McCormack provides her readers with quite a few stats to compare the Obama/Biden campaign against McCain/Palin. Obama's YouTube site has 1,538 videos with 100,595 subscribers and 23,828 friends of the page alone. The videos featured on the page include ones of his family, speeches, advertisements and even Michelle's speeches. By searching his name alone, you get 514,000 results for Obama and Biden returns 47,600 videos.
McCain's page, which does not include Palin, has 305 videos with 25,060 subscribers. When searching for his name, you receive 268,000 results, which is almost half as less as Obama's. Palin does not have her own page but when searching her name, 107,000 results appear.
In regards to YouTube, the numbers do tell that Obama/Biden are taking over this portion of social media. However, according to McCormack's article, the numbers are closer for Facebook. I must disagree because Obama's page has 2,077,944 supporters while McCain only has 573,390 on his Facebook page. Obama even dominates on Twitter, with 101,500 followers and McCain doesn't even have an official page.
This obviously shows that Obama is dominating Web 2.0 and reaching out to more audiences. Obama is targeting first-time voters by using sites millennials visit every day. By using these resources, both candidates are changing the way elections are conducted. You have to wonder what the numbers for these Web 2.0 sites will be like during the 2012 election, when more people are using the three mentioned outlets and more will be developed. Will TV ads still have the same effect as they do now? Will print still be the main focus? Or will the candidates be moving toward the Internet and using those resources for smear campaigns and relaying messages to their target audiences? We will figure this out within 3 years, when the next presidential election comes about.
1 comment:
I think your right. It's inevitable, as more Americans gain broadband access, the more attractive the Internet beceoms as a mass advertising tool.
Nielsen statistics now reports 72.5% of the United States population is on the Internet.
Which according to the U.S. POPClock and "the U.S. Bureau of the Census, the resident population of the United States, projected to 10/14/08 at 06:48 GMT (EST+5) is
305,407,249."
And 72.5% of that is 221,420,256 United States Internet users.
Whether broadcasting to the masses, or targeting specific segments, campaigns of the future are sure to jump head-first on to the Internet bandwagon soon.
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