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…and no one is watching, does it go *poof*?

In a delayed follow-up to last week’s post on political video, I wanted to pause for a moment of silence in memory of a dead internet project that no one seems to have missed.

Back in late August, I noted that the Politico had a page in its Multimedia section for uploading user-generated content, which I was pretty excited about since I hadn’t yet gotten in on the Huffington Post gig. Politico even made a nifty little intro video telling us all to go out and record and submit political happenings or position videos, and they’d give us a “soap box” to stand on. I threw my Mitt Romney video up there and stood back to watch the playcounts fly. Up to like, 8. And the submissions to the page quickly stagnated as well.

I had completely forgotten about the whole Politico UGC endeavor until I was looking at the prominence of James Kotecki’s PlaybookTV on the Politico homepage, and saw next to the video player the little box that advertised the Multimedia page, with the accompanying text

The news never stops and now you can be a part of it. Submit your own photos and videos directly by phone of campaign events and politicians in your area and share them with the world.

Except when you click the link, you’re taken to the new version of the Multimedia page, which is entirely populated with Politico content like PlaybookTV, lacking any of the earlier-submitted UGC (which is still floating out there in cyberspace on the old UGC page), and completely devoid of any further text or link instructing us how to submit the video. According to the old, also-stranded User Video Instructions page,

Upload your content on our Multimedia page, or submit them directly from your cell phone to:
video@politico.com
or
photo@politico.com
All approved submissions will appear on our site. Be seen, be heard and spread the word!

No telling what’ll happen to anything you send in to those addresses at this point. The box on the front page next to the PlaybookTV embed does suggest they still want UGC, but the lack of follow-up on the new Multimedia page suggests on the other hand that the same guy who was in charge of deleting the old island pages off the server is in charge of updating the text in the Multimedia advert box.

There is a section of that box called “You Report,” which you might think would hold the answer, telling us

This is your chance to tell Congress about important political stories in your backyard – and earn $100. Submit stories (NOT OPINION) about local political disputes, trends and ideas that you believe should be on the national radar. Stories are being accepted now.

However, that’s just soliciting text, no video — no $100 for us tubery geeks.

That’s okay, ’cause MTV might be paying a whopping $200. More on that later.