More on the RedState ban on Ron Paul "shills"; Matt Stoller responds to Patrick Ruffini's analysis of newly-released Facebook data; as we suspected, media coverage of the election is more horerace-y than ever before; Barack Obama will participate in the second MySpace/MTV presidential dialogue; Sam Brownback belatedly updates his website with news that he's dropped out of the race.

Stephen Colbert gets a Facebook group; more data fun over at ronpaulgraphs.com; Barack Obama is the next participant in the MySpace/MTV Presidential Forum -- where are the Republicans?; Todd Zeigler on Obama's latest "personal" email.

Slate writers on the glories of Google Suggest; James Kotecki officially joins the Politico; are DailyKos' traffic numbers artificially inflated by Sitemeter?; the lack of social conservatives online; techPresident is profiled by the Washington Post; Leon Wolf leaves the Brownback campaign; Marc Ambinder thinks Chris Dodd's web team is the most innovative out there; Barack Obama and the 21st-century fireside chat; a report from Elizabeth Edwards' meetup with mommy bloggers; and Obama's blog outreach guy leaves the campaign.

Newt Gingrich is advising Fred Thompson to use video when, or if, he announces; asking if the Internet really matters in election politics; Barack Obama launches Generation Obama; and Obama, Sam Brownback, and Ron Paul are the only candidates to support an act that would create "a kind of Google for the federal government";

The Web on the Candidates

It's good to be back! The, er, south Pacific (or was that the north Atlantic?) was splendid.

The Ames Straw Poll results are in, and Mitt Romney has won handily, with 31% of the vote.  The big story, though, is Mike Huckabee's surprising second-place finish, which came despite a relative lack of money and resources. Meanwhile, Sam Brownback finished a disappointing third, just a couple of points ahead of Tom "Let's bomb their holy sites" Tancredo, and six points ahead of Ron Paul, who finished fifth, proving that his fanatical online support has yet to move offline.

An in-depth look at the online warfare preceding the Ames Straw Poll tomorrow, including the return of mini-Mitt, the ultimate test for Ron Paul's online movement, and digital dirty tricks. Plus, an exclusive look at Barack Obama's new interactive video banner ads, and Fred Thompson courts the "safe online transactions" vote.

The Web on the Candidates

Barack Obama's campaign has gone viral, writes Time's Karen Tumulty. "No campaign has been more aggressive in tapping into social networks and leveraging the financial power of hundreds of thousands of small donors," she says. While Obama has been the most successful at utilizing the web to generate micro-donations from 258,000 supporters in the first two quarters of the year, John Edwards and Hillary Clinton are also trying their hand at smaller donations and larger communities. After Edwards advisor Joe Trippi made his amusing video of himself baking a pecan pie (Tumulty called it "embarrassingly awkward") with fellow advisor Jonathan Prince, $300,000 came into the campaign, with donations as small as $6.10.

Karen E. Crummy at the Denver Post has discovered two spoof websites that claim to support Sam Brownback. For example, at Baptists for Brownback 2008 you'll read that Brownback believes that the earth is flat, refers to rapes as "unplanned sexual events," and other untruths. Another site, Blogs 4 Brownback, traffics in the same kind of material. Both sites exhibit a kind of comic version of conservatism, making inaccurate, and, depending on your point of view, funny or offensive claims about Brownback's political and religious beliefs. While these sorts of sites present a message control problem for the candidates, Crummy writes that "the impact of parody or critical websites is unclear. In the case of the Brownback sