Our friends at Eventful have released some good news about the candidates' use of their site to organize local events in the runup to the Nevada caucus and South Carolina primary.

In Nevada, Sen. Barack Obama has more than 500 supporters demanding an appearance in their town, far out-pacing his competition. Edwards and Obama are both using Eventful to send messages to supporters through the site’s online messaging tools, enabling the campaigns to create grass-roots support for upcoming events. Edwards recently built crowds by messaging his supporters to attend his rally in Reno, Nevada on January 16th.

In South Carolina, which is also up for grabs according to recent polls, several Republican candidates are using Eventful in unique ways to build crowds. Fred Thompson is using an Eventful calendar to post all of his events for his current bus tour on his Web site. Eventful’s calendar tools enable Thompson’s campaign to build awareness of his events on Thompson’s Web site, Eventful.com and at hundreds of sites that publish event calendars from Eventful.

Mike Huckabee has also used Eventful extensively in South Carolina, messaging supporters about upcoming events. “Eventful is a great way to communicate with supporters who have an expressed interest in attending campaign events,” said Chris Maiorana, an Internet consultant for the Huckabee campaign. “We find a very strong response rate from Eventful users as they’ve already ‘Demanded’ to see Mike Huckabee.”

The site is still mostly used for fans to demand bands and artists' appearances, but it's been building out its political side for the last year, as the candidates' dependence on it shows. Check out their politics page to see an impressive swatch of campaign events being held across the country.