Update: Stephen B. Smith, Director of Online Communications for the Romney for President Exploratory Committee just emailed to let us know that the Full Announcement Video is on MittTV. Glad to see they are listening.

Governor Mitt Romney announced that he's running for president today but I can't find the video online.

His website has a transcript of the announcement speech and some speech excerpts on Mitt TV, but I can't find a full version of the video.

Why is the "Vote Different" creator still in hiding? There can only be one reason: the project was funded by a well known Obama supporter, or someone with very close and public connections to the Obama campaign. Don't misunderstand, I'm not saying that the Obama campaign had anything to do with it.

But so far most of the discussion of the ad has put up a picture of an independent video person working at home on their Mac in their spare time. But that's just not plausible. Such a character would be claiming his or her reward right now, boosting his or her career and having a great time doing the media rounds. And, also telling: the ad maker knew exactly what election law lines not to cross, stopping just short of express advocacy. Why didn't the ad say, "Vote Obama"? So, when did independent YouTube video hackers get access to their own election law attorneys?

I received an e-mail from the DNC today laying out plans for a new state-by-state strategy. It's not the same old 50-state plan, and should make the GOP cringe.

The Democrats plan to put videographers on the ground in every state. While the e-mail is focused on the possibilities for the top of the ticket, the real benefit could be found down ballot.

ExpertVoter.org compiles a matrix of candidates and issues on one page. The unique feature is that the page is full of YouTube videos.

Our "2008 Web Video Odyssey," which was produced by the good folks at PoliticsTV, is up on YouTube:

At the Personal Democracy Forum I did some hallway walking, and captured some fleeting moments in video.

In a discussion about the recent French presidential election at the Personal Democracy Forum unConference this past Saturday, Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry presented an interesting thesis: not only did Ségolène Royal's 'net-centric strategy fail to win a majority at the polls, but her campaign's emphasis on citizen participation may have actually backfired entirely by undermining her perception as a leader and by leaving her dependent on a fatally unrepresentative group of voters.

In his previous post, Alan Rosenblatt asks if anything a campaign has ever produced has gone viral. I'd say this has a decent shot.

Only two videos this campaign cycle were worth me pulling my apolitical wife aside, and saying, "You've got to see this." The 1984 ad. And the Hillary Sopranos spoof.

The video breaks any number of First Laws of campaign web videos. It's "overproduced." And she's acting. It's nowhere close to authentic. But it's funny as hell. And self-deprecating.

What Zack Exley has written here is truly wise, and bears repeating until every campaign manager and general consultant has heard it loud and clear. Don't hire an Internet person!

So I think that all of us “Internet people” need to put our foot down. Let’s remove “Internet” from our titles and resumes. The longer we leave “Internet” on our name tags, the longer we’re enabling all this bad behavior—and devaluing our own contribution to the movement at the same time.

I know people who are the future of the progressive movement. Most of them have “Internet” stuck on them. But they are not Internet strategists, they are strategists. They are not Internet communicators, they are communicators. They are not Internet organizers, they are organizers.

Don’t take that “Director of Internet Communications” job. Take the “Director of Communications” job.

Amen.

The question the campaigns this year have struggled with is whether or not to set up an Internet division. By and large doing so is the right decision, because right now, not having one means that the Internet is sublimated to communications-by-press-release hell.

But make no mistake. That shouldn't be our end goal.

I'd just as soon not bring this up, as I've probably had beers with most of the people involved with this topic. But I feel that the cause of good, solid reporting on what Presidential eCampaignmeisters is worth setting the record straight.

Jonathan Martin brings up MittTV as an interesting example of Mitt going around the "media filter," a la HillaryHub. This isn't the first time I've seen MittTV signed out in writeups of Romney's website, and every time I have to ask, "Why?"

What is MittTV? It's Mitt Romney's videos on his website, draped in a custom player and a zingy name. But who isn't posting videos to the Web and YouTube? A number of candidates are even using their name and "TV" in the branding! Here's BarackTV and Hillary TV. Now, Romney's folks have been more aggressive about posting news clips of their guy to their YouTube channel, which is just smart strategy, but that's about the only differentiator to this that I can see.

Meanwhile, another worthwhile Romney effort, the Sign Up America campaign which signed up 30,000 supporters in 24 hours, didn't get as much play in the media. But over the long run, it's stuff like this -- the boring game of inches of recruiting volunteers and donors -- that has the greater impact.