It's been a long while since we've blogged last, and this is an update to let you know we're still working on some new features/fixes for ifimpresident.com

We've loved reading the blogs so far, the policies you've created, and especially your profile videos. You'll be hearing from us soon; keep up the political dicussions!

This is an update for you to check out a couple reviews of ifimpresident.com.
First first from a major web 2.0 reviewer called KillerStartups and the second from the comprehensive RotorBlog blog.

Some new features coming soon. Stay tuned!

At the top of each page, you should see a little line that's introducing you to the new ifimpresident.com Blogger Affiliate Program.

What is this? Well in short, it's a program that allows political bloggers to set up a blog here on ifimpresident.com, using our blogging engine.

Why would someone want to do that? It's pretty simple. We plan on being the definitive political network, and will be sharing all ad revenue brought in through blogs back with you, the bloggers.

Check out the link below for mroe information and how to sign up if you're interested. It's only available for 25 bloggers, and is a great offer.

Looking forward to reading some your thoughts.

Bloggers: you can no edit your posts :)

We've made a minor update tonight. Now you can digg anything you find relevant on the site.

On every discussion, news article, and policy, there's a little digg icon underneath the title. Clicking it will let you submit it to digg in a matter of seconds. It's a way to get a discussion you think is note-worthy a little more attention.

Blog posts also have them!

You'll notice at the top that there's a new tab.. blogs!

What's our plan? Well right now, if you click on blogs, you'll see a list of blog postings, some from this blog, and others from users who have been given a blog.

We will be working with some prominent political bloggers from around the internet, and they will be setting up blogs on iip. What will this do? Each blogger will have an area they are very aware and informative about.

They'll be able to provide authority on certain topics, and hopefully will be able to share their opinions with others in an organized way.. one place.. one realm (politics).

I'm looking forward to it!

So, when you sign up, you get a profile right?

Well so do candidates. Right now these profiles are not controlled or editted by the respective candidates, but as we await a response from each party, we will maintain their accounts on behalf of them.

Why are they there?
They are there, so that people can show who they support. Give them an approval rating to show what you think of them, comment on their profile to show your support, or check out their most recent campaign videos through their profile.

We hope to hear from the candidates parties very soon, at which point we'll be able to elaborate on what these accounts are really for.

Profiles
Just like every other network out there, you get a profile. I don't say social network, because iip isn't a social network.. it's more of political network where you're connected to people based on political similarities and interests.

So how is your iip profile different from any networks profile? This is your hub for all things political. Here you can:

Set your profile picture, to identify yourself
Set your profile video, to show people what's got your political (or other) interest at the moment
View your approval rating, which is a way for others in the community to rate how much they approve of your position/stance within the network
Choose who you support in the upcoming election
View updates on your friends, and what they're doing in the community through your news wire
View recent actions you've done like your replies, discussions, policies, and pages you've starred
Have your friends comment on your profile

And of course, most of this is controlled by you. Don't want to show your profile video, or friends section? Thats fine, you can hide it.

Coming up next.. Candidate Profiles!

Tag clouds
The tag clouds which are at the bottom of the page aren't just pretty colors that make the site look better. They actually represent something. In each of the three tag cloud areas, you'll notice some tags are small, and others are bigger. The bigger the tag, the more popular it is for that area.

This will give you an easy way to gage what is most popular every day, week, and month.

08' election
The 08' election section is right now a place for you to choose your candidate, and check out posts about your favorite candidate. Oh and we have some really pretty pictures of the candidates too!

searching...
Search is something that we do great here at ifimpresident.com.
Find news, discussions or policies that are very specific to what you're looking for. Want to find articles on obama and clinton debating? Then do a quick search for clinton obama debate.

Give it a go!

IIP's most visible feature would most likely be the news articles that get populated.

As this site is specifically about politics, and to a certain extent, presidential politics, we thought that it'd be vital to keep people in the community aware of the current news.

Every 5 minutes or so, we check for news with BBC, Foxnews, and CNN. This news is automatically created as an article which user's can reply to.

Discussions on the other hand are articles that YOU can create. If you've got a topic that isn't specifically a news item, then create it yourself, and start a discussion with others in the community.

And what are Policies? Policies are a little more one-sided. They are articles that you can create on specific topics, where you can present your views, and see who agrees, and who doesn't.

And finally, replies. You can create a reply to a news article, or a discussion.

But what's so good about all these? It's not that you can do it, but it's how you do it.

To ANY of them you can:
Add the post
Tag it for easy finding
Add YouTube videos
Add a poll
Add links
Add sources

Oh, and more features coming VERY soon!

Welcome to ifimpresident.com!
We've just launched, and this is the inaugural blog posting for the political network that will change the way you discuss the news.

Over the course of maybe 10 blog posts, we're going to describe each of the major features of ifimpresident.com, but to start, we'd like to share with you our REASON for creating this, rather than what it can do.

We are...
People who are interested in politics, and thought there was a void. We love to talk politics but find that the way in which is available right now, through things like facebook, myspace, forums, etc., are somewhat old.

IIP (for short) lets people share their views, but at the same time, do so with media. Add a video, links, sources or a poll, all within seconds, to any of your posts. This isn't about someone posting a blog and you replying in 140 letters your comment.. this is about you participating in the conversation.

And that's why, in short, why we made this. We wanted to be able to interact with people better while being able to discuss the massive topic of politics, and we think we've created the best such network.

Look out for most posts on our specific features.

Thanks,
Oliver Nassar