Saturday, February 17, 2007 1:12 PM
A post by Ann Althouse last week, Liberals ideate furiously over the black-and-white McCain website, led me to visit not only John McCain.com but the websites of a number of other people who have expressed interest in a 2008 White House bid. Hillary Clinton, Rudy Guiliani, Barack Obama, Mitt Romney, and John Edwards, among others. Looking first at the calendar (Feb 2007) and then the election date itself (Nov 2008), made me think if every politician will ultimately have a private website constantly conveying the message, regardless how far out the next election may be (Newt Gingrich's Newt.org seems to be thinking in these terms already).
Moreover, I was struck by how sophisticated the websites are becoming. The graphics, the photographs, the features and functions, all have come along way over the last couple of election cycles. Also notable, the inclusion of multimedia, especially video, is becoming a standard feature. This latter feature is probably going to grow in importance, especially as teams of opposition videographers seem to be filming every interview and speech a presidential candidate makes, all in hopes of catching a few seconds of footage that reflects poorly on the candidate (which they immediately post to YouTube, Revver and similar websites. Of course, each candidates own supporters will also avail themselves of the same websites in posting more positive footage to the sites.
It is not a stretch to say that the 2008 Presidential election will be played out across the web at levels never before seen. The emergence of technologies and websites that allow for video content to be quickly disseminated worldwide in a form that you can actually consume in a matter of seconds (as compared to the interminable download/wait times of the past), will ensure this. It also makes me wonder if web's continued emergence will decrease the importance of traditional television and written publications in elections. For example, will regular inclusion on Yahoo's Presidential Election 2008 site become more important than regular inclusion than one of the countless political roundtable shows on the cable networks? And, in a nod to the future perhaps, something that seems a bit 'out there' today, like the news that an Edward's supporter had opened an unofficial virtual campaign headquarters in the virtual world of Second Life, may become standard issue [see John Edwards’ campaign enters Second Life, the news of which, was broken by, of course, the Second Life News Network: US Presidential Candidate John Edwards Launches Campaign in SL].
No matter the pace of change (and I tend to think it will faster than we realize), I don't see the web genie going back in the bottle. The sophistication of the web's new technologies, as well as the growing sophistication of the people employing these technologies, will ensure that.