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The Myspace Primary |
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The Myspace Primary
The first primary of the 2008 Presidential election will take place in on Myspace.com
GETTING A JUMP ON THE Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary, News Corp.’s MySpace plans to host a general presidential vote on Jan. 1 and 2 of next year. The move is the latest attempt by MySpace and its rivals to engage users in what is certain to be a fiery election where online components will play a significant role.The vote corresponds with a MySpace Impact, a page launched last month and dedicated to aggregating candidates’ official profiles, as well as an online voter registration drive launched last year.
Let’s take a look at the current state of affairs in the Myspace Primary.
Democrats
Barack Obama: 92759 Friends. Obama is clearly winning the Myspace Primary. Is it due to a groundswell of popular support or a superior Internet campaign? The verdict is still out on that one. I’ll have a better idea in the coming months.
Hillary Clinton: 33362 Friends. Hillary also has a Myspace Group. Interestingly, the myspace group displays a goal of 10,000 members by April 3rd. Today, on April 5th, the group has 3,307 members, yet, for some reason, the goal of 10,000 by April 3rd is still listed. The page for the group has another interesting twist to it. Right at the top, in the second sentence, it says, “Keep it positive or you will be deleted.” It is apparent that someone on the Clinton campaign just doesn’t get it.
John Edwards: 17467 Friends. The page loads fine in Internet Exploiter (Explorer) but has some issues in Firefox. Someone on the Edwards staff may want to look into that.
Dennis Kucinich: 1905 Friends. The little guy (sorry Dennis) actually seems to have the best site. He includes code for people to copy/paste to their profile, he doesn’t moderate comments, and he uses myspace video rather than youtube.
Bill Richardson: 2196 Friends. Very basic page here. The only exceptional thing I noticed is the fact that one guy left the same exact comment four times on April 3rd. Someone should delete three of these, it only takes a second.
Joe Biden: 1482 Friends. This page is unspectacular other than the fact that it shows off a few of Biden’s microsites: nomoretroops.com, planforiraq.com, and endingthewar.com.
I can’t even justify a link for Vilsack, Dodd or Gravel except to mention that Gravel has a total of TWO, yes TWO friends.
Republicans
Ron Paul: 5185 Friends. Paul’s page has dozens of myspace videos, which is a plus. Despite the fact that he is pretty much completely absent from the corporate media narrative, Paul seems to be winning the Myspace Primary on the Republican side. The one thing that really sticks out is the fact that all of his “top friends” have the same “Ron Paul for President” image for their profile. Pretty creepy if you ask me.
Mitt Romney: 4394 Friends. As well as coming out on top on recent fundraising reports, Romney appears to be the legitimate candidate with the most support on Myspace. Two facts of interest on the Romney page: 1) His profile song is courtesy of Elvis. 2) One of his top friends has the name “Retail Slave.” Interesting.
John McCain: 3871 Friends. On first glance McCain’s site seems to struggle from the same monochrome blandness as his campaign website. At least he has recovered from the enhancement from last week. McCain’s page encourages people to “Spread the word!” It then gives you three instructions on what you can do to help the McCain campaign. As far as interactivity, that is as far as it goes. Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for the McCain for President Campaign!
Rudy Giuliani: 1687 Friends. Rudy’s page is quite plain. It features two youtube vidoes (of news footage), but nothing created specifically for the Internet. Under “Who I’d like to meet” it just has a picture of a Rudy bobblehead, what is that about? The page is also rather annoying, with an image of the statue of liberty and the Capital building getting in the way of anything you might want to read.
As was the case with the Democrats, there are a few candidates (Tancredo, Hunter, Huckabee and Brownback) whose presence hardly warrants a mention, much less a link. I would advise these candidates, as well as Dodd and Gravel on the Democratic side, to either get with the program or save themselves some energy/face and get out of the race early. It isn’t as if any of them have a chance anyway.
What a sad state of affairs. All of the candidates that have Myspace pages seem to have indicated that they understand the importance of the youth Internet vote and they intend to embrace it. Given the lackluster efforts so far though, it isn’t clear that anyone other than Obama and Clinton have put any serious effort into it. Any of the candidates, if they truly cared, could generate serious support through this medium. I’d say it is safe to assume that with the recent announcement of the Myspace Primary they will give a little more attention to this aspect of the campaign.
Tom “The Sack” Vilsack officially withdrew a few weeks ago and is now working hard to be VP.
Oops, forgot about that. I’d say, despite his Iowa connections, his odds at the VEEP spot are little to none.
Rudy’s page looks like its a joke almost! What’s with that bobble-head doll? Does Rudy only want to meet people who look like him?