MySpace and YouTube Vie for a Spot in the Political Machine

Video will undoubtedly play a major role in the 2008 Presidential election. Now two majors players in the video game, MySpace and YouTube, are out to have an impact on voters via video.

Los Angeles Times reporter Scott Martelle reports in the Sunday edition that both Internet sites have announced campaigns which will include webcasts of town hall meetings and candidate debates. Both are looking to draw voters into the political process. "Both MySpace and YouTube would like to establish themselves as serious political sites," according to Josh Bernoff, a social-computing analyst at Forrester Research. "They want to be broader, more multidimensional." He adds that credibility is at stake for both sites as they try to establish themselves "as more than one-trick ponies where users share passions for rock bands or post funny videos."

According to the LA Times article, at stake are 21 million potential viewers who have viewed political videos since February, according to Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Internet & American Life Project. He also says that 24 million people have participated in online lobbying campaigns. Though those numbers are extremely large, they don't represent the largest percentage of voters considering that 122 million people voted in the last Presidential election.

MySpace announced a campaign which will include a series of webcast town hall meetings with both Democratic and Republican presidential candidates and a virtual primary planned to take place in January. In addition, some of the candidates including Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John McCain have created MySpace profiles.

YouTube will cosponsor with CNN a Democratic debate in July and is currently in talks to cosponsor Republican debates.

Facebook.com is also trying to get in on the action by establishing profile pages for each candidate. Facebook users can become a supporter for the candidate of their choice.

However, some web innovators question the staying power of the candidates on these sites stating that communication on the issues with the candidates will fade away. Perhaps a better idea is an issue based e-system rather than a candidate based system. Meetup.com is a 5-year-old social networking site that Howard Dean used to self organize. Scott Heiferman, CEO of Meetup.com, says the site has noticed an increase in issue based groups. Heiferman predicts these meetup groups will stay around for a long time and says that "they are sustainable local groups."

Source:
Scott Martelle, "YouTube and MySpace campaign for political positions." Los Angeles Times (http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-web20may20,0,24100.story?coll=la-home-center)