ZDNet tech blogger Donna Bogatin examines the online outreach of Senator Joe Biden (D-DE) and the results are mixed. She labeled his announcement speech ìstaidî and failing to make him stand out from other candidates declaring online. Questioning Biden's ability to connect to potential voters, Bogatin writes, "Perhaps Jill [Biden] should give Joe lessons in networking" after photos of the senator's wife receive more attention than the senator himself.

Jeremy Bronson, reporting for MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews, chronicled how candidates are combating the YouTube effect and trying to turn it around in their favor.

The Web on the Candidates

"If the liberal blogs want to understand why so few people outside their narrow echo chamber take them seriously, and what it will take to gain the broader credibility they crave, they should look no further than their handling of the recent flap over John Edwards’ foul-mouthed blogger hires," says Dan Gerstein in the Politico.

Patrick Ruffini calls John Edwards' site a "mess," in part because, as Todd Ziegler notes, there are icons for and links to 24 social news/social networking sites. "I get it. The Edwards campaign is really into the whole Web 2.0 thing. Message delivered. I understand the power of these networks. I do. But 24 accounts? This just strikes me as sort of ridiculous," Ziegler says. Ruffini says there's also too much text on the home page: "A homepage should be made for scanning, so a big graphic with your message of the day, with icons and 5-6 word descriptions of your key features is what works best."

This weekend I took an hour to review all the candidates sites as if I were coming to them ignorant -- simply using the web (as many will) to decide who to support. I assumed that I would start trying to figure out, "why are they running for President?" and then dig deeper. I did not use the bio sections of the site, but the structure and initial text. This is the superficial first pass. What, in two words, is the core message of each site?

The Web on the Candidates

Just after techPresident's Jack McEnany posted a review of Mike Huckabee's exploratory site, the site went down (must be all that techPresident traffic!). Upon finding a Go Daddy parked url in the place of Huckabee's site, Todd Ziegler of the Bivings Report wrote, "This is the kind of message you get when (a) your site isn't done yet and you are parking a URL you bought on GoDaddy or (b) you go over your bandwidth limit for the month and haven't put in more cash." The site, up now, was down for at least an hour.

Over at PrezVid, Jeff Jarvis catches up with Iain Dale, creator of 18 Doughty Street, a conservative British Internet TV channel. Jarvis posted a video in which he and Dale chat about American presidential candidates' use of video ("He says Clinton’s Hillcasts are just pieces to camera; 'she’s not interacting with people, she’s talking at them.' He says that Obama’s site is fresh; I say he’s not saying [anything] but Dale argues 'you don’t have to say much; David Cameron didn’t say much' at the start of a campaign... He advises that candidates should not (like McCain) make their videos too slick. And if candidates have blogs, they should join in personally sometimes. 'You’ve got to personalize it.'"). Definitely a site to keep an eye on.

The Web on the Candidates

When the election is over, will the candidates keep Twittering? Marianne Richmond of Blog the Campaign in 08 wants to know. "So what happens when the election is over? "Do the candidates that get eliminated upon the way, close up social media shop?," she wonders, daydreaming about the first executive order: "Please cancel my MySpace account, Facebook, and Twitter accounts..."

Todd Ziegler of the Bivings Report takes on IPDI's choice of nominees for their annual Golden Dot award for online politician of the year. The nominees for the award are Ned Lamont, Mark Warner, Dick DeVos, and Jack Kingston. As Ziegler points out, only one of these nominees actually won an election. "Three of the four nominees did not achieve the office they sought and are being nominated for losing with style. Winning was not a consideration in putting together this list. I could understand including one or two politicians who lost (avoiding the word "losers" here), but three?" he writes. He agrees with techPresident's Mike Turk, who recently wondered "What is [the candidates'] strategy to win? What are their obstacles? How will their online campaign help seal the deal on Election Day? Most of the Presidential campaigns have not, at least to the casual observer, answered those questions. Looking at their sites, you have no idea how their web operation is going to move them toward the goal of actually getting votes."

The Web on the Candidates

John Edwards and Barack Obama "have distinguished themselves in the presidential field by running campaigns that deliberately part with a longtime rule of election-year politics: Keep the spotlight on the candidate," writes Salon's Michael Scherer. While their attempt to build "semiautonomous political movements" is not wholly altruistic (they do want to actually win), the strategy is an acknowledgment that the power of the Internet and of organizing lies in connecting supporters with other supporters. "The whole focus of the Internet program is to enable people to work together to take action on the issues that matter," says Ben Brandzel from the Edwards campaign. Adds Andrew Rasiej (this site's founder), "simply asking people for money or e-mail addresses rarely builds support. The campaign that encourages voter-to-voter communication has the potential of leveraging the power of the Internet."

