Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Social Media and Politics


Today my friend sent me an email containing a link to an online CNNBC video titled:

"Obama's Loss Traced To (Your Name)"

I clicked on the link and watched the short 2 min story. I could not stop laughing. My friend inserted my name to make it appear that I was the reason Obama lost the election. He lost by one vote, mine. So the story went on to interview angry voters who could not believe this one person ruined the election for Obama.

At the end of the message the screen says: (Your Name) this does not have to be the future. Get out and Vote.

HOW CLEVER!

So I started thinking about social media and the upcoming election and conducted some research.

Election 08 Social Media Showdown

Senator Barack Obama
Twitter http://twitter.com/barackobama 40,400 Followers
Facebook http://www.facebook.com/barackobama 1,019,657 Supporters
MySpace http://www.myspace.com/barackobama 401,807 Friends
YouTube http://www.youtube.com/barackobama Subscribers: 58,023 Channel Views: 14,495,498
LinkedIn http://www.linkedin.com/in/barackobama 500+ Connections

Senator John McCain
Twitter Unofficial Site http://twitter.com/JohnMcCain2008 1,166 Followers
Facebook http://www.facebook.com/johnmccain 149,505 Supporters
MySpace http://www.myspace.com/johnmccain 55,323 Friends
YouTube http://www.youtube.com/johnmccain Subscribers: 5,824 Channel Views: 739,510
LinkedIn http://www.linkedin.com/in/johnmccaindotcom 500+ Connections

Although one candidate may have more online followers and supporters than the other, it is interesting to see how social media has become so prominent in this years election.

Are you surprised by the candidates using social media to reach voters?

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Nice! It is interesting to see those numbers for each network. Social media is where it's at! No surprise it is being used so much for this election.

Dave said...

It's amazing to see how effectively Obama has used the Internet to his advantage. On the flip side, it's amazing that McCain has as many online followers as he does, seeing as how he doesn't know how to check his own e-mail.