Just a day after I posted about John Edwards texting campaign, a friend told me that Edwards was now using Twitter, a social networking tool that enables users to let friends and strangers know what they're doing.

Twitter became very popular the past couple of weeks, as all of the A-List bloggers, and folks attending SXSW in Austin started signing up and inviting all of their friends. Because of this, Twitter has proven itself as a great means by which candidates can make connections with potential voters.

Candidates should be doing more video-driven online fundraising.

At first, I didn't "get" Twitter. But then I stopped, took a deep breath, and started engaging and connecting through Twitter.

Once I "got it," I started thinking about how I would soon deploy the modern technology with Republican politicians.

Here's what I'm thinking...

The Politico's Jonathan Martin posts a breakdown of Mitt's numbers, as claimed by the campaign. If you look beyond the claim, the numbers just don't add up.

Total Raised for the quarter: $23, 434, 634
Total Disbursements: $11, 570, 981
Money Raised Online: $7, 206, 216
Total Donors: 32,074
Itemized ($200+) donors: 12,236 (38%)
Non-itemized donors: 19,838 (62%)

The Hotline breaks that online number down further.

$3,365,625.59 in pure and simple website fundraising, and
$3,840,591.00 raised through Quick ComMitt, our online fundraising pledge entry tool

Some other numbers to keep in mind:

Obama, 50,000 online donors, $6.9 million
Edwards, 30,000 online donors, over $3 million online
Clinton, probably around 30,000 online donors, $4.2 million online

With all the attention being paid to how much money the candidates are raising online, I think we need to better understand what “online fundraising” means.  Does it just include funds that are solicited and fulfilled online, or does it also include any funds submitted through the candidates’ online contribution forms, regardless of how solicited?  Or what if people mail in a check based on an email solicitation?  You see, this is not such a simple question.

Further, while we tend to focus on online campaign strategies in isolation from other campaign strategies, that view is already dated.  The boundaries between online and offline campaign strategies are blurred, at a minimum, and obliterated at most.  One only need look at the spike in Obama’s YouTube views following the extensive coverage CNN and the rest of the media gave to the 1984 video to see that offline developments drive online activity.

So let me suggest a typology for online fundraising:

1. The solicitation and fulfillment are both online
2. The solicitation is offline and the fulfillment is online
3. The solicitation is online and the fulfillment is offline

This is my debut for comment. I've followed the discussion on Mitt$ and online fundraising generally and want to weigh in. The online world is NOT independent of the paper/direct mail and telemarketing world. They operate best when used together.

He's had the account open for a while, but I just received this email...

Dig in below the fold tweets...

As David and Stowe and a bunch of other people have noticed, Barack Obama is Twittering. Now, I'll gladly apologize if I'm wrong on this, but it appears that Mr. Obama didn't write his first Twitter. There's just something patently un-senatorial about all of those exclamation points.

There are two competing trends in online social technologies. One is that everyone from presidential candidates to up-and-coming musicians are scrambling to master MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter. Along the way, they're embracing a new openness that sees value in the networked public sphere. The second is that everyone from the U.S. military to universities are rushing to control the tools that those over whom they have dominion -- from soldiers to swimmers -- use to express themselves online. The Army is both cracking down on milbloggers and YouTubers, citing security and bandwidth; college administrators are banning athletes from Facebook, citing threats to school reputation.

The question for political candidates and political leaders in my mind becomes: you're willing to exploit the enormous potential of new social technologies to further your agendas, but are you willing to stand up for the right of the people you lead to use them?