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.

During Sunshine Week, starting Sunday, even reporters who hue to the tightest vision of objectivity get political. Government should be more open, they cry, and with editorials and stories they actively push for improved FOIA, expansion of FOIA to Congress, and improved transparency in all parts of Government. (Note: I work for the Sunlight Foundation, which does this year round, so my judgment may be clouded...)

If I were a candidate, I would make strong stands on transparency in the Executive and Congressional branches, but I would back up the stands with more transparency on the home front of the campaign.

Maybe they are brainstorming about it now. Pictures and salaries of all staffers? Personal financial disclosure linked from the home page of the candidate websites? Descriptions of all high donor meetings? A tease--a day's worth of phone calls being made to high donors? What will they do, and what would we like them to do? A podcast of a real strategy meeting?

Last week at the IPDI Conference in Washington, DC, the keynote address was offered by Elliot Schrage, the VP of Global Communications & Public Affairs for Google.

In his address, he noted that the "downside of access is intrusion" and suggested that this could be the year that a candidate is found using some form of malicious spyware to collect more information about its visitors.

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.

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...

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?

The Web on the Candidates

Does the performance of a candidate's web page help determine their online effectiveness and the amount of online donations they bring in? Katherine Noyes at TechNewsWorld reports that 62% of respondents to a "nationwide survey" "said they'd abandon the online donation process after two unsuccessful attempts, and 67 percent said they would tell other people if the donation process didn't work well," and "of the 43 percent of survey respondents who had already visited or who planned to visit candidate Web sites, 58 percent said they believe there will be a correlation between the candidate with the best-performing Web site and the ultimate winner of the presidential race." However, these stats ignore the actual content of the web sites -- are candidates blogging, using video, or Twittering? Are they using social networking sites? While a site's poor performance can undeniably aggravate users and discourage them from donating, there also other online factors to consider when judging a candidates' online presence.

The Candidates on the Web

John Edwards has launched a new web site called Support the Troops. End the War, with an overlong url to boot, that is calling for Americans to... support the troops and end the war with a series of actions over Memorial Day weekend. The site begins, "As citizens, we honor and support our troops for their service and sacrifice. As Americans, we are blessed by that sacrifice and support, which keeps us safe and keeps us strong. As patriots, we call on our government to support our troops in the most important way it can - by ending this war and bringing them home," and provides 10 things you can do over Memorial Day weekend toward that end. Otherwise, the site is mostly a place to gather email addresses, though it also provides a way to search for Memorial Day activities near you. However, I live in one of the most populated spots in the country, and the nearest activity ("Donation") was over nine miles away, followed by an activity ("Call/email President Bush and your Congressional Representatives") almost 29 miles away.

In Mike Turk and Zack Exley's session at PDF 2007, a topic that came up frequently was the creation of perception with social media tools. The discussion explored methods for humanizing the candidate; dropping in on the comments of a blog post seemed a common and popular strategy. The outcome of this type of action is simple - it creates the perception that candidates are actively engaging with digital supporters. Of course, the problem is that this strategy isn't scalable or realistic; if we don't have enough time to read all of the blogs in our newsreader every day, one can only imagine how little time candidates have.

The connections fostered by social media are unique and context-specific. A blog comment is not the same as a Twitter or text message or Facebook share; all of these tools have their own rules and expectations. Perhaps this is why Barack Obama's first Twitter seemed so strange - his avatar seemed to not understand the complexities or expectations of the medium. Of course, once you understand the rules of the medium, it's not hard to create authentic persona for the candidates (though I'm still not sure about Obama's Twitters).