The Web on the Candidates -- Daily Digest Lite

• Over PrezVid Jeff Jarvis takes a look at what presidential candidates are advertising using Google AdSense, and whose keywords they're advertising with. The most active advertisers are Hillary Clinton -- who's advertising on Obama, Biden, and Dodd searches, and Rudy Giuliani -- who's advertising on McCain, Brownback, Tancredo and the phrase "flat tax." This basically means that when you do a search for, say, McCain or Tancredo, you may see an ad for Giuliani on the right side of the page. Take a closer look at the post for many more interesting results, including the fact that "no one — no candidate, no brand, no news organization, no one — is advertising against “Bush” and “George W. Bush”, even negatively. Nobody wants any of that on them."
• Some students at Brigham Young University are protesting Vice President Dick Cheney's upcoming visit for commencement ceremonies later this month, and in addition to voicing opposition in the student newspaper, students have created a Facebook group. The group is a model for how to organize using social networking, writes the Bivings Report's Steve Peterson. "The social network provides a venue where people who share similar feelings can vent and plan, but the university has no control and likely no jurisdiction over it. Group leaders have kept members informed on their progress on obtaining permission from the university to protest Mr. Cheney, and after approval was granted the group was used as a bulletin board for organizing the event. Further, links to news coverage of the greater opposition and debate through comments are available there," he says.
• Katherine Noyes of TechNewsWorld is writing a series called Campaign 2.0 about new trends in online campaigning and fundraising strategies.  The first article in the series is, of course, about the "Vote Different" video and the paradigm shift it's popularity suggests.  TechPresident's Micah Sifry provides the quotes for the piece.  "In 2004 we saw the first stirrings of lateral connections between voters using Internet tools and platforms, and now we're seeing the full flowering of that trend.  Voter-generated content and initiatives are going to be the wild card of 2008," Micah said. The second part looks at "how online campaigns are building on the fund-raising theme and making the sites more interactive." 

In Case You Missed It...
The Shortcomings of Traditional Media in Covering Presidential Politics
Much has been said about the inaccuracies of blogs, Wikipedia, and other forms of collaborative intelligence. But traditional centralized institutions also have shortcomings. Earlier this week, for example, many traditional corporate media outlets suggested that Hillary Clinton was the fundraising leader without having complete information. And mainstream media has been more than twice as likely to cover the Iowa and New Hampshire contests as to cover the South Carolina and Nevada contests.
Barack vs Hillary: Gauging the Q1 Money- and People-Chase

So Barack Obama is keeping track with Hillary Clinton in the money chase, with "over $25 million raised," compared to $26 million by her. Or, is he actually ahead, with $23.5 milliion raised for the primary, compared to some unknown subtotal for her?

Note: In honor of the Passover holiday, the Daily Digest will be on be on a diet for the rest of the week and the posts will be shorter.  We will resume full digestion on Monday (too many matzoh balls nothwithstanding).