the white hot light my comments provide.)
If you’re a TPM reader who came here from Wendy Davis’ blog, I’ve posted a fresh welcoming diary that I hope will be worthy of response.
http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/70040
“Don’t enforcement and bitching tend to oppose each other?”
The enforcement is of impotent bitching about all of the ways Obama betrayed poor widdle Progressives. Anyone who dares defend Obama is usually piled up on by a bunch of ignorant, holier-than-thou Protest People. They have far more interest in establishing their bona fides as the current version of the New Left than in actually moving our political establishment to the left.
They’ll be right at home here.
It’s a might white of you to drop by and share a note here, brew. Care to test your ideas about You and Them in front of a fresher audience? Why not mosey on over to today’s board and let loose.
No reason to be afraid. This seems like a wonderful community.
http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/70040
From one of the loudest “bitches” no less. Glad to see you bring your unique misogyny here.
Thank you for drawing attention to the misogynistic nature of that word.
watt, the closing of TPMCafe could unleash unpredictable force here. I wonder if the long-suffering “widdle Progressives” on TPM will find a more conducive, or at least less disruptive home here?
watt, he has made one valid point – in the face of two parties practicing the same political bait and switch jujitsu, occasionally throwing a bone to their hungry base, “widdle Progressives” are indeed impotent to move their agenda forward via the establishment mechanism. It has to be one politician at a time, in a long drawn out and steady race.
That’s my prayer.
Thanks for sharing, half-pint. You just saved me a lot of investigative work.
Seriously, I welcome you, watt, and all of your brothers and sisters here to the last house on the left.
Damn! I’ve got to get some more WD40. The front door hinges are creaking again.
Yes, one electoral step at at a time in a long steady journey. Plus making sure that Progressives have a firm united hold on the meta-narrative that comes out of the upcoming election. FDL may be a key anchor point in our solidarity.
Note to Baby Igor:
Steal 1 can of WD40 next time you’re at WalMart.
I see you’re all over this site pre-emptively smearing me with the baseless “misigynist” label. Charges of “misogyny” are a coward’s way of stifling debate when they can’t win an argument using logic or facts.
In the dozens of interactions I had with commenters at TPM, you can point to one that is arguably sexist in nature. And that was only after the female commenter decided to attack a poster for “pimping out” his teenage daughter by using a picture of the two of them together as his avatar.
Qwerty is representative of a type far too well represented in the lefty blogosphere: someone who ostentatiously proclaims their moral superiority, yet consistently failing to offer viable solutions for acheiving their goals and not hesitating to engage in nasty ad hominmen when challenged on the failures in their thinking and their general political irrelevance.
“I wonder if the long-suffering “widdle Progressives” on TPM will find a more conducive, or at least less disruptive home here?”
Get off of that cross. We need the wood.
And god forbid you actually get challenged, er “disrupted,” in your attempts to leave the playing field completely open to the depredations of the Republicans.
If you read the standards when you register to be able to comment and post, you’ll know what is not allowed here.