Daily Digest: 3/19/07

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."
• Competing online video reviewers Jeff Jarvis and James Kotecki talked to each other at the Politics Online conference. Before some of the commentary began the two vloggers playfully joined forces. Kotecki: "The competition gets intense sometimes but we both enjoy what the other person has to say because we're some of the only people that are doing commentary about the president[ial candidates] and online video at all." Jarvis: "And I hope it stays that way." Also check out Dennis Kucinich's direct response to Kotecki's commentary, a first this year.
• The recent pro-Obama remake of Apple's "1984" video featuring Hillary Clinton as a Big Brother figure continues to get attention in the blogosphere. A Technorati search turned up 1,763 blog posts about it, with most bloggers praising the mashup. One blogger called majestic at Disinformation says "It may be the most stunning and creative attack ad yet for a 2008 presidential candidate -- one experts say could represent a watershed moment in 21st century media and political advertising."
• More than any other year, Internet companies are busy getting into the politics business, the Washington Post reports. At the Politics Online conference last week online political advertisers, representatives from the game industry, "Candidates are brands and the power of video games, like a brand mascot, is to create an emotional connection with the brand," Scott Randall of BrandGames said. And both Yahoo and Google will adapting their web services -- groups, advertising, email, video -- for use during the campaign in an effort to connect voters to candidates.

The Candidates on the Web

• Dennis Kucinich has been posting screenshots of his videos on his front page, but you can't actually watch them on the front page; you have to click on "play" below the screenshot, which takes you to a secondary page that features the video, which was uploaded to YouTube. It would be easy to embed this video on the home page, which I guarantee will increase the number of views. The fewest number of clicks; it's one the first rules of web design.
• The Straight Talk Express is back, this time with video. John McCain's site has been featuring his videos on the front page (Kucinich, take a look) and there's a new video up showing his campaign stop in New Hampshire, and this time there is no shrieking hawk, flashy editing, or militaristic Hollywood-esque band in the backround. Just McCain on stage and a wildly whipping camera.
• Duncan Hunter has added a picture slideshow to his homepage, which offers a series of un-illuminating medium-close-up shots of Hunter behind various microphones, getting married, and talking. In each shot he looks the same and there is almost never another human in the foreground of the shot (children and wives excepted).

In Case You Missed It...

Myspace Impact Launches
As reported by David All last week, Myspace has launched its politics portal - Myspace Impact.

Searching for Social Media's Holy Grail
In essence, we're searching for the holy grail of social media.

Mitt's four-leaf clover: MySpace, YourSpace, OurSpace, MittSpace
Mitt Romney has officially launched his Presidential myspace page. And surprisingly, it's actually very authentic, personal, and hand-crafted for the medium.

A lesson from Bill Frist
It's because he's not running for president that Bill Frist is now free to communicate like a normal human being. Presidential candidates should take a lesson.

Live-Blogging Politics Online 2007: How Political Journalism is Changing
Here's Micah Sifry's semi-verbatim but not for direct quotation transcript of Friday's fascinating panel on how the web is changing political journalism.

Setting The Record Straight
At the Politics Online conference yesterday, a number of people questioned some of Mike Turk's comments on this site. The general theme was "TechPresident is supposed to be candidate neutral, but you seem to spend a lot of time beating up on McCain". Turk was asked why he doesn't give equal criticism to Romney, Giuliani, and the other GOP candidates.