Net Results:The internet has been through a couple of presidential elections now in the US. It hardly featured in either 1996 or 2000, and only began to show up on the political radar in 2004.
Oh, sure, there were candidate websites, even candidate weblogs in the last election. There were fundraising sites and issues sites, get out the vote sites and hammer the opposition sites.
But - let's be honest - even in 2004, the web was more meaningful as a media story than an election swayer. I know many bloggers and campaigners will argue otherwise, but I have never been persuaded this was anything more than wishful thinking (speaking as someone who has had a weblog since 2002, when there were about five of us in Ireland).
Don't get me wrong, I believe in the power of the web (and especially blogs) to do many things, and believe they will be powerful election and political tools. That is, as my fellow Americans say, a no-brainer. I just don't believe the first real glimmers of the internet's political potential was realised until the 2006 election - aka the YouTube election.
Videos à la YouTube and other upload sites were all over the US election landscape in the mid-terms last year, allowing for endless replays of gaffes and glories. I was in the US in the midst of the campaigning, and not a day went by without some commentator somewhere, mentioning a YouTube video. Sometimes, a video or its creation was the entire story.
Some people might argue that Moveon.org, the grassroots political action website that has galvanised and mobilised the liberal agenda in the US, was significant in politics from its inception in 1998, when it was created to push Washington politicos to move on from the partisan impeachment proposals and get back to more important issues of national governance.
Without doubt, Moveon.org has proven itself to be a formidable - perhaps the formidable - web political force. But even in a new report on its website, the organisation itself acknowledges that 2006 was its first truly significant attempt at organising voters.
How significant? Moveon.org alone raised $27 million (€20.7 million) over that two-year election cycle. Membership grew by 450,000 to 3.2 million members. That's right; the members of a wholly website-based organisation nearly match the entire population of the Republic.
But the web has finally indicated in no uncertain terms that, at least in the US, it is not just a meaningful force in politics and public life but actually a key political tool for the most central election announcements. It is no longer the least important medium for a campaign, as it was even at the last presidential election, but the place from which the most crucial political campaigns in US politics are launched.
The evidence is in the fact that last week, the web was where arguably the two most eye-catching US presidential campaigns were announced (or, in the case of Barack Obama, semi-announced) - not on television, not before cheering crowds, not on radio.
With a video that quickly found its way onto YouTube (but of course), followed by the spoofs and "mash-ups" (overlays of different web-based content onto the announcement speech), Hilary Clinton posted her formal announcement to her campaign website.
This was surely a forced hand, coming days after Obama announced he would be assembling a presidential campaign team to prepare for a possible run. All of this is two years before the actual announcement, making these some of the earliest ever hats thrown into a primary election ring.
Why did they use the internet? Well, without the YouTube factor, they probably wouldn't have. By that, I mean they both know that any announcement made in video format can be reposted and circulated by links and through e-mail very rapidly.
They can also make a detailed yet strangely distanced announcement about a major decision. Millions will see the announcement because the major media outlets will spread the word and show the videos.
But the candidates themselves get the advantage of a "soft" launch, in marketing terms. They are not standing on a soapbox, simply posting a video. They are not open to immediate questions from the press, and can lay out the terms of their announcements and supply details elsewhere on their sites.
In other words, they get the message out, but in a clean way. They can gauge reaction and see what issues arise and will need to be addressed when they do make that first public appearance after the announcement.
They have the perfect speech always there for the public and press, accessible in its entirety at any time, not reduced to a soundbite on the evening news.
If these candidates are using this medium, this strategically, this early in a campaign, expect the most interesting election ever for internet watchers.
