The Web on the Candidates

• Change.org, the new social networking site that asks users to link to each other around shared political and social causes and to donate money to those causes, has just launched a Facebook app, and on first glance it looks fantastic. It appears that the whole of the Change.org network -- causes, friends, and donations -- is recreated within Facebook. A more in-depth look to come, but we highly recommend you take a look.
• Last week, techPresident's Alan Rosenblatt wrote a post in which he chided Mother Jones for focusing too heavily on the blogosphere in their feature on Politics 2.0. Mojo's Harkinson then initiated a fun debate that started over at Mother Jones' MojoBlog in which Harkinson took issue with Alan's post and happened to call him a -- actually, in the interests of not offending your senses, I'll just direct you to the post. What followed was a great discussion of the blogospehere -- meritocracy, the existence or non-existence of elites, gatekeeping, and more. TechPresident's Micah Sifry waded in at the MoJo blog and at PressThink, where Jay Rosen also picked up the thread. It's still running on Jay's site; check out his excellent summary for a full history.

The Candidates on the Web

• MyDD's Jonathan Singer is reporting that, out of a total of $32.5 million raised in the second quarter, Barack Obama raised $10.3 million online -- just about a third of his total earnings. This gives him a record total of $17.2 million raised online this year. As one commenter points out, Obama's online number is more than John Edwards' total of about $9 million. Meanwhile, Jerome Armstrong compares Obama's numbers in 2007 to Howard Dean in 2003 and finds more differences than similarities. "One of the things I noticed during the 1Q, is how a relatively small part of Obama's 1Q raised came from the internet. In the 1Q this cycle, is that Obama raised $6.9 million (out of $26 million) over the internet; just above Edwards, who raised $3.3 million (out of $14 million) over the net. In comparison, Dean, who raised about $50M overall for his campaign, had $25M of it come directly over the internet. Over half of Dean's funds came from online donors (and even more than half in the first few quarters), but much less of a percentage for Edwards, and even less for Obama (I've not seen internet-raised numbers for 2Q from any candidate)." Read on for more; I suspect that we'll see more number-crunching and comparisons in the days to come.
• Chris Dodd's campaign has just launched a new section to its website called DTV which stands for... you know. It will feature live video from the campaign headquarters and the road (using Ustream.tv), YouTube footage from the trail, real-time questions and answers with Dodd staff, and live-streaming of Dodd events. Looks like an interesting new addition to the site -- now the challenge is for Dodd to show he understands how to use this technology to interact with his supporters in new ways, rather than just broadcasting himself online.
• Meanwhile, where is HillCam? Last week I wrote about Hillary Clinton's new project, HillCam, which promised a "behind-the-scenes look at the Clintons' 4th of July trip through Iowa next week." So, it's Tuesday, July 3rd, and there's no sign of HillCam... it isn't even mentioned on her home page. What's going on?

In Case You Missed It...

Alan Rosenblatt interviews Amy Rubin, John Edwards' New Media Strategist, about Edwards SMS fundraising strategy.

The creators of Community Counts have written an op-ed that outlines their vision for using YouTube to create a true two-way conversation between voters and candidates.