Just before last week’s ABC/Facebook debate, Hillary Clinton asked her supporters to submit their questions on her website, making an explicit appeal to young voters in the face of Obama’s Iowa win. One Hillblazer named Jesse Berney announced the project: “Ask Hillary is the place where Hillary’s Facebook friends, Hillblazers, and young voters across America can ask Hillary about the issues that matter most to them.” Cool.

The outreach to millennials may have been new, but the nuts and bolts were classic Hillary. Instead of asking supporters to upload videos of questions, or to text or IM them — which would have been a natural thing for young voters to do — she asked them fill out a web form. Thanks to the closed nature of web forms, once participants hit “Submit” their questions went up the stovepipe and couldn’t be shared among other supporters. Not a very networked, webby way to behave, and typical of Clinton’s top-down style.

Now Hillary has released a video in which she answers those questions and makes another appeal to young people. It's been somewhat popular, having been viewed about 36,500 times on YouTube since it was posted yesterday.

Interspersed among testimonials from college-aged voters are Hillary’s answers to some submitted questions. Because the questions were submitted on her website, she needs a staffer to ask her them, which drastically reduces the fun factor. The result is a somewhat boring but slick (doesn’t that describe most of her video efforts?) video that shows that 1) young people like Hillary, and 2) Hillary answers their questions.

Check out the prolonged shot of the aide’s Mac laptop. Think they remember the "Vote Different" Apple video?

It would have been much more effective to have seen the questioners themselves; imagine their videos juxtaposed with Hillary’s answers! Now that would have been fun. As it is, we’re given a semi-cozy yet distanced view of Hillary. An apt description for her online campaign.