The WSJ reported today that Starbucks is getting its feet wet on Capitol Hill[Sub Reqd], and the ride's been a bumpy one so far. In fact, several other companies, such as Red Hat Inc., a software company; Monster.com, a job-search Web company; and Google Inc., the search-engine giant, all hired their first lobbyists within the past few years.

Will bloggers ever have a lobbyist? Who would sponsor such a person or group? Or, do we already have one. I know that blogging has the attention of politicians, but to date we've been blowing in the winds and whatever direction they happen to be going that day.

Perhaps thinking that we'll actually put an advocate in the capital is a bit far fetched, but is it that unreasonable to think that someone like Google, who owns Blogger, or SixApart would put someone in washington, or at least tag along with a lobbying group on citizens media rights or something?

Dana, don't know if you've been following the current debate surrounding political blogs. But there are some indications that bloggers could use a lobbyist, and fast. The FEC has been looking into whether or not blogs that link to campaign sites, or that solicite fiscal support for candidates violate campaign law. The City of San Francisco also had an initiative on this, which thankfully didn't pass. Here's a C-Net article that covers the issues: "The coming crackdown on blogging."

It's a very interesting question. If I as an individual were to say, "Dana, you should donate $200 to Candidate X," that's protected free speech. If I have a blog that gets 100,000 unique visitors the day and I say the same thing, then I'm in effect giving something that has monetary value to the campaign, in other words a donation. And donations are regulated by campaign laws. This gets to the strange nature of blogs and the internet. Any piece of information, including this comment on your blog, has the potential to be read by millions of people, or perhaps just be a dozen. Personally, I think what the FEC is proposing to do is ridiculous and would have a very negative impact on the blogosphere, at least the political corner of it.