Afro-Netizen

Afro-Netizen proudly sponsors 10Questions.com

Over this past summer I was interviewed on a couple different radio shows on NPR and Air America, and the hosts asked me what I thought about the CNN/YouTube Presidential Debate (Democrats). To paraphrase, I said,  "it sucked".

At the end of the day, some random assemblage of CNN employees and consultants ultimately decided which video questions of the thousands that were submitted were "TV-worthy", thus stripping away the most organic and important elements of participatory media CNN claimed to embrace.

The CNN/YouTube Debates used this powerful new medium poorly and in bad faith. I quipped to the radio hosts that I'd like to see a candidate-free presidential debate that focused on analyzing candidates' positions on issues most important to the general public. Well, I'm glad to say that toward this end, my colleagues at TechPresident.com have innovated once again!

The rigorously creative folks at TechPresident.com called me up to ask if Afro-Netizen would come aboard to sponsor and promote 10Questions.com. Micah Sifry gave me the "elevator pitch", and I replied, "You had me at 'Do you wanna . . .'". I realized that 10Questions had the potential to do what corporate media structurally resists doing: trusting in the collective wisdom of the public, in this case, the private citizens who choose to engage in this fascinating civic experiment.

So, here's the quick-n-dirty synopsis of 10Questions:

ROUND 1

1. You ask a video question addressed to the presidential candidates (& upload it via YouTube, Blip.TV or Yahoo Video, tagging it with "10Questions").

2. You vote on the best questions.

3. The top ten questions get selected.

ROUND 2

1. The top ten questions are presented to the candidates.

2. Candidates post their video answers.

3. You decide if they actually answered the questions.

Afro-Netizen sees in this ground-breaking project a (sadly) unique opportunity for us Blackfolk and other marginalized Americans whose concerns and priorities often fall outside of "mainstream" discourse to express our diversity of thought and perspectives as individuals while simultaneously committing to rally around those few questions that evoke the most visceral response in us communally.

I recommend to Afro-Netizen readers the following:

1) Craft an actual question (not a speech).

2) Make that question clear & specific.

3) Consider a question regarding an important issue that you haven't heard asked of a 
    presidential candidate on TV.

4) Frame the question within the context that acknowledges structural inequality and/or a
    commitment to social, racial and/or economic justice.

5) If you do upload a video question, please remember to tag it with "10Questions" and
    "afronetizen" (so that the 10Questions folks can pull it and we at Afro-Netizen can   
    monitor the efforts of submitters who learned about the project through us.)

6) Be sure to add a clear, descriptive title to your video.

If you do not have access to a webcam, do not want to be on camera, or simply want to share your question(s) with Afro-Netizen to invite our readers to submit them, feel free to do so by shooting us an e-mail at: 10questions@afro-netizen.

Spread the word! And let's get to it!

(To share this post with others via e-mail, you can copy & paste the following URL into the body of your message: http://www.afro-netizen.com/2007/10/afro-netizen-pr.html .)

Why your feedback counts so much

Afro-Netizen™ is free. And we'd like to keep it that way -- ideally, forever!

I've been a netizen since 1995, and I've simply grown accustomed to not having to pay for news and other forms of good information. Most of the major Internet studies all confirm that the majority of netizens share my opinion on this issue.

However, the reality is that it costs money to operate this site and administrate our e-newsletter. It costs even more to continue improving it and expanding our offerings to keep you happy.

This being said, in order to ensure our ongoing operation and ultimate success, we only need one thing: numbers!

These numbers can be in the form of dollars or people -- but preferably both! To be fancy, let's call these categories: 1) community and 2) capital.

Community. Presently, Afro-Netizen reaches many thousands of "thought leaders" and other types of afro-netizens across the country and abroad. But until we reach that magic number of 1 million subscribers, we will be under the critical mass of Blackfolk we'd like to have in order to really leverage our influence to secure the autonomy Afro-Netizen truly needs to be a force to be reckoned with.

Capital. We need money to make money. We're not looking for hand-outs, grants, etc. We're looking for small, but consistent investments from our loyal supporters -- those folks who appreciate what we do and how we do it; folks who regularly forward our e-newsletter to all their friends, relatives, etc. and who encourage them to subscribe to us.

One way to invest in Afro-Netizen is to buy something from our webstore. If you don't find anything you like, you can still buy gifts for family and friends.

Another way to invest in us is to click-and-buy any book that looks interesting to you on our site. We get a piece of the action every time someone buys an item on Amazon.com via our site.

Still another way to invest in our success is to encourage your friends and colleagues to partner with us to promote their products, services, books, events, etc. However, bear in mind that Afro-Netizen reaches a national audience. And so the best promotions are ones that seek to reach our mature, savvy, and fairly well-educated readership of Blackfolk.

Additionally, each promotional campaign we do on our clients' behalf includes a tracking report where we provide them with a report indicating how many people opened the e-mail messages containing their promotions and how many people clicked on their links. That way, they will know how cost-effective marketing via Afro-Netizen was and whether or not to do so again.

Also, we encourage you to retain us to develop custom surveys for your work or civic organizations you're affiliated with. These services are ideal for folks who need to survey the opinions, background, and/or behavior of groups consisting of 50 - 50,000 individuals. Moreover, if appropriate, we can combine a promotional campaign on our e-newsletter with a custom survey.

So, for example, if you have an event planning firm, you could have a short paragraph on the Afro-Netizen eNewsletter promoting your services along with a link that will take you to a custom survey. In the survey, you could extract important information from your prospect to see if there was a good fit. And after they've completed the survey, they would be forwarded to your website. (If your firm does not have a site, we can refer you to web designers whose work and professionalism we can vouch for.)

Well, I hope I've clarified things for you. If not, feel free to drop me a line. And, if you haven't read "The Story Behind Afro-Netizen", please click here to learn how and why it all began.

Thank you so much for your interest, advocacy, and ongoing support!

Sincerely,

Christopher M. Rabb
Founder/Chief Evangelist
Afro-Netizen

Est. 1999