The Web on the Candidates

The Web on the Candidates

• Joe Anthony, the creator of an unofficial MySpace Barack Obama profile who had a well-documented brush-up with the Obama campaign over control of the profile, has decided to take down his old unofficial profile. This morning he wrote on his blog, "I've had some time to relax and think about what's next, and decided it's best to delete this profile and start anew. Regardless of the outcome, we accomplished a lot here on Myspace. We built the biggest profile, the biggest community of supporters, for any candidate on Myspace and I think we all did an amazing job. We did this together, before the campaign or Myspace even got involved... I'm going to stay positive and look forward to the next opportunity, whether it includes Myspace or not. I hope I'll meet some of you along the way." It's still up this morning but will apparently be deleted sometime today.
• Scott Keyes at Political Insider does a quick roundup of the candidates' Facebook profiles, offering one factoid per candidate. Examples: Hillary Clinton is "the only candidate in either party to not list his or her relationship status. Everyone else listed 'married.'" Joe Biden "lists his political views as 'liberal' and is the only candidate to do so." Dennis Kucinich is "in a Facebook group called 'Free Hugs.'" Mitt Romney said that "Battlefield Earth was his favorite novel, [but] it isn't listed among favorite books; the classic American novel Huckleberry Finn is listed instead." And Sam Brownback also likes his science fiction: he "lists The Lord of the Rings before The Bible in his list of favorite books." (thanks Colin!)
• The Bivings Report is running poll asking "whether political candidates should maintain official MySpace presences or let supporters lead the way." After 39 votes (not quite scientific!) the results are basically split down the middle. Forty-nine percent think the campaigns should run their own profiles; 51% think supporters should. There are clearly pluses and minuses to both approaches, as we've seen with Obama's MySpace debacle, and E.M. Zanotti says it all with the headline, "Right, Because If Anyone Knows Online Communities, Its Forty-five Year Old Senators."
• Despite his lackluster official web presence, Ron Paul is everywhere on Digg. This largely owes to Paul's libertarian politics and the anti-establishment sensibility of Digg, whose users are clearly responding to Paul's criticisms of the war in Iraq and government spending and intrusion. After ABC briefly left Paul out of an online poll asking viewers of the Republican debate to rate who "came out on top" (he was added after supporters protested). Paul is a good case study of how the web can sweep up a candidate and make him their own, with or without his help.

Source: techPresident [digest@personaldemocracy.com]