Campaigns in the Web 2.0 Era

2007 brought forth some seminal moments in politics with Senator Allen's Macaca Moment captured online and distributed widely among the more memorable moments.  Not to be outdone, MySpace is jumping on the political bandwagon with the announcement of their online primaries to be held on January 1 and 2nd of 2008.  The idea was reviewed in a recent posting on TechCrunch, where they revealed that Barack Obama was leading the pack with 89,465 MySpace "friends".  With the number of registered MySpace accounts creating a virtual community that would be the 11th largest country in the world, it will be interesting to see how this online primary shapes the real ones a few weeks later. 

MySpace has also launched the ImpactChannel, an online video channel focusing on the 2008 Presidential primaries according to the New York Times (registration required).  As of this posting, 11 Presidential Candidates were "working the streets" of MySpace. Missing from the list of angels, flip floppers, scoundrels and all around communicators was Wisconsin's very own former governor and recently declared presidential candidate Thompson.  Hmm is he campaigning for President or some other position>

In other political video news, we're seeing the growth of PoliticsTV.com, an online video site dedicated to covering the political scene.  As of this posting, they had an Alexa ranking of 478,248, an increase of 185,252 over the past 3 months.  Here's a clip of an anti-Senator Susan Collins ad that was posted on PoliticsTV and YouTube.

Not to be left behind, YouTube launched their political channel called YouChoose.  Also missing from the list of candidates was Tommy Thompson...