The Web on the Candidates — MySpace and MTV “Flektor” Edition

• Yesterday, John Edwards participated in the inaugural MTV/MySpace Presidential Dialogue, and we were impressed. About 300 students at the University of New Hampshire attended the event in person, and questions came from them and, via IM (well, if you had a PC; MySpace’s IM client didn’t work on Macs), from folks watching online. Using Flektor's real-time polling software, viewers could rate Edwards’ performance, and could see everyone’s collective opinion, in real time. In the end, it was simple: the candidate fielded questions, we submitted our own, and we rated his answers. It was intuitive and engaging.

• DailyKos blogger georgia10 saw the dialogue as a chance to do away with the folks who typically mediate our experience of these events. In the traditional debate format, “Our reactions, our real-time responses are confined within the four walls of a small New Hampshire bar, or in our living rooms, or in fast paced comment threads. The candidates don’t experience our experience, and instead, the ‘success’ of their performance is judged post-debate by spin doctors and pundits.”

• One student at UNH judged the event a success. “This is a great idea. A lot of students are on MySpace. Everyone watches MTV. Seems like a perfect fit to me,” Bie Aweh told the Washington Post’s Jose Antonio Vargas.

• Feministing’s Jessica Valenti Jen Moseley thought the event was a great idea, but, when executed, it “really felt like the same old boring town hall meeting candidates have been doing forever. John Edwards can talk passionately about a lot of things, but today he kind of droned on until the last 10 minutes.”

• Joe Garofoli at the San Francisco Chronicle notes that “multimedia analyists” (like us?) have been praising the event, but some serious questions are also being asked. Some experts have “questioned whether the dialogue was using the fancy new tech gadgets to their maximum potential in soliciting audience interactivity,” and others, including Michael Connery on this site, have criticized the timing of the event, which occurred when most young people are in school or at work.

• In addition to Edwards, Garofoli thought the star of the event was arguably Flektor. Its software made it easy for viewers to rate Edward’s answers, and by the end of the debate the voting widget they used had been viewed more than 23,000 times. This doesn't necessarily indicate the number of participants; we’re awaiting official numbers from MySpace and MTV.

In Other News

• When it comes to capturing the youth vote, too many campaigns are obsessed with Facebook, Myspace, blogs, and other web phenomena, says Jane Fleming Kleeb, Executive Director of Young Voter PAC. “None of these new media tools alone will get young people to the polls. Rather, what it takes to secure the youth vote is, interestingly enough, to treat them as serious constituents and target them as voters,” she writes. Despite the rise of online hubs, outreach still often means meeting people in the flesh, where they live and hang out, Kleeb says.

• An anti-Hillary Clinton Facebook group is continuing to grow in popularity, outpacing all other pro- or anti-candidate groups on the site, Wired’s Sarah Lai Stirland writes. Stephen DeMaura, the creator of the site and the executive director of the New Hampshire Republican Party, told Stirland that “We wanted to show (the) college students and those on Facebook that they’re not alone in opposing Hillary Clinton…. We wanted to show that people of all political stripes are opposed to (her candidacy).” But how effective are these groups at galvanizing real-world support? “This is not a Move On kind of list,” techPresident’s Micah Sifry told Stirland. “As a barometer of public sentiment, Facebook is still important because there’s still a lot of people (using the service) in the same way as they would place a bumper sticker on their Chevy…. But after that, it rapidly loses its power.”

• A couple of weeks ago we reported on Politifact, a joint project of the St. Petersburg Times and Congressional Quarterly to fact-check the presidential candidates’ statements. Now there’s a promotional song to get you pumped about truth-telling, voting, and democracy, complete with requisite references to George Bush (41), Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton, Obama Girl, and Billiam, the YouTube debate snowman.

• I don’t even know what to do with this: Sam Stein, writing at the Huffington Post, has a story involving John Edwards, a “formerly hard-partying girl who claims that she found enlightenment,” and the inability to find or watch promotional videos produced in 2006 for Edwards’ One America PAC. There’s too much to summarize here; read it.

• Ron Paul’s underdog campaign is being fueled by young, impassioned people fed up with both major parties, writes the Boston Globe’s Lisa Wangsness. We know the stats: his young supporters dominate political Meetup groups and he dominates the Republicans in the number of Facebook supporters, MySpace friends, and YouTube views. Here, Wangsness offers portraits of actual people who are feeling energized by Paul’s libertarian message. Meghann Walker’s social life is taken up by the campaign. “I don’t really see my friends anymore,” she said. “My new friends are the Ron Paul Meetup group.” “I don’t want to vote for the lesser of two evils,” says Casey McCowan. “Where we all seem to agree is that the government has stopped being responsive to the people,” says Tom Kawcyznski.

• Thanks to the rise of sites like ActBlue, "online fund raising is now filtering down to low-dollar state and local races, where a little bit of extra money goes further than it would in a national race," writes Amy Schatz at the Wall Street Journal. ActBlue recently opened up to local races, giving Daniel Biss, a Democratic candidate for Illinois state legislature, a much better chance at raising money. "So far, Mr. Biss has raised $37,148 online for his bid to win a Republican-held seat representing the north Chicago suburbs," writes Schatz.

The Candidates on the Web

• The winner of Mitt Romney’s ad contest is 23-year-old Ryan Whitaker, who produced the “Ready for Action” mashup. Sarah Lai Stirland writes that, with just more than 27,000 views, it’s not even close to being the most popular video on the site. That honor belongs to the “Way!” video, produced by Slate’s Mike Reed, which has been viewed more than 85,000 times. I'm not kidding. Way!

• Jose Antonio Vargas also points out that, with just 129 submissions in the contest, the results of Romney’s contest are underwhelming. “Imagine if a similar contest had been held for supporters of Rep. Ron Paul or Sen. Barack Obama, both of whom have consistently led their respective fields in the total number of YouTube views, MySpace friends and Facebook supporters, three ways of measuring online popularity.” Is Romney just less popular online? Or maybe he's still an unknown quantity.

In Case You Missed It…

Check out our roundup of our favorite political videos of the week, including vids of George Bush prematurely announcing the death of a major international figure, a parody video attacking legally-challenged fundraiser Norman Hsu, and the second in a series of silent debates moderated by Harry Shearer.

David All thinks Rudy Giuliani’s webcast appearance to more than 1,000 house parties tapped the “long tail of politics.”

Michael Connery gives the first MTV/MySpace Presidential Dialogue with John Edwards a solid grade, despite some minor glitches.

The amount of first-person video documenting the ongoing unrest in Burma marks the first time online video has had a major impact on a political mass revolt, writes Dan Manatt.

Despite a few criticisms, Fred Stutzman finds MTV’s entry into the social networking/online advocacy fray a laudable effort, and they have created a timely portal for advocacy.

Micah Sifry and I live-blogged the MySpace/MTV presidential dialogue; check out our insta-reactions.