Steve Garfield recently announced that, according to Jeremy Allaire from Brightcove, an up-and-coming challenger to YouTube, Barack Obama's video announcing his presidential exploratory committee received 140,000 hits on Tuesday, the day he announced. That's almost 40,000 more views than the total number of views of John Edwards' announcement video on YouTube. Garfield sees this as a sign that Brightcove is gaining on YouTube:

Has Brightcove dethroned the king with this video? Has Obama jumped to the top of the presidential race with one video?

It's possible that Obama's high number of views are simply a product of the channel his videos appear on; but as Obama is more and more celebrated in the mainstream media -- replete with rumors that he'll officially announce his run on Oprah -- it becomes more plausible that he's simply more popular than Edwards, and that Brightcove has a ways to go before it becomes a real challenger to the king.

Also, if you look closer you'll discover that Obama's inked a deal with Brightcove to give him a channel of his own on the site. More presidential candidates will probably be doing the same, creating a new dynamic in online political video. We'll be keeping a close eye on this...

Tags: Barack Obama, John Edwards, Brightcove, YouTube, video, presidential race

2008 | Campaigns & Elections
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