Senator Joseph Biden (D-DE) launches his presidential bid this morning and according to Beth Fouhy of the Associated Press, the longtime senator will announce his candidacy via online video to supporters.

While in Iowa this weekend, Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) was caught on microphone singing the national anthem out of tune, reports the New York Times' Patrick Healy. The new media that sparked a "conversation" about her announcement message quickly turned on her as the video made it to YouTube within hours.

The progressive blogosphere has been waiting with baited breath for news about the fate of John Edwards' bloggers Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwen after they were criticized for writing anti-Catholic slurs before working for Edwards. Salon reported that they were fired yesterday, but TAPPED and others have heard otherwise. And Glenn Greenwald has been building an unbelievably long list of links to other blogs covering this.

The MSM has been covering the story with mixed value; for example Time Magazine does a decent job of putting it into larger context, but oddly claims that the story has an antecedent in "Democrat" John Thune's hiring of bloggers in his run against Senator Tom Daschle in "2005." Hello, rewrite? (Read our seminal story on the Thune bloggers episode here.

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."

A Rightwingnews.com poll suggests that Duncan Hunter has gained significant new support among the conservative netroots. Newt Gingrich was the most popular potential candidate, followed by Hunter and Mitt Romney. Chuck Hagel, George Pataki, and John McCain were very unpopular among the 230 participants in the poll.

The Politico and MSNBC are sponsoring the first GOP debate at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, CA on May 3. It will be broadcast online on the Politico's web site, where viewers can submit questions to the candidates.

Ben Smith of The Politico reports that a new Hillary-obsessed website, JustHillary.com ('It's All About Her"), has launched. It chronicles its editor's obsession with Clinton and, by extension, the media's obsession as well. It features links to Hillary-centric news articles, editorials, blog posts, YouTube videos, and looks like it was designed in 1997.

A straw poll conducted by GOP Bloggers has Rudy Giuliani at the top of the heap at 32.2%, over 8% higher than Newt Gingrich, the runner-up. Another interesting metric is the "candidate acceptability" poll, in which Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel has a -67% approval rating, probably stemming from his break with President Bush on Iraq.

The Web on the Candidates

• AbsentCongress.org is keeping tabs on the voting records of 2008 presidential candidates in the Senate. According to the site, Sam Brownback has missed more than half of his Senate roll call votes. Compare that to Hillary Clinton and John McCain, who have been present for 94.87% of their votes.
• It's tapioca time: Jeff Jarvis laments the threat to conversation signaled by the Edwards blogger resignations: "Now every blogger hired by every campaign — in any position — will have their writing scanned for anything that could offend anyone. Tapioca time."

On February 1st, I used a new account to sign up for email from 25 potential prez candidates from both parties to study their use of the medium. Here's a summary of what I've found:

1. Most of the candidates have studied how email was used in the 2004 prez campaigns and have adopted elements that worked

2. Just like with their websites, nobody has offered anything innovative or interesting. (If even to engage the press or DC insiders only, you would think they would be putting more attention and energy into their mass emails) ...

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.

The Web on the Candidates

The Editors Weblog reports that The New York Times and the New York Sun are both developing dedicated web sites to cover the 2008 election. "The migration of politics and political journalism to the web isn't quite new, but it sure is moving fast. We're moving too," NYT executive editor Bill Keller says.

Valleywag took a tour through John Edwards' unofficial space in Second Life and wound up asking, "where are all the people, anyway?" Well, there two people there, and the writer was able to hop on to a helicopter and hover next them, prompting one person to say, "Dude, there's a helicopter behind you."

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.