I took a break from ValueWiki this weekend and made an interesting discovery.
Take a look at impact.MySpace.com and you’ll see all the 2008 Presidential hopefuls…yes, on MySpace. In fact, libertarian underdog Ron Paul is an active MySpace blogger, and Dennis Kucinich has a MySpace video blog.
Candidates by number of MySpace friends (March 26)
Barack Obama 81623 Friends
John Edwards 16012 Friends
Hilary Clinton 5492 Friends
John McCain 2579 Friends
Mitt Romney 2944 Friends
Bill Richardson 1784 Friends
Ron Paul 1670 Friends
Dennis Kucinich 1425 Friends
Joseph Biden 1279 Friends
Christopher Dodd 494 Friends
Rudy Giuliani – Profile Set to Private
Judging from list, it appears Democrats are more hip among the MySpace set than Republicans, with Barack Obama being the clear front runner. Indeed, a quick scan of candidates’ websites reveals Obama’s to be the most web 2.0, with complete social network features at My.BarackObama.com. Hilary’s page offers a blog, which she has never contributed to, and John McCain’s site offers McCainSpace, an opportunity to create your own John McCain website.
Ron Paul is making daily appearances on Digg.com, in what almost appears to be a concerted Digg campain. Then you have voters like Phil de Vellis who created this controversial anti-Hilary 1984 ad.
The Obama camp scrambled to deny responsibility for Phil’s ad.
So how will the web audience respond to these Web 2.0 methods of campaigning. Will MySpace video blogs from aging U.S. senators be regarded with cynicism?
Is Obama’s clear MySpace lead in any way an indicator of trends to come?
What do you think of America’s 2008 Presidential web campaign? Is this political pandering or a positive step forward?
Update March 27 12:00pm:
For the record, I used the MySpace profiles pointed to by Impact.MySpace.com. Readers point out Hilary’s other MySpace page lists exactly 32,000 friends…putting her ahead of John Edwards. Meanwhile, Ron Paul also has a second MySpace page listing 4,695 friends.
One digger writes, “If you’re going to look at myspace, take a look at Facebook where the majority of users are college students. To date there are 322,208 members in the “million strong for barack obama group” and we’ve raised $14,000 through my.barackobama.com.”
It is true that many Facebook and MySpace users are currently too young to vote. And yes, I am following this trend with a certain sense of irony…I mean, you have to wonder if Hilary or McCain has ever actually used MySpace. However, it is certainly worth tracking these trends for 2008, 2012, 2016, and beyond. The Facebook example above is fascinating. In a meta sense, I do think it is very positive to see politicians doing more than ever to engage voters on the internet.
March 26, 2007 at 10:56 am
“Is Obama’s clear MySpace lead in any way an indicator of trends to come?”
I doubt it. Most of the folks who friended Obama are probably too young to vote.
And yes, I am aware that MySpace claims to have a good amount of its users in the over-30 group. I would beg to differ, and I know plenty of underage kids who don’t reveal their true age online, instead claiming to be “99 years old.” I’d love to see a study to show how many MySpace users claim to be over 90.
March 26, 2007 at 3:07 pm
Obama is clearly the most popular Dem candidate with YouTybe as well; with 2,714,418 Channel Views and 3703 subscribers. Most, if not all the candidates, Democrats and Republicans have launched a YouTube channel, under the banner “You Choose ’08, Face the candidates on YouTube”. Until now there are 12 candidates exposed through YouTube, with John Edwards being the one who created a YouTube channel 12 months ago, and Senator Barack Obama being the most popular.
http://vasblogger.blogspot.com/
March 26, 2007 at 5:54 pm
Yes sure Barack Hussain OSama has one of those robot freind adder software programs ringing up friends.
LOL
March 26, 2007 at 10:04 pm
Interesting points. Vasileios, I didn’t know about YouTube. That’s pretty fascinating. Thanks,
Jon
March 27, 2007 at 8:19 am
wow, you copied a business week article from 2 weeks ago!
March 27, 2007 at 8:22 am
Flo, way to be open-minded. I bet if he wins he is going to take away your guns, raise taxes and abort babies for no reason.
March 27, 2007 at 8:29 am
[...] read more | digg story [...]
March 27, 2007 at 8:32 am
[...] the US, presidential candidates are struggling to get hip with the MySpace generation. ValueWiki has lots of links and a question: How will the web audience respond to these Web 2.0 methods of [...]
