Our only connection is synthetically.
We show our affection electronically.

                   Stuck to You, Hellogoodbye, 2006

I am friends with Barack Obama. In fact, I’m buddies with Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Dennis Kucinich, Mitt Romney, Ron Paul, Mike Gravel, George Clooney, and Angelina Jolie (psst… don’t tell Brad). How have I become so popular in only 3 months as a Choose or Lose Street Team Reporter? The magic of social networking. Am I really friends with these people? I’m friends with their PR department, I guess, since I have agreed to be their “friend” in the think.mtv.com community. But in a way this changes the game of politics.

Think how radically different campaigning can be now: Politicians can go to young people where they are and have a basically unlimited space to show them their platform and ideas. They can obtain demographic data about what kinds of people support their campaign with relative ease from these sites. And they can have a dialogue, sending and receiving messages as they please.

Television doesn’t allow it. Neither does radio. As a matter of fact, no medium, except possibly the video game, allows for the interactivity that is allowed by the Internet. So how will this change the election? Facebook, MySpace, and many other sites were not the powerhouse they are now during the 2004 election. And what candidate is doing the best job of harnessing this magical new medium? That candidate may find him- or herself on top.

So let’s look at how the major candidates are using several sites. And for fun I’ll look at Ron Paul, too. This is in no way a scientific study, but more of a fun look at how the candidates are using online media. The numbers I have are from March 21, 2008, before 10am.

Round 1: Think.MTV.com

Candidate                Number of non-celebrity friends               Average views of media

Obama                     67                                                                    65

McCain                    18                                                                     60.5

Clinton                      27                                                                    59.875

Paul                          22                                                                     59.375

In Round 1, Barack Obama comes out on top, while a surprising Ron Paul competes with the big dogs and actually posts better numbers than John McCain.

An important note in this case is that numbers for all of these campaigns are relatively low on the site, considering the power and recognition they should have. For comparison, here are the numbers for my page:

Name                            Number of non-celebrity friends             Average views of media

AnthonyFL                    85                                                                  178.37

No one would argue that I'm a major celebrity, but so far I have been able to make better use of the think.mtv.com community than any of the presidential campaigns. Then again, it's my job to post to this site. Still, it would seem that social networking can help level the playing field for those without big names or lots of money. So let's look at the next site to see what happens...

Round 2: Facebook

Candidate                Number of supporters                     Number of wall posts

Obama                    706,836                                               141,236

McCain                    94,656                                                 10,669

Clinton                    137,319                                               188,176

Paul                         83,597                                                  15,996

Again, Barack Obama is a clear winner with an absolutely crushing number of Facebook supporters. Interestingly, Hillary has more vocal supporters, as witnessed by the number of wall posts on her page, despite a much lower number of supporters. However, Hillary might still be the big loser of Facebook: the group Stop Hillary: (One Million Strong AGAINST Hillary) has over 940,000 Hillary haters from all over the country. That’s a lot of people who won’t be voting for Hillary. In fact, it’s more people than have confirmed that they are voting, according to the Facebook event Presidential Election 2008. As of now, about 600,000 people have RSVP’d for that event.

Again, notice the relatively high support that Ron Paul is getting online despite a relatively small turnout at the polls…

Round 3: MySpace (unofficial people pages)

Candidate                          Number of friends                       Number of comments

Obama                             22,239                                            1507

McCain                             N/A                                                   N/A

Clinton                             46,965                                            13,881

Paul                                 4,668                                                N/A

It seems that Clinton surges back! A surprise, if I may say so. So I will speculate as to why Hillary is doing much better than the others on MySpace user-generated pages. For one thing, her oldest comment is dated Oct. 5, 2003, so this page has been up for quite a few years. The page for Barack dates back to Feb. 1, 2007. Not quite as long.

So now let's look at the official pages, as of March 26, 2008, at 12am EST:

Candidate                          Number of friends                      Number of comments

Obama                                332,407                                        53,935

McCain                                 48,961                                         6,279

Clinton                                 194,635                                        19,300

Paul                                     130,660                                       61,777

Thanks to the laudable efforts of Ron Paul supporters everywhere, I was informed that I didn't show the data on the candidates' official MySpace pages. (See their comments below). So looking at these numbers, Barack Obama has a clear lead, followed by Hillary and Ron Paul. John McCain, on the other hand, has a minimal MySpace following.

Still, the numbers witnessed by by user-generated pages are not too shabby...

Final Round: YouTube videos (not made by campaigns themselves)

Name of Video                             Number of Views                         Average Rating

I Got a Crush on Obama                 7,191,529                                   4

Hott 4 Hill (Hillary Clinton)*             1,264,842                                    3

John McCain                                       N/A                                         N/A

High Tide (Ron Paul)**                      102,841                                     4

While this last round doesn’t really meet the consistency standards of the other three, it does prove a point: This election, more than any other, relies on a reliable base of talented supporters who can create grassroots materials in support of their candidate. That’s precisely the reason why a candidate like Ron Paul can have such a relatively large online presence: his group of supporters is probably tech savvy and creative. Some of these videos were more highly produced and more expensive than others, but none were commissioned by the candidates themselves. And all of them pulled in major views. That is, with the exception of John McCain, for whom I could not find a suitable user-made video for comparison. Maybe his supporters do not have the talent or money to produce the elaborate videos that have been made for the other candidates.

All of this goes to show that the Internet really changes the game for this year’s elections, because for the first time average citizens can create ads and show support in a tangible and documented way. I can’t buy TV time during March Madness, but I have a chance to create a video that is viewed a million times in favor of my favorite candidate.

If you want me to declare a winner of “Best Online Presence”, it’s probably Barack Obama. To be sure I was right, though, I’d have to look at many more sites than the four mentioned in this blog to determine how well any candidate is harnessing the Internet. And that could take awhile.

For more professional opinions on this topic, see my video.

The professional panelists in the video were gathered at University of Miami for the We Media conference on February 27.

Special thanks to Markeem Middleton for his help with this week's video!

*As a note, Taryn Southern is a former Florida resident, and a graduate of University of Miami.

**For an alternative look at the numbers for Ron Paul's online presence, see Rucdelaspook's comments below. The commentary goes to show that the Internet does change the political game; a rebuttal like the one listed below would be impossible in another medium.