How Presidential Candidates Are Using the 'Net
This election cycle is becoming the year politics go super-digital. Take a quick look at any of the candidates' websites -- each one reveals a host of buttons linking to the various candidates' digital outposts on various social Web services. Each site has a blog, a MySpace page, and a YouTube channel. Each one also provides tools to help supporters organize.
This is not just the result of the growing popularity of online services and the success of the Dean revolution from 2004, masterminded by Joe Trippi, but a necessity of the compacted primary season. Candidates can't be everywhere at once, especially those who still have day jobs as Senators and Governors. With 23 states holding their primaries or caucuses by February 5th -- representing slightly less than half the delegates -- a strong online presence and enthusiastic grassroots organization is essential to staying in the race.
We've taken a quick look at what the major players in the race are doing and how they stack up against each other.
Hillary Clinton
Hillary is probably the least tech savvy of the major Democrats in the race. She has the requisite MySpace and Facebook (26,000+ friends) pages, a YouTube and Flickr channel, and has even unveiled a text-messaging initiative not too long ago. Hillary's attempts so far, however, seem too safe, the old guard adopting the new media without understanding how it works.
Her text-messaging service seems to be primarily a way to put out announcements while her MySpace page forgets that the social web is about being, well... social. She is well on her way to 123,000 friends, but Clinton's top 15 are all photos or logos of her and her campaign. There isn't a single regular supporter in sight, and the content is written in the third person, betraying what we all know anyway -- that Hillary didn't write this. The same goes for Clinton's YouTube channel, where clips you see are primarily things like her quip from the last debates about sending Dick Cheney to other countries "hardly being diplomatic." It screams "look at me! Aren't I funny!?!?," which misses the whole point.
Her one experiment that sort of succeeded was an opportunity for Hillary supporters to choose her official campaign song. People logged on and voted for their choice. The winner was revealed through a video with hubby and ex-pres Bill that spoofs the ending of the Sopranos.