March 27, 2007 at 8:51 am
Great blog. We did a story on this as well – Check It Out.
http://collegecandy.com/2007/03/22/myspace-you-have-a-friend-request-from%e2%80%a6-the-future-pres/
March 27, 2007 at 8:54 am
i really hope all this hype for barack calms down.. ron paul or dennis kucinich are my favs.
March 27, 2007 at 8:58 am
I love the comment on Ron Paul. It’s obvious that a concerted effort is being made to push him as a great guy on Digg – far too many unwarranted comments and articles all over the place.
March 27, 2007 at 9:49 am
If we can just keep the hate mongers like Sean Hannity off the air, we’d have a real election again.
http://www.hatehannity.com
March 27, 2007 at 9:52 am
I think you found the wrong Hillary Clinton MySpace profile as “Hillary Clinton 2008″ has 32,000 friends.
March 27, 2007 at 9:58 am
great perspective guys. nice seeing you at barcamp Zach. keep up the great coverage!
March 27, 2007 at 10:24 am
[...] Candidates by Number of MySpace Friends Filed under: Uncategorized — recar @ 6:24 pm 2008 Presidential Candidates by Number of MySpace Friends All of the Presidential Candidates now have MySpace profiles. In fact, Ron Paul is a MySpace [...]
March 27, 2007 at 11:01 am
[...] man. This story makes me want to cry. Apparently, all the major 2008 presidential candidates have myspace [...]
March 27, 2007 at 11:49 am
It’s likely to be a matter of no consequence. If the last two elections are any indication, most of the 18-25 demographic – the ones most likely to be Democrats – don’t vote. Doubly so, because once they graduate from college they’re more likely to be conservative. And people who just graduate high school tend to not vote at all – but if they do, its conservative.
* Don’t confuse ‘conservative’ with Republican; they’re not the same.
March 27, 2007 at 12:33 pm
I’m not going to lie, I didn’t read all of these comments because I’m at work and don’t have time, but I will say this:
Most people on Myspace are young
Young people (as sad as it is) don’t vote and therefore have no say in the ultimate outcome of the election
So the number Myspace friends a particular candidate has is irrelevant.
March 27, 2007 at 12:35 pm
When I say young, I mean under 25…and even those people don’t vote — sad statement on society.
March 27, 2007 at 12:47 pm
“I love the comment on Ron Paul. It’s obvious that a concerted effort is being made to push him as a great guy on Digg – far too many unwarranted comments and articles all over the place.”
Of course. Perhaps the diggers are in league with the MSM, or perhaps they’re (shudder) FORCING the poor media outlets and bloggers to write about him.
Maybe we should count how many links and comments there are on Digg about Barack Obama; what has he done to warrant the attention?
March 27, 2007 at 12:58 pm
ho… hum… the exit polls said John Kerry would win in a landslide… so this is news?
myspace is used more often by kids seeking to create accounts that their parents can’t see (and is advertised as for kids). Since, according to elite media, only stupid people vote for conservatives, I wonder why Obama has so many MySpace friends. Most myspace users I’ve ever met are fairly brainless.
March 27, 2007 at 1:04 pm
Though he hasn’t announced if he’ll run for President it’s worth mentioning Wes Clark has 46913 myspace friends.
March 27, 2007 at 2:17 pm
“The Obama camp scrambled to deny responsibility for Phil’s ad.”.
There is no indication the Obama camp scrambled at all. They had no reason to, since the guy responsible had only one connection to the campaign: he worked for a company that provided tech services to each campaign.
He resigned promptly.
March 27, 2007 at 3:43 pm
[...] a la vista de sus redes de amigos, no todos cosechan la misma fama. Entre el pblico de MySpace los demcratas llevan clara ventaja, pero lo ms reseable es que Barack Obama suma a su perfil ms de 80.000 amigos, frente a los [...]
March 27, 2007 at 3:56 pm
Seems like Barack will really have a chance
March 27, 2007 at 3:58 pm
[...] Politics 2.0 I took a break from ValueWiki this weekend and made an interesting discovery. Take a look at impact.MySpace.com and […] [...]
March 27, 2007 at 5:05 pm
Interesting post. I would imagine that Democrats would indeed be favored more by the Myspace crowd…
March 27, 2007 at 5:17 pm
Interesting comments!
Did everyone see that John McCain’s MySpace profile got hacked today?
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/03/27/john-mccains-myspace-page-hacked/
Jon
March 27, 2007 at 5:59 pm
Ron Paul is making it big on Digg.com because a lot of his views and statements are bold and align with the intelligent portions of the internet community (sorry, but Digg is a pretty intellectual site). Digg users are often having to deal with big government organizations (ie Bush admin trying to use Google search histories, FCC trying to censor, or dealing with internet neutrality bills) and are aware that Ron Paul’s political views would affect them in a positive way.
On the other hand you have fools like Hillary trying to censor video games (Digg community hates that one) or Romney trying to force church into the state. Either way you put it, I’ll make the very un-bold comment that Digg users are more politically aware than most other demographics and their support for Ron Paul should be hinting at a few things…
March 27, 2007 at 9:17 pm
2008 Presidential Candidates by Number of MySpace Friend
took a break from ValueWiki this weekend and made an interesting discovery.
Take a look at impact.MySpace.com and you’ll see all the 2008 Presidential hopefuls…yes, on MySpace. In fact, libertarian underdog Ron Paul is an active MySpace blogger, a…
March 27, 2007 at 10:32 pm
Please remember that when Dennis Kucinich was mayor of Cleveland in the late ’70’s the Cuyahoga River actually caught fire.
Dennis Kucinich managed to catch his own hair on fire twice the same year, and his brother was arrested for indecent exposure.
True Story. He’s fun.
March 28, 2007 at 2:39 am
Sooner or later, candidates should be able to sit comfortably in their homes and relax… and just campaign on myspace or facebook…
March 28, 2007 at 4:42 am
[...] March 28th, 2007 in politics by mparham …and others as well. I thought you might find this fellow wordpress post of interest. It’s a survey of political candidates on myspace and [...]
March 28, 2007 at 6:38 am
[...] Politicians using 2.0, Australian Politicians still using paper 28 03 2007 Politics 2.0 on the ValueWiki Blog only highlights the Luddite qualities of Australian politicians and [...]
March 28, 2007 at 8:23 am
[...] Booty Politick March 28th, 2007 — Alabaster Crippens So, I saw something on today’s hot posts on the front page, and hoped for it to be something it wasn’t. [...]
March 28, 2007 at 10:09 am
[...] to ValueWiki What are the odds of having Politics 2.0 Digged and Interview With PayPerPost VC Dan Rua Slashdotted, all on the same day? Zach and I are [...]
March 29, 2007 at 12:14 am
[...] has a video blog. Barack Obama has 81,623 MySpace friends… Is this a predictor of success?read more | digg [...]
March 29, 2007 at 1:35 am
Nice post and great coverage. Keep it up.
March 29, 2007 at 3:44 am
[...] having MySpace pages, does the number of friends they’ve amassed reflect their popularity? Check this site out for the debate. As one savvy commenter points out though, Briney Spears has more friends [...]
March 29, 2007 at 6:31 am
[...] on the impact of the interweb as I do from time to time, it is interesting that I came across this blog post that comments on the Myspaces of the various candidates for the US presidency. It [...]
April 2, 2007 at 4:33 pm
May I direct you to http://myspace.com/Stanhope08 – 6500 friends and his main page has nearly 30,000. Doug is running for the Libertarian party nomination.
April 3, 2007 at 9:48 am
[...] has a video blog. Barack Obama has 81,623 MySpace friends… Is this a predictor of success?read more | digg [...]
April 11, 2007 at 2:28 pm
[...] all started two weeks ago when Politics 2.0 and Interview With PayPerPost VC Dan Rua were Digged and Slashdotted on the same day. This prompted [...]
April 22, 2007 at 5:56 am
Rofl no way is doug stanhope running? What did man of the year inspire him to run lol. Anyway he’s an awesome comedian though.
July 10, 2007 at 11:05 am
You really need to do some more work here, and update your “friends list” numbers for the presidential candidates on my space. Your numbers are extremely low.
August 27, 2007 at 6:28 am
[...] major presidential candidates have MySpace profiles, I’ve got to assume that they have Facebook profiles as well. Saying that Web 2.0 favors [...]
August 29, 2007 at 11:40 am
[...] read more | digg story [...]
October 9, 2007 at 6:53 am
[...] read more | digg story [...]
November 10, 2007 at 9:18 am
[...] has a video blog. Barack Obama has 81,623 MySpace friends… Is this a predictor of success?read more | digg [...]
November 19, 2007 at 3:33 pm
[...] has a video blog. Barack Obama has 81,623 MySpace friends… Is this a predictor of success?read more | digg story Similar posts: obama internet [...]
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