Politics and the Web, Part II

08 Aug

Posted by Andy Brudtkuhl under Technology

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Although I am not the political junkie as I used to be I am fascinated by adoption of technology by political campaigns. For some reason politics has become an early adopter for advances on the web… During the last round of elections in November of ‘06 I wrote ‘The State of Politics - and the Web‘ where I discussed Google Bombing, the adoption of social networks, and John Edwards relentess quest to use every Web 2.0 service available - the latest being live streams on Ustream.tv.

They are calling it Politics 2.0, naturally.

techPresident is doing a great job of tracking these trends. It is using MySpace and Facebook for polling by cbrualculating the number of friends/contacts each candidate has. Using TubeMogul they have charts tracking the number of viewers and subscribers each candidate has. They also track conversations using Technorati.

Recently we saw the CNN-YouTube debates where youtubers uploaded video questions and candidates answered them live on CNN, of which the answers were then posted on YouTube. So far they have just done the democrats and are taking questions for the republicans to air in September.

Another web 2.0 development is MapLight.org, which has less to do with the campaign and more to do with creating awareness. Basically they have created a web app that connects money, politicians, and legislature in a web 2.0 wrapper. You can watch their 6 minute intro here.

I’m sure we’ll see the campaigns finding more and more creative ways to use the web as the caucuses, primaries, and elections get closer…

Oh, and if you are a politics junkie, you should check out Iowa Blogs Politics to get the latest scoop on the election and the upcoming Iowa Caucuses.

Tags: Politics, Web 2.0, Politics 2.0, techPresident, Campaign 2008, YouTube, CNN, Iowa Blogs