With 3 days left until the election, I am oh-so-proud to announce the launch of sayHear.org, a site intended to literally give voice to the voters of America. You participate by calling one of the numbers on the sayHear.org website based off of who you are voting for and leave a message explaining why you are. Your audio recording will then show up on the site for others to hear.
This site was a joint-collaboration between myself, Gershoni and Ribbit. Without Ribbit’s technology, there would be no way this could have been created – I cannot thank them enough for their time and generosity. In addition, working with the Gershoni crew was absolutely amazing and I am still amazing at how much we were able to accomplish in such little time.
Please, do take the time out to go to sayHear.org and leave a message. It will take less than a minute and in return you will help keep the political discussion going all the way until election day. You should also check out electionmyx.com for some really cool election 2008 video mashups. Big hat tip to Neil Voss for the great work on that site.
The Discussion
15 Comments on “sayHear.org Launches”chris
1.11.2008 10:20 amwell done, nice use of ribbit. it’d be cool to have an api to tap into the data you’re collecting in there. so many different visualizations to be created from it.
again, well done.
chris’s last blog post..Several random thoughts
somerandomdude
1.11.2008 10:28 amChris – It’s definitely something we talked about but just didn’t have time to devote time to before the launch. However, I would not be surprised in the slightest if this does in fact happen after the election is over. Until then, we’re too busy just trying to keep the server up. ;)
Sarita
2.11.2008 8:59 amRepublicans are leaving messages under the Obama phone number. As usual, Republican terrorist @$$holes are not following the rules, but trashing everything they can.
somerandomdude
2.11.2008 9:06 amSarita – I’ve been tracking each and every call and I have to say it’s happening equally on both sides.
Evarist
2.11.2008 1:02 pmVery cool interface
Xande Macedo
3.11.2008 4:24 pmFantastic! Thank you.
Stephanie
3.11.2008 5:04 pmHi! I found sayhear from boingboing, and I was disappointed to find most of the people “voting” for McCain were prank calls. They further the stereotype that Republicans are racist and or/stupid. It is sad to see people abusing this tool that should be used for debate for middle-school level prank calls. Thanks for making it though!
somerandomdude
3.11.2008 5:09 pmStephanie – I couldn’t agree more. That definitely was not the intention of this site, although we knew it was going to happen to some degree. For the most part, the comments are focused and honest – but you’re always going to get some people that want to do their own thing.
We’re trying to keep moderation very loose. If we get too heavy handed, even when people are faking, it will seem like we’re only accepting calls we ‘agree’ with. It’s a tough one.
Kelliekat
3.11.2008 5:34 pmTHANK YOU SRD! Amazing site. Despite some of the ridiculous comments, it’s good to hear every kind of commentary that is out there.
Joshua Gruber
3.11.2008 7:01 pmI would love an RSS feed of sayHear.org
somerandomdude
3.11.2008 8:06 pmJoshua – We’re definitely going to be making some improvements on the site – RSS is one of the top things on the list. Right now though, we’re just trying to keep the servers up and running. :)
Say You, Say Me | MetaFilter
3.11.2008 8:44 pm[...] Subscribe Call a phone number and explain why you’re voting the way you are. Brought to you by these guys. posted by gman (38 comments total) 3 users marked this as a favorite The first McCain [...]
R. Moose
7.11.2008 11:38 pmAwesome site!
Three Features I Wish Were There…
1. Would like to see some way to flag the posts for review.
2. Would like to be able to “digg” posts (vote up)
3. Would like to be able to link directly to a particular post.
There are more.. but yeah =)
Mepho
14.01.2009 9:05 pmCongrats on site launch – this is a cool site.
Another improvement could be after i click on one I want to mark it read so i don’t open it again later on. Change the background color.
somerandomdude
14.01.2009 9:17 pmThanks for the comments everyone. I have a feeling there’s going to be another round of thought and work put into sayHear.org relatively soon. We’ll definitely be implementing many (if not all) the good ideas here.