The role of Internet in the US presidential Elections

Sunday, Feb 24 2008, the San Jose Mercury News dedicated its first page to "The Race Online". Presidential Rivals embrace Internet as a tool for building support.

It shows in details statistics and techniques used by the candidates to use the Internet as a leverage. Leading the way, candidate Obama owns the biggest Facebook supporters crowd on Facebook, has more traffic on his website than anybody else (44%! of the visits!), and his videos have been seen more than 22 million times on Youtube.

Obama raised $28 million online with 90% coming in amounts of $100. With 1 million donors, Obama is has totally understood the concept of long tail.

Candidates have used online marketing techniques to increase their web traffic. John McCain for example bought thousands of key words on search engine to increase his web audience.

That is funny to see how Internet has grown so much and is one of the key factor of success in this election. You see now partnership between MTV and Myspace for debates, and also CNN and youtube co producing a show.

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