President web 2.0?

[T_i_B]

Yet another article hyping the effects of Myspace and Facebook on the political scene.

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/mark_hanson/2008/01/president_web_20.html

While British politics is still more gimmick than conversation, the US campaign is already demonstrating that blogging is old hat when it comes to grassroots engagement. The candidates are moving on to other forms of social media such as special interest forums, where communication can take place directly between people who are passionate and knowledgable in certain topics and people who want to know more about the candidate.

The most effective social networking is that taking place between two campaign supporters, not the interaction between campaign and supporter: Fred Thompson's team has got a thriving network based on this principle where supporters can talk to each other. Some supporters are more influential than others and can drive the kind of peer-to-peer recommendation that is so valuable in the new media world.

This kind of social media strategy is far more valuable than trying to attract thousands of people to be "friends" of the candidate on a Facebook page. Hillary Clinton's team weren't so smug about having the most friends when John Edwards' team started to mine some of the profile data and then try and convince Hilary's friends that he was a better choice.

The 2005 US campaign revolution that is only now starting to feed through, badly, into UK politics, was all about voters finding the campaign on the web. In America in 2008, campaigns will be all about finding the voter on the web - and hanging onto them no matter where on the web that user is.