techPresident - YouTube: Who Gets It? - Comments

Candidates on YouTube

EmergencyCheese — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 01:58:34 -0500

For the past few weeks, I've actually been making YouTube videos about just this topic. Each video looks at a specific candidate's official use of YouTube. They are available
here . In case my HTML fails, it's http://www.youtube.com/EmergencyCheese .

I agree with much of what's in this article. Two other candidates (although undeclared) that have official YouTube channels are Clark and Gingrich. Clark is doing a great job of generating views and subscriptions - even though he's not even in his most-viewed videos, he's laying the groundwork for future viewers when he does decide to get more Presidential.

The thing YouTube brings to the picture is community

Raven Brooks — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 17:02:57 -0500

The thing that YouTube brings to the picture is community. There are people out there every day viewing videos, regular people who may or may not be political.

Furthermore people are already used to sharing YouTube videos on their blogs, on myspace pages, etc. No matter what kind of technological advances campaigns make on their web properties they won't be able to win a significant number of users over any time soon.

Campaigns should be doing all of the things you mentioned already, and they certainly shouldn't be putting all their eggs in one basket. But YouTube offers a broader community, a chance to reach people who aren't political.

What you are suggesting is equivalent to suggesting that campaigns should maintain blogs on their site but never go out to other communities to interact with people. Or going even more old school, release press releases but not have blogs.

I'd consider myself on the upper end of the scale of being politically active and I'm also young, and I can guarantee you I wouldn't hang out on a candidate's website all day to comment on what they are putting out - they need to bring the message out to places I and people like me frequent.

YouTube doesn't get it.

JasonRosenberg — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 16:29:49 -0500

I think you put all webvideo at risk when you refer to webvideo under the title "YouTube." While YouTube is a great place to post a video (it’s free and no download is required to watch videos) YouTube is a terrible place to find and organize videos. Many candidates are either hosting video on their site (which is expensive) or they are hosting video on premium sites such as BrightCove or higher quality sites such as Revver. Mitt Romney and Barack Obama use applications that not only allow their campaigns to post their video, but organize it as well. These candidates, and Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick before them, use web video application to create their own networks. These networks neatly organize campaign videos, television commercials, user generated content, speeches and behind the scenes content in one place.

YouTube is messy hard to navigate, easy to confuse users with pseudonyms. An opponent of Hillary Clinton’s can easily post nefarious content on YouTube by spelling the Senator’s first name with only one “L.”

Campaigns should syndicate their content through embed codes and RSS. Good tools for syndicating content are Revver, blip.tv, splash media, BrightCove and ROO Media.

Campaigns (and companies) should look for syndication tools other than YouTube and the internet community should avoid using YouTube as a term for syndicated webvideo content.

rosenberg(at)echoditto(dot)com

YouTube: Who Gets It?

Raven Brooks — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 13:52:21 -0500

One thing to watch this presidential campaign cycle will be the usage of YouTube by presidential candidates. YouTube allows a presidential candidate yet another avenue to engage potential supporters and voters, and it does so for an incredibly low price tag. All one needs is a digital video camcorder, a computer and an internet connection. The YouTube community doesn't demand the high production values that a TV audience requires. Another important aspect of YouTube is the viral aspect of it, particularly among an increasingly active and growing demographic, young voters.