Politics 2.0
In the 2004 presidential race Howard Dean's campaign was lauded for its unprecedented use of the Web and blogs for its success in raising campaign contributions and support among younger voters. Fast-forward to today and the quorum of candidates crowding the evening news--most have beefed up their Internet presence to make their campaigns more accessible.
Newly announced candidate Barack Obama, for example, launched a sophisticated website that links to his profile on Facebook, a YouTube stream and blog. There's also BarackTV, which streams video of speeches and interviews. Visitors can also join Obama's own version of a social networking site to chat with like-minded voters, not to mention donate to his campaign.
Indexing all the candidates' developments is the newly launched www.techpresident.com, an offshoot of Personal Democracy Forum. The site is spearheaded by a collection of veteran online and political strategists and states its purpose to cover "how the 2008 presidential candidates are using the web, and vice versa, how content generated by voters is affecting the campaign." The site is hooked into MySpace (it measures how many 'friends' each candidate has on that site--Dems are winning by far), and Flickr, where voter-generated photos are collected from political rallies.
It's Campaigning 2.0, folks. The voice of the people will be heard (and seen, and streamed, and downloaded) loud and clear in '08.
