Not only is turnout at record levels in primaries across the country, but the role the internet is playing in the election is setting records that bury previous high marks. According to the Pew Internet & American Life report issued today, a full "46% of Americans have used the internet to get political news and share their thoughts about the campaign. Online video and social networking sites have taken off, especially among Obama supporters." So let’s stop asking whether the internet will ever elect a president and accept the fact that no candidate can afford to downplay the importance of it.

I hate to risk alienating my new BFF Mark Zuckerberg, but has Facebook's moment in the sun as a hot political tool passed? And if so, what does that tell us about the future of social networking sites for online political organizing, and even about the future of Facebook itself?

I'm taking off tomorrow morning for London, England, where I'll be speaking along with techPresident blogger Michael Turk at "Politics Web 2.0," a two-day international conference hosted by the University of London, Royal Halloway. The conference features 120 papers organised into 41 panels, with more than 180 participants drawn from over 30 countries, and is probably a bit more academic than most of the events I tend to go to these days. My talk is titled, "The Revolution Will Be Networked: How Open Source Politics is Emerging in America." What do you think I should cover?

I was shocked to discover that Mark Penn's book Microtrends has its own Facebook application.

For those of you attending (or thinking of attending) the upcoming Politics Online Conference, consider attending a panel I have assembled: Social Networking/Media Strategy of the Presidential Campaigns. While it may be too soon to say that this aspect of online campaigns is the "be all, end all" of online strategy, there have been some great innovations in this space this campaign cycle.

Which would you rather have: A million-member email list or a network of 25,000 bloggers and 20,000 fundraisers? A look at Clinton vs Obama's metrics leads me to one answer: a network is more powerful than a list.

Change.org — the social network that seeks to connect people around social issues — recently announced a major new addition to its platform. Calling itself the “Ning for nonprofits,” the site now lets nonprofit organizations create “branded networks” that can tap into Change.org’s community of users but retain their own look and feel.

Recently, Micah Sifry and I had a chance to catch up with founder Ben Rattray by phone and learn more. Check out what we learned over at Personal Democracy Forum.

When we talk about social networking apps and elections, the question often arises of how online support translates into votes. Now a new study has, for the first time, linked online support on Facebook to actual votes.

Some interesting conclusions in a preview of a study of presidential candidates and social networking sites to be released by two Bentley College (Mass.) professors in August. For instance, the authors note that the different demographics of MySpace on one hand and YouTube and Facebook on the other show a generation gap favoring certain candidates: Barak Obama and Ron Paul far outshine the other candidates in their parties on YouTube (and Obama on Facebook) but are much less ahead on MySpace, whose audience is more diverse and not as dominated by students and recent graduates. The authors are also not the first to note the disconnect between social networking standing and broader popularity:

Recently, Sen. Chris Dodd's presidential campaign announced the creation of a "social network aggregation" site - one that ostensibly would allow a visitor to browse Dodd's presence on all social networks at once. Using MyLifeBrand, an alpha-stage social network aggregator tool, the team put together a page which is available here. While Read/Write Web is overall positive on the value proposition of MyLifeBrand, Matt Safford of Appscout directs some well-founded criticism at Dodd's implementation..