"Every appearance by a top Republican official or candidate should be recorded. Every one of them," writes Markos of the Daily Kos. "All it takes is one "Macaca" incident to transform a race or create one where one didn't exist." Most people would probably agree, though Jeff Jarvis points out that, from a Democratic standpoint, it's probably prudent to record every second of your own appearances as well, "for why not create your own narrative rather than leave it to a bunch of GOP shooters?"

The Web on the Candidates

Over at TechRepublican, Jim Durbin writes that the way for conservatives to match the energy of the left-wing netroots is to strongly convey Republican messages online. The key, says Durbin, is to stay on message on blogs, discussion boards, social networking sites, everywhere: "If you believe as I do, that our strength is in our reasoned approach to issues - mainly that in winning the arguments, we'll win the elections, than the strategy is simple." Durbin takes for granted that people will simply be won over by better arguments -- there are actually ideologies and political beliefs at stake here -- and his position that "the reasoned argument on the left is outweighed by emotion. On the right, reasoned argument is actually our strength," is not so reasonable in itself... But we give him credit for seeking out ways to invigorate online conservatives.

The Web on the Candidates

In a piece about Fred Thompson's fundraising strategies, techPresident's (and TechRepublican's) David All discusses the important role micro-donations will play in the campaign: "He has more of an Internet presence than any announced candidate. There's a heck of a lot more donors who can give $5 or $10 on the Internet than those who can give $2,300." All elaborates in a post on TechRepublican, calling the strategy the "Long Tail of political fundraising." This year, Barack Obama has proven that tens of thousands of supporters donate $5, $10, or $20 can be just as effective -- or possibly more effective -- than just approaching the heavy-hitters. You can approach these micro-donors again and again, whereas the big donors quickly max out. While we've yet to witness Thompson's fundraising strategies, All implies that his online popularity will lead to this Long Tail approach.

The Web on the Candidates

A new poll from CBS, the New York Times, and MTV shows that younger Americans aged 17-29 favor Barack Obama (18%)and Hillary Clinton (17%) for president, and that the majority of them lean left. One-third have been to a candidate's website and 15% have visited a candidate's MySpace or Facebook profile. But will this group actually go out to the real polls? "Nearly three-fourths of 17 to 29-year-olds say they're registered to vote, and most of those who aren’t say they plan to register before the 2008 election."

The Candidates on the Web

Tomorrow Chris Dodd will be the next candidate featured by YouTube's Spotlight series. This morning Tim Tagaris of the Dodd internet team told us what to expect. According to Tagaris, the video will depart from the the formula followed by most of the featured candidates, in which they briefly explain their backgrounds and their stance on an issue and ask viewers to respond with their own hopes and dreams and, vaguely, their opinions. Instead, Dodd will critique the way the mainstream news media has beeen covering the election, for example showing a brief clip of Wolf Blitzer talking about Hillary Clinton's "very important question" about her theme song. He'll then explain his amendment to the Defense Authorization bill designed to end the war in Iraq and ask viewers to perform a somewhat involved task: go to their Senators' offices and videotape a conversation with them about the amendment. The idea, says Tagaris, is to have supporters focus on and investigate real issues, rather than simply have them select a theme song (which, we should add, was probably pre-selected anyway). Tagaris says the goal is to use the megaphone of the race to speak about important issues. We're looking forward to seeing the video itself, and seeing what level of participation it inspires.

The Web on the Candidates

Gaby Wood, in yesterday's Guardian, reviews the details of the "YouTube election" for British readers. Most of the examples -- the "1984" ad, Obama Girl, "I Feel Pretty," and so on -- are familiar to readers of this site, but Wood takes an interesting look at the idea of voter-created campaign ads. "The notion of a 'citizen ad' is an intriguing one, suggesting as it does both a citizen's arrest - the idea of doing something without pay for the public good - and Citizen Kane. You can, from the privacy (and affordability) of your own home, have an effect akin to that of a mogul," Wood writes. "Is YouTube the ultimate form of democracy, then, a means by which voters can have their say and politicians can really listen? Or is it something to be feared, a kind of anarchic 24-hour surveillance?" The answer to this question -- which continues to be asked about the web itself -- isn't as stark as Wood suggests.

An anti-Hillary Clinton Facebook group, "One Million AGAINST Hillary Clinton," now has more supporters than the successful group from which it derives its name, "One Million Strong for Barack." The anti-Clinton group claims an impressive 348,556 members, while the Obama group has a 309,674. When gauging a candidate's popularity on Facebook, how should we factor in this level of unpopularity? Do the negative numbers cancel out the positive numbers? And should we take the group's claim that "whether you are supporting Rudy Giuliani or Mitt Romney, John Edwards or Barack Obama a single goal exists, to ensure that another Clinton is not put into the White House" at face value, or is this a partisan Republican group? (Thanks, Patrick.)