As a result of these events, users have an outlet to let their voice be heard. According to a new study from Topix and Equation Research, the gap that once separated voters and politics is getting smaller and smaller, largely because of the Internet.

Where do you go to get your political information? Let us know.

The companies surveyed 1,000 U.S. voters and found that more voters are going online for political information. In addition, more than a quarter of voters are going to the Web to participate in political discussions and debates.

“People are working these issues out themselves by talking to the people on the Net,” said Chris Tolles, CEO of Topix.

One of the reasons people are going to the Web is because many in the U.S. distrust the media for issues of bias, as the Gallup Poll found last year. Tolles told us that Internet gives users choice and lets them be a part of the political process in a scalable way.

As he explained, voters want to see both sides presented. They’re not just looking for an echo chamber, but they’re looking for an interactive experience that platforms such as Topix, Facebook, and Twitter provide.

TV is still the biggest source that voters rely on for political information, but the Internet isn’t too far behind with those surveyed weighing in at 78 percent and 68 percent respectively. Although the Internet is gaining ground, Tolles does not believe TV will lose its value. Instead, he thinks the two will merge to some degree.

The main difference between the two is the interactivity that the Web offers. Tolles told us that voters want to have a “personal relationship” with news, which interactivity helps to promote.

“The Internet gives you a chance, as an individual, to get [to be] a little bit bigger part of the process,” he said.

He went on to say that the relationship between politics and the Internet would continue to grow and that more voters would look to the Web for political information going forward. Tolles also said that politicians would have to figure out how to embrace the Web more effectively.

How do you see the relationship between politics and the Web evolving over time? We’d love to know.

Everybody’s waiting to find out if Google will really buy Groupon. We may find out very soon, as Groupon’s board is supposed to be meeting today to come up with an answer. Groupon is all about local, and that’s something Chris Tolles, CEO of local news powerhouse Topix knows a bit about. He offered some of his insights on a possible Google Groupon acquisition to WebProNews today. 

First off, Tolles has some thoughts on Google’s larger local strategy. "This is the largest area of online advertising growth, and expansion here is one of the few areas that’s fragmented and still rife for disruption," Tolles tells us. "They are going to need to expand local sales efforts and staffing, as well as create products and partner for local inventory."

On why Google is looking to buy Groupon rather than build this type of product internally, Tolles says, "It’s pretty clear from the hundreds of unsuccessful Groupon clones that building one of these things is not as easy as all that." 

"Plus, Groupon has a $600M local sales run rate," he adds. "It’s not obvious that Google is making that much from local advertisers. Plus, Google has always been about the algorithm and when they need to build outside of their core experience, they have done a great job in acquiring companies to help them in products like maps, Android, YouTube etc.  While they’ve not succeeded in everything, they’re successes are pretty impressive."

Tolles says Google could help Groupon reduce its operating costs. "Groupon’s growth depends on their building out email lists, and they use Adwords from Google for a big portion of that," he explains. "Presumably getting the wholesale rate on that kind of advertising, or creating new ways of integrating Groupon signups into search results, Gmail or Places would be a potential huge economy of scale for Groupon to tap into."

There’s no question that Google could greatly help Groupon expand internationally, although the company has gradually been doing this on its own. "Groupon is going to have to expand internationally to continue the kind of growth that we’ve been seeing from them, and being able to leverage Google’s existing international infrastructure is a potentially game changing time to market advantage," says Tolles. 

"While I’m sure Groupon could soldier into countries where they have no presence, having native speaking staff on the ground in as many companies as Google is operating in would be a big asset," he notes.

Google is doing all it can to own local and that will continue for the foreseeable future as long as Marissa Mayer is in charge no doubt. The company’s been doing some interesting things in the local space, from adding a great deal of emphasis on local to its regular search results, and introducing a social recommendation engine (Hotpot). All of that said, local is too large a space for any one company to dominate, according to Tolles.

"Local advertising is a $100B year business – 2/3 of the ad spending in the US," he says. "You’d have to control billboards, TV, radio, online, mobile and email lists to be able to ‘dominate local’. While I think Google is on a path to have a major part of that ecosystem, I don’t see them dominating local advertising anytime soon."

To me, there are clear advantages for Google if they acquire Groupon (particularly as it battles with Facebook, which recently encroached on Groupon’s model). Some think the acquisition would be a mistake on Google’s part, however. We’ll see what happens. We should find out soon whether it’s going to even go through or not.

Meanwhile, Groupon has been making acquisitions of its own. TechCrunch reports the company has acquired Ludic Labs, the local marketing services startup behind offerfoundry.com and diddit.com. The company has also acquired Asian sites uBuyiBuy, Beeconomic and Atlaspost. In addition to all of this, Groupon just announced some major features for local businesses.

Do you think Google should acquire Groupon? Share your thoughts in the comments.

It hasn’t been very long since Topix moved from a focus on news aggregation to a more local search/community orientation. Although Skrenta led the company through that change and beyond, Tolles will take over from here.

Tolles discussed the changeover at the Topix blog. Though all is going well at Topix, including a place in the Hitwise top 20 news & info sites for May 2007, Skrenta evidently did not relish the role of being more of a salesman than a coder:

Rich told me that he wasn’t having as much fun right now, and looking at what we needed to do, didn’t see much opportunity for what he really loves to do — architect from the metal on up and put out the 1.0 that is so far ahead of everything else – the first computer virus, one of the first MUD’s, NewHoo/dmoz, Topix – that even his no good co-founders couldn’t screw things up. No, we had just deployed the big new re-invention, and now it’s time to keep tweaking it, and also push up the marketing and sales efforts a couple of notches. Rich would rather chew off his arm, I think.

Skrenta won’t have to look for the salt and pepper, though. Tolles will report to him, but the real day to day duties will be on Tolles’ shoulders. That leaves Skrenta some freedom to cook up something new. Perhaps his recent blog post about social networking provided a peek into Skrenta’s latest interest.

That sense of the gap between the two types of conference was confirmed for me in a chat with Lawrence Coburn, president of Rateitall.com, a consumer review site (who gave a thought-provoking presentation on “widgets” as viral marketing tool). Coburn noted that many of the companies who are closest to the Web 2.0 scene (actual startups with short runways of cash) might actually be priced out of attending that event, and worse, would miss out on the fresh ideas that come out at a Pubcon sort of event featuring players who are, in Tolles’ words, “…hungry. A little scary. Nobody is dialing it in at this place.”

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Andrew Goodman is Principal of Page Zero Media, a marketing consultancy which focuses on maximizing clients’ paid search marketing campaigns.

In 1999 Andrew co-founded Traffick.com, an acclaimed “guide to portals” which foresaw the rise of trends such as paid search and semantic analysis.