Never before has the US presidential campaign been fought so fiercely online. Today political candidates are using the Web to speak directly to their voters by launching their own Websites, building buzz on social networks, blogging and posting videos. Almost unheard of three years ago, today’s social networks are becoming a primary source of gathering support among young voters.

With 60 million American users per month of which 86% are of the voting age, MySpace is becoming a crucial destination to build relations among young supporters. The site recently launched the Impact channel which features links to political profile pages of twelve presidential candidates. Users can then add their favorite candidates to their friends lists, read blogs (on issues ranging from war on Iraq, healthcare, the economy) view personal videos, add political campaign banner ads to their profile pages or send messages of support. For instance, a campaign on Hillary Clinton’s profile page called “I Can Be President” gives girls and young women an opportunity to express themselves - showing that they can make a difference and can make history. MySpace also features voter registration tools, job listings and will soon add a one-click payment function to help contenders solicit campaign contributions.

To date, Barack Obama leads the MySpace friend's list with 81,369 friends.  John Edwards friend's list is standing around 15,875 and the recently launched official Hillary Clinton page now has 5183 friends (unofficial/supporter built profile page counts to 31,089 people). Several candidates are also building support on competitor sites like Facebook. Obama supporter created a group called “One Million Strong for Barack” which now has almost 300,000 members. Clinton and Obama share roughly the same number of Facebook groups (about 500 of them). Other candidates on Facebook include Howard Dean and John McCain.  Similar to MySpace’s impact channel, YouTube launched a new channel called YouChoose ’08 which features video clips of politicians announcing their presidential aspirations for 2008. Yahoo Group, which connects people via e-mail and message boards, has already seen more than 700 groups formed to discuss next year’s election race.

Not only are political candidates using popular social networks for campaigning and fundraising activities, they have gone as far as building their own social networks - feeding into user-generated politics. Barack Obama’s launched my.barackobama.com and lets supporters create profiles, network with other supporters, blog or create/join groups. Hillary Clinton's site features a weekly Hillcast (video) and has a blog. Republican candidate John McCain invites supporters to build a “McCainSpace” to connect with other McCain supporters, register to vote as well as an invitation to make donations online. Meanwhile, John Edwards' site features blogs and campaigns ranging from global warming and the fight against poverty to issues regarding free trade.

It’s pretty clear that the Internet, particularly the use of social networks, is becoming an important platform for politicians to build their political base among young voters and conduct fundraising activities for their campaigns. The question is, ‘can social networks help swing the presidential results next year?' 

Resources: Washington Post, USA Today, Business Week