Yup, I think its a work in progress, really.

Perhaps more attention should be paid to how LibDems have approached this, particulalry on internal party discussion and debate.

Yup. But there is little of that publicly debated to get a sense of what was said…

But, if this is about more than page impressions, my sense is that the LibDems probably have the most useful and well-developed blogosphere of the three major parties for their own active members particularly, and a sense of connection between their blogs.

The tone and style of LibDem voice strikes me as particulalry successful in what it is trying to do, partly because it strikes me as focusing more on facilitating internal information and discussion than primarily platforming partisan challenges to the other parties. I would naturally be more sympathetic to the LibDems than conservatives but I can recognise good writing from the right, and the quality of discussion and argument does strike me as considerably better from the LibDems.

I suspect part of that arises from there being several advantages in that to being the third party, or rather a reflection of and ability to challenge several disadvantages from offline politics.

- There are relatively few LibDem stories in the national press, and those on politics tend to be about leadership, opinion polls or hung parliament speculation. And though many LibDems will read the Guardian or Independent, it does not have a newspaper, letters page, etc sense of community which lefties or the right might get from the Guardian or Mail/Telegraph. But this is probably ahead of where a much higher proportion of party discussion especially (below the cabinet/shadow headline news) is now increasingly taking place outside the national media news cycle.

- The national politicians also probably have some more incentive to pay attention to what’s going on online.

I don’t get much sense of that from the Tories (it strikes me as more aspiring candidates), nor from Labour (where it has been mostly relatively ‘outsider’ grassroots, certainly up to a year ago. I suspect the party/activist demographic may help, and that the group who are say around five years out of university probably have a stronger share of ‘voice’ in the party.

I was interested to see somewhere Clegg referring to the value of twitter hashtags: the new communications operation does offer the LibDems a chance to level up if they take it seriously and others don’t.

- And the party culture helps as well, in that there is a certain pride in open disagreements and discussions, though my own sense is that the development of more salient online politics within parties will change each of them. (Conservativehome has, I suspect, changed the culture of Tory activism a fair amount already in the last couple of years).

While I accept that many people here may be allergic to the LabourList Derek Draper effort, I expect Labour will do more to get its act together in several different spaces over the next six months. Perhaps more attention should be paid to how LibDems have approached this, particulalry on internal party discussion and debate.