The Web on the Candidates

• The data-chewing folks at web marketing hub Compete have released another update of their FaceTime metric, which “quantifies the total amount of time voters spend online with candidates across their official website as well as their related sites on places such as MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, and Meetup.com.” In November, Mike Huckabee saw his face time increase by 194%, and John Edwards’ face time increased to 181%. Both were helped by popular videos — Huck’s Chuck Norris endorsement, and Edwards’ Politics of Parsing, an attack on Hillary Clinton. Meanwhile, his Webbiness Ron Paul continues to get more face time than anyone.

• Today MTV launched its “Street Team ‘08” project, which is arming 51 citizen journalists, one from each state and D.C, with laptops, video cameras, and cell phones to cover the election. “The members will contribute weekly, multi-media reports (short form videos, blogs, animation, photos, podcasts) that will be distributed via a soon-to-launch WAP site, MTV Mobile, Think.MTV.com and to the more than 1,800 sites in the Associated Press Online Video Network,” goes the press release (it’s partially funded through a $700K Knight News Challenge grant). To be honest, I think this is awesome. This effort, in addition to their running series of candidate dialogues, shows that MTV has been improving their already impressive election-year coverage to include new technologies and voters. Their focus on mobile is especially smart.

• YouTube’s politics and news editor Steve Grove announced — in a video, suitably — that YouTube is partnering with the Des Moines Register to collect videos about the caucus process from Iowans in the run-up to January 3. Wired’s Sarah Lai Stirland links the effort to techPresident’s Patrick Ruffini’s Twittering Iowa idea. With people being asked to shoot video and twitter and who knows what else, could this be one of the most voter-generated electoral events yet?

• Cool new site of the week: The Electoral Map, which is about “the intersection of politics and geography.” I like that! It’s run by Patrick Ottenhoff, who analyzses the political uses of mapping from around the web, focusing heavily on Iowa of late, because he believes “that maps tell the story behind the votes.” Keep an eye on this one, especially on caucus and primary days. (via Ben Smith at the Politico)

• I hope this never happens to me: British Parliament member Steve Webb discovered Monday that his Facebook account had been disabled because someone had suggested he was imposter. Webb’s account was soon reactivated after friends started a Facebook group in protest. It’s a regular 21st-century existential dilemma. Sartre, eat your heart out.

The Candidates on the Web

• Marc Ambinder sees an Edwards surge online and offline, noting that Edwards recorded “more e-mail signups than almost any day in its history” and has been adding servers to keep up with increased web traffic, and his online contributions have rivaled his highest two-day totals following last week’s Democratic debate in Iowa. Our own Technorati charts show an increase in blog mentions over the last couple of days. So is Edwards on the up-and-up? It looks like there’s a three-way-tie in Iowa, so it’s anyone’s guess what could happen in two weeks. But it’s damn exciting.

In Case You Missed It…

Someone is trying to play a trick on the press, to the detriment of both the Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama campaigns, but Micah Sifry is on to them.

Beth Simone Noveck has written a seminal piece on “Wiki-Government” for Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, in which she lays out a powerful case for reinventing government with “civic software” that “can shift power from professional sources of authoritative knowledge to new kinds of knowledge networks” and create a kind of “collaborative governance.” Micah loves it.

Ron Paul’s supporters sure know how to make the media/industrial complex take notice: they’ve learned to speak the language of political professionals, which is money, writes Colin Delany. The challenge now is for his campaign and his supporters to win the hearts and minds of the many rather than the wallets and passion of a few. Check out the comments for some disputes over Colin’s math and considerations of how “niche” Paul’s campaign continues to be.

Can the Internet do a better job at covering election night than the media? Patrick Ruffini wants to find out, so he’s launching a project asking Iowa caucus-goers to Twitter caucus results on Jan. 3. He’ll be pulling in the data and posting real-time tallies of the totals.