Politics 2.0: Facebook wars

The US 2008 presidential campaign will be remembered for the candidates' increased emphasis on the internet. All the principal contenders for the White House -- with the notable exception of Rudolph Giuliani -- have set up and maintain accounts on popular social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook.

Creating a "buzz"

Yet the Democrats seem to be engaging with Web users more effectively. Barack Obama has been aggressively tapping into social networks, which is important for connecting with younger voters. A recent CBS-New York Times-MTV poll showed that younger citizens aged 17-29 favour 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.

This group may make their presence felt at the ballot box. Nearly three-quarters of 17 to 29-year-olds say they are registered to vote, and most of those who are not plan to register before the 2008 election.

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Spare a dime

The best networkers make the most successful tin-rattlers. A strong online presence does more than just connect with these younger voters; it can help leverage the financial power of hundreds of thousands of small donors.

Obama has also been the most successful at using the web to generate micro-donations from 258,000 supporters in the first half of the year. This shows that there is a strong correlation between creating a "buzz" and squeezing campaign dollars out of a network of supporters.

This partly explains the funding disparity between Democrats and Republicans online. The Democrats significantly dominate online discussion compared with the Republicans, with nearly double the amount of blog posts over the past year.

Creating a buzz has its risks. One anti- Clinton Facebook group, "One Million AGAINST Hillary Clinton," now has more supporters than the successful group from which it got its name, "One Million Strong for Barack." The anti-Clinton group has 348,556 members, while the Obama group has a 309,674. It is therefore important to consider a candidate's relative "unpopularity" along with their popularity on social networks.

Giuliani: not savvy enough?

Republican candidate Rudolph Giuliani is not yet using the web astutely enough and therefore could have the most to fear from it.

Giuliani still has a private MySpace page, no Facebook page and his Web site does not even have a blog. He has instead focused his campaign on more traditional media, running hundreds of radio advertisements, twice as many Mitt Romney, the only other candidate with local radio ads. Alongside the traditional Left-Right contest, the 2008 election may feature a battle between old and new media.