A questioner points out that the Republican meetups are used to identify local candidates at the grass roots at least in New York.
Another questioner points out there are existing social institutions for conservatives (e.g. churches)—might that explain skew in MeetUp results?
Jeff jarvis asks Hoder what we should be doing to support international efforts. Hoder replies: localize blogging software! Blogger isn’t available in Chinese or other languages (true?) and this is a problem. Mixed blessing, I think. On the one hand this might mean that more people in these countries might be encouraged to write in English so we non-Chinese-speaking readers might get their perspectives. On the other hand, the ability to do blogs in double-byte characters—let alone what the text on the UI says—was the biggest complaint internally about the various ad hoc solutions available for Microsoft bloggers.
Q: Why are some voting technologies trusted and not others? A: (Pippa)—it’s not necessarily all about trust; there may be other factors.
Good comment about the influence of the campaigns on the liberal skew on Meetup.