A look at Austria might prove pretty instructive these days: since the government announced re-elections this fall, all the political parties have gone hysterical over the short period of time: how do you organise and manage a campaign in the short timeframe of only two months?

While the two big parties will probably rely on classical, agency-based campaigning, some members of the green party have started thinking aloud about a “crowdsourcing” campaigen: User are asked to design sujets, and my guess is that a lot of green politicians will start twittering all of a sudden. How can the power of direct communication be harnessed during these times? The next weeks will show if Austrian politicians make good use of Youtube, Facebook and Co. to reach out for the teenagers. This seems more useful than ever, considering that .at just lowered the age barrier: this is the first election where 16-year-olds are granted a vote.

For the last couple of weeks, Subvertandprofit has been awkwardly silent. The last thing we heard was that the mystery founders of the world’s first Digg- and Stumble-Upon influence tool planned on moving to a new server. Everyone was expecting technical problems, the truth a is a lot sadder though.

I just received the following note via e-mail:

With deep sadness, the Subvert and Profit team brings you news of a tragic accident last month that took the life of one of our founders. [...] As we are celebrating the life of one of our brilliant undercover marketing pioneers, we are uplifted to know of your support, and we are at your service to assist you in high-rank placements and content voting assignments.

Luckily for all online marketeer, it’s not the end of a promising project. The remaining team will continue operations within a week:

Last month we moved to a new dedicated server. The move was successful, and we apologize to those of you who may have thought that we spent the last month figuring out the new server, when in fact we spent it figuring out how to move on in the face of tragedy. We will be opening account access again within the next week, and we will send out another announcement when that happens. Thank you for your patience and understanding.