E-News to Go

VoteGopher relaunches. VoteGopher.com, a site targeting young voters, has launched several new features, including a series of 25 video breakdowns offering comparisons of candidates' positions on the issues. A new tool called MyBallot coordinates with the issue summaries to help users create a personalized scorecard and see which candidate's views is more like their own. The site was founded last year by Will Ruben, a member of Harvard's class of 2010.

The rise of the blogosphere. A new study by Cision of the top 20 national magazines and newspapers shows that over the last five years, the number of times blogs and bloggers are mentioned in articles has increased more than 16-fold. According to the research, the publications mentioned blogs and bloggers 13,066 times in the one-year period ending June 30, 2008. That compares to only 795 times in 2004 and 2,179 times in 2005. "This stunning growth in blogger influence magnifies the importance of employing common sense when contacting bloggers," said Peter Granat, executive vice president. "Knowing the blogger and his/her focus is the critical element in a successful blog relations campaign. While many blogs are highly visible in their own right, the growing influence with the mainstream media elevates their importance."

Sports fans are watching. Serious sports fans comprise 19% of overall online users and represent one of the most lucrative audiences online, according to a new JupiterResearch report. Twenty-one percent of serious sports fans, who tend to be younger males between the ages of 25-34, view streaming video monthly, according to Jupiter. "To fully tap into this lucrative audience, local sites must make a commitment to search engine optimization and search engine marketing," said Bobby Tulsiani, analyst and lead author of the reporting a statement. "During the 2008 NBA Finals, none of the local TV or radio stations ranked among Hitwise's top 10 sites for traffic from the search term 'Lakers' or 'Celtics'."

DestinationRx prescribes blog. DestinationRx has debuted a new blog, www.drugtrendstoday.com, to share data and trends related to the prescription drug industry. The blog will feature recurring data "snapshots" illustrating drug and pricing trends in graph or chart format. Weekly features include the top 10 searched drugs with the DestinationRx price comparison tool; Drug Class of the Month, which will compare pricing among multiple brand and generic drugs in a single class; the DRx Challenge, which takes one drug and illustrates multiple avenues for cost savings; and an ongoing Drug Price Tracking feature that will compare pricing, and changes in pricing, for the most popular hypertension medications over the long term.