A couple of days ago, I reviewed the launch of the new WhiteHouse.gov. Today, nearly 72 hours after Barack Obama's inauguration, the only official documents of the Obama Administration online are his inaugural address and his executive orders. President Obama has had public events to swear in his staff, announce the closing of Gitmo, and name envoys to the Middle East. The photo office has release some pretty striking photos of Obama's first day in office to the press. None of this content is online at WhiteHouse.gov.

Hidden in all of this is the fact that the Internet is now a mass medium. More people watched the Sarah Palin SNL skits on Hulu than live on television. Obama videos were watched for 1 billion minutes on YouTube. That works out to about 7 minutes for every American that voted on November 4th, or the equivalent of 14 thirty second spots.

The Internet has become television. Or, at least, there is now a powerful streak within the Internet that allows broadly popular candidates with mass (not niche) appeal to survive. This has coincided with the rise of web video, which allows the pecking order of celebrity in the offline world to be recreated online.

As Republicans debate how to rebuild the party with new technology and stronger grassroots, watch for the media to fawn all over Obama's use of the Internet as President as he brings (some) of the tactics of his winning campaign to the White House.

It began this weekend with the release of President-elect Obama's YouTube address and the transformation of the anachronistic radio address. This generated an explosion of media interest, even though 1) the format is not especially compelling, and 2) at least initially, ratings and comments on the video have been turned off, preventing ordinary Americans from talking back -- contrary to what happened on My.BarackObama.com during the campaign.

Shortly after 3 AM on the east coast, the long-awaited text message from Barack Obama announcing Joe Biden had finally arrived. But it was something short of letting the cat out of the bag. At 10:50 pm on Friday night, ABC News confirmed that Biden was getting Secret Service protection. The first official confirmation that I could find came from CNN at 12:45 a.m. The promised "be the first to know" text message came a full two hours later.

The common wisdom is that BarackObama.com is not only better at wrangling donations from the faithful, but is categorically better than JohnMcCain.com because it embraces an interactive as opposed to a broadcast model.

But let's not kid ourselves. At its core, BarackObama.com is not truly interactive. It is transactional.

There's a lot of hype surrounding microtargeting -- which is the process of targeting voters scientifically based on consumer and demographic data. This piece in Salon yesterday on "Obama's super marketing machine" is no different. But as someone with a bit more than a passing understanding of what microtargeting is, I have to shake my head a little at articles like this. Because the media gets it almost completely wrong -- whether it's hyping relatively mundane technologies or celebrating "sexy" examples (dial up 40 year old Vodka drinking Volvo drivers!) that have almost no bearing on microtargeting's usefulness in real life. 

But this development is more properly seen as a natural evolution in any open, networked system that is allowed to operate in the political space. The credit belongs to his supporters, not Obama.

It's now a truism that when presented with an open platform, users will hack it to serve their purposes, not necessarily those of the sponsor. Many times, those two sets of priorities are intertwined (e.g. supporters desire to get involved matched with a campaign's need for volunteers), though in this case, they weren't.

My.BarackObama.com still works, and it's not because recreated the features of a social network. If they've succeeded, it's because they've harkened back to the early days of the web, to the primary way that the online grassroots connected with each other before blogs: e-mail groups.

To get the most bang for its online buck, the McCain campaign should be the first political campaign in history to release a website API.

Good online strategy is simple: reflect the very best of your candidate offline. John McCain offline is transparent, accessible, and willing to answer any question. John McCain online is stilted and awkwardly asking me for money. There’s a fundamental disconnect.