16 September 2005
Greens virtually win election

The Green Party is claiming an 'e-victory' after running the most creative and technologically advanced election campaign, Co-Leader Rod Donald says.

Yesterday, the Thursday before the election, the Greens main site - www.greens.org.nz - had 12,000 visits, an outstanding record for a smaller party. In addition, the party's frogblog - blog.greens.org.nz - has grown to just under 5000 visits a day.

"The Greens website, which is regularly the most popular party political website in New Zealand, has more than trebled it's number of visitors over the last couple of months," Mr Donald says.

"We also welcome the positive review of our online presence by Netguide editor Nigel Horricks on National Radio this morning, where he described our web efforts as being at the forefront of political party efforts.

"We're particularly pleased to see that frogblog, the Green Party blog, has come from nowhere to be in the Top 10 in Hitwise's rankings. When combined with the main site, online visits to the Greens are right up there with the two big parties."

Green IT Spokesperson Nandor Tanczos says "online campaigning is important because it means we're destroying less forests and using less fossil fuel to get our message across and because the breadth of information it can deliver has a democratising influence. But the Green are also committed to greening cyberspace in terms of advocating open source and addressing toxic hardware waste."

The Greens e-campaign has also included

* the distribution of thousands of the first-ever multimedia manifesto, packed with video, music and policies;

* video streaming of the TV broadcasts, MP interviews and TV ads;

* highly creative web ads placed on many commercial sites;

* the first and most creative party political use of permission-based email systems; and

* daily audioblogs with MPs and others on frogblog.

ENDS

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