It's been a busy week in the 2008 presidential campaign--Hillary Clinton launched her online "conversation" (see David Weinberger's spot-on critique) and went to Iowa; John Edwards also did an online video web-chat that he calls a "live online discussion"; Barack Obama laid low and let the explosive growth of one unofficial Facebook group (now at more than 158,000 members) speak for him; and Bill Richardson formally announced his campaign launch.

Senator Joe Biden (D-DE) launched his presidential campaign, via web video, in a hail of controversy regarding comments he made in reference to fellow Democrat, Senator Barack Obama (IL). Within hours, the audio of his remarks made it to YouTube, as did a clip of FOX News -- no stranger to an Obama controversy -- airing Biden's clarification. The senator later joked about it with The Daily Show host, Jon Stewart. (Video here.)

In South Carolina, Senator John McCain (R-AZ) is determined to win as he picked up the support of forty State House members -- all caught on video -- via Laurin Manning of South Carolina '08.

Social network scholar Fred Stutzman takes a look at Barack Obama's new social networking site and how all candidates should view social networking sites: "Companies like Youtube and Myspace succeeded because they embraced openness... The candidate who embraces this mentality will make the most sense to the netvoter, as our sensibilities have changed significantly over the past few years."

Eve Fairbanks thinks that candidates' plunge into MySpace and Facebook and other facets of online pop culture isn't cool at all: "assimilating Internet tactics doesn’t mean you have to assimilate Internet culture, too: the unhinged language, the fake intimacy, the studied hipness." Who's to blame? Howard Dean: "Political consultants and aspiring candidates were wowed by the way Dean used the Internet to create energy and momentum behind his upstart campaign. They envied the way young people, inspired by the concept of the Web as 'people power,' were transformed into Deaniacs in droves."

Welcome to our new group blog on how the presidential campaigns are using the web, and how the web is using them, TechPresident.com. This blog is an extension of Personal Democracy Forum, our online zine and annual conference on how technology is changing politics. Over there, we'll continue to cover all the ways the political arena is being reshaped by new tools and practices born on the web, while over here we're going to drill down on what the presidential campaigns are doing online, and vice-versa, how bottom-up initiatives launched by ordinary people, what we call voter-generated content, are going to impact the campaign.

What happened to Hillary Clinton's friends on MySpace.com? A day ago, she had about 22,000; now her site lists only 12,177. For a couple of hours today, if you tried to go to http://www.myspace.com/hillaryclinton2008, you saw this:

My parents always taught me that you can learn a lot about a person by looking at the people with whom they choose to associate. It's something I have always believed. It is, however, something that is being tossed on its ear by social networking sites.

My question has been, and remains, what do your MySpace or Facebook friends say about you? Will campaigns be judged on the people they publicly affiliate with via social networking sites? Most importantly, will the media care?

Most mentions of social networking focus on the number of friends a candidate has, but nobody seems to care about the people that make up that number?

We're pleased to announce our newest feature: Technorati tracks, a series of dynamic charts that show how often bloggers are mentioning the presidential candidates over the last 30 and 90 days. The charts are broken down by party, and we've also included a third set showing how bloggers are also talking about prominent non-candidates like Al Gore, Newt Gingrich, Wesley Clark and Michael Bloomberg.

I tend to be more interested in "how the web is using them" than "how the candidates are using the web" in this site's mission. So of course I'm fascinated by the John Edwards Is Good website. I like the ambiguity of this slogan. Does it mean Edwards is good... looking, for America, at billiards? It could be any of the above.

When I saw first these 80's-inspired t-shirts popping up during the 2004 campaign, I took them for nothing more than a smarmy remark on Edwards' looks from some overly-clever college students. However, it seems that this meme has blossomed into a full-on campaign. While the goal was previously to market the shirt and take pictures of people wearing it in funny places, now the site seems to be semi-seriously promoting the election of John Edwards.

You may have noticed that Dennis Kucinich seems to have gained a lot of MySpace friends in the last day (I know you've been watching those numbers like a hawk). It's not because Kucinich has suddenly become a social networking phenomenon. Instead, we were informed that he has another, official, profile that is more popular than the profile we were linking to.

So what made Aregbe's group special? Just as in the case of Ben Parr's "Students Against Facebook News Feed", the success of the group was somewhat arbitrary, but there were factors that contributed to its success. First, Aregbe's group was properly timed. He created it the day after Obama's video "A Message from Barack" made its way around the web. Unlike the inevitable campaign announcements of Edwards and Clinton, Obama's announcement was a pleasant and noteworthy surprise to many. This, combined with the connected nature of Aregbe (his day job is advising college student government) made his timing and placement perfect. The message moved through his network (via Facebook news feeds) like wildfire, quickly arriving on the growth path that has let it to its success today. To boil things down a little more, this was a 1) perfectly-timed message sent to a 2) primed audience by a 3) maven/connector.