It's been a busy week in the 2008 presidential campaign--Hillary Clinton launched her online "conversation" (see David Weinberger's spot-on critique) and went to Iowa; John Edwards also did an online video web-chat that he calls a "live online discussion"; Barack Obama laid low and let the explosive growth of one unofficial Facebook group (now at more than 158,000 members) speak for him; and Bill Richardson formally announced his campaign launch.

Not surprisingly, the Democratic candidate who showed the most growth in online grassroots support, as measured by trends in the number of friends they have on their MySpace page and in incoming blog posts to their campaign site was Richardson, whose MySpace numbers were up a whopping 61,100% and blog posts up 285.8%. Of course, those numbers have to be put into context. A week ago, Richardson had only one friend on MySpace; as of last night (Sunday, January 28), he had 611. His incoming blog link tally, as measured by Technorati, jumped from an anemic 92 to a still feeble 355. But, hey, you have to start somewhere.

Jake Tapper, senior national correspondent for ABC News, has a series of web videos outlining the historical racial insensitivities of presidential aspirant, Senator Joe Biden (D-DE).

Copies of Senator Hillary Clinton's (D-NY) "I'm in" video has appeared on YouTube and, collectively, amassed over 7,100 views, according to Donna Bogatin at ZDNet. However, the official upload, Bogatin writes, is not a "viral video sensation," registering only 550 views and eight subscribers to the "hillarydotcom" channel.

TPMCafe's Election Central has video highlights from six possible Democratic presidential hopefuls from the Democratic National Committee's Winter Meeting in Washington, D.C. Among the official, exploring, or rumored candidates: Senators Christopher Dodd (CT), Hillary Clinton (NY), Barack Obama (IL), John Edwards (NC), Congressman Dennis Kucinich (OH) and retired General Wes Clark (AR). ABC's Political Punch has more, including a podcast from the DNC meeting.

Obama (D-IL) drew over "3,000 mostly sign-waving students" in Virginia, notes New York Times political blogger, Sarah Wheaton. The event was sponsored by the George Mason University chapter of Students for Barack Obama, a national, student-based grassroots organization. The group used Facebook, a social networking favorite among college students, to handle RSVPs for the February 2 appearance. More from the Associated Press here.

The Web on the Candidates

The Washington Post's Jose Antonio Vargas writes about the presidential candidates' use of video, and the reviewers that pick it apart. Specifically, he interviews Jeff Jarvis, James Kotecki, and techPresident's own Micah Sifry about what the candidates still have to learn about online video. Online viewers want something different than they're getting from the candidates; while one of Hillary Clinton's recent Hillcasts had about 15,000 visitors, a popular video of YouTube featuring Clinton singing an out-of-tune national anthem has been viewed over 1.1 million times. A lot of viewers are looking for that human touch: "Look at how the candidates are talking in their videos. With a few exceptions, they're mostly looking sideways, not talking directly to the camera. The important thing about this medium is it's very human and intimate. A voter comes across and clicks on you. You should talk to that voter and look at him in the eye," says Jarvis. Micah agrees. "There's something fundamentally different about video online. Viewers are looking for that rare, unscripted, revealing moment, to get a little sense of who these candidates really are."

The Web on the Candidates

Danny Glover at AirCongress writes that Newt Gingrich is issuing us a "conversation challenge." Newt dismissed the Hillary 1984 video as "utterly, totally destructive of the process of thought. There is not a single thing in that commercial that enables America to solve a problem. … It’s the Entertainment Tonight version of governing a great country. … Everything is reduced to gossip, attack, whose consultant is cleverer. And it’s really very destructive." Instead, he's proposing that the nominees engage in a 90-minute dialogue once a week from Labor Day 2008 to Election Day. "Once a week with a timekeeper and no moderator. No Mickey Mouse questions. No gimmicks. Two adults, much like [Abraham] Lincoln and [Stephen] Douglas," he said.

The LA Times reports that Google, and to lesser extent other web companies like Yahoo and Myspace, is aggressively reaching out to political campaigns, looking to provide them with advertising and other services.
Phil Noble of PoliticsOnline thinks it's a smart move: "There's probably a lot less [money] than they think initially, but Google plays for the long term and they're smart to be there... The Internet and politics is a revolution, and Google and these guys are not going to lead the revolution, but they don't want to get shot in the back either." According to techPresident contributor Michael Bassik, 2004 campaigns only spent $12 million on online ads, compared to $1.6 billion on TV, but "political campaigns are expected to shift more of their ad dollars to the Web." Google will be waiting in the wings.

The Web on the Candidates

There's a new GOP Bloggers straw poll out, and this month Fred Thompson is the conservatives' fave.   However, the Hotline's Blogometer is starting to notice a pattern: "a new name is mentioned, bloggers fall in love, compromising facts are revealed, and a new name is mentioned."  While Thompson came out on top this month, last month it was Rudy Giuliani, in January it was Mitt Romney, and in December it was Newt Gingrich.  Who's your pick for April?

PrezVid's Peter Hauck links to a remix of Katie Couric's 60 Minutes interview with John and Elizabeth Edwards. The Blue State's Todd Haskins made a montage of Couric's questions, removing the Edwards' responses.  The result makes Couric look particularly aggressive, asking a lot of "Some people say..." questions. 

The Australian progressive group GetUp (it's kind of like Australia's Moveon) just posted a great video produced by Daniel Illic of Downwind Media in support of David Hicks, the only Australian who has spent the last five years in Guantanamo Bay after being arrested by American forces in Afghanistan in 2002.

The Web on the Candidates
Jeff Jarvis posts a great video on PrezVid grading most of the candidates on their use of YouTube, and showing us some of the best and worst moments from their videos.  John Edwards and Dennis Kucinich both get a 'B,' the highest grade Jarvis hands out.  Edwards is "the best of the bunch" with a video of a speech to a labor convention.  "He's passionate and the video is well-organized," Jarvis says.  The Kucinich video actually stars his British-born wife, and Jarvis likes it: " Best candidate spouse accent. Best candidate spouse hair. She’s quick, newsy, and charming. What’s not to like?"  Most of the others were average at best.  Obama "keeps making Sally Field videos: They love him, they really love him," and Giuliani is "pathetic" for putting up audio of Steve Forbes' endorsement, paired with a photo of Forbes.  Check out Jarvis' video for the report card.

The Hotline's Blogometer notes a growing frustration with Barack Obama among the netroots community.  Linking to the Daily Kos and MyDD,  the Blogometer says that "Obama has not done enough to separate himself from the Dem establishment on netroots bread and butter issues like the war and economic populism."  

The Web on the Candidates

Yesterday, we linked to a post from Giuliani advisor Patrick Ruffini in which he disagreed with people who think the Democrats own the Internet.  TechPresident's Mike Turk engages Ruffini in a long response to the post, questioning assumptions about media attention paid to Democrats and Republicans, word of mouth marketing, campaign organization, and more.  It's a detailed and thoughtful discussion -- check it out. 

MyDD has a new straw poll out, and not only is John Edwards in first place, almost 10 points ahead of Barack Obama, but Hillary Clinton is fifth place, almost 40 points behind Edwards and over point behind "Other."  Given that MyDD's readers are overwhelmingly liberal and critical of Clinton, the results aren't that surprising, but will this extreme unpopularity with the base affect her standing with the general public?  

The Web on the Candidates

A new site called QubeTV sees itself as a conservative alternative to YouTube. “It won’t be easy to compete against a giant like YouTube, but if enough conservatives embrace the idea, it could become the go-to place for conservative video on the Web,” said Robert Bluey, director of the Center for Media & Public Policy at the Heritage Foundation. The site was started by two former aides to Ronald Reagan, Charlie Gerow and Jeff Lord. “Conservatives now have the opportunity to be in ‘Web 2.0’. Our goal is to make QubeTV the dominant social network site for anyone who is right-of-center and to have the best in online video, especially online video related to the campaign of 2008,” Gerow said. Check out Wonkette's snarky take on the site.

Two surveys have been released that show an increased reliance on the web for information related to the 2008 election. A Word of Mouth Marketing poll found that "Forty-two percent of Americans say they will get more pre-election information from the internet in 2008 than they did in 2004," and online ad network Burst Media found that one quarter of likely voters think the web is the best place to research the candidates, making it the most popular source of information for 2008. The Burst study also found that more than 20% of likely voters had visited a candidate's web site, and almost half would watch online video of a candidate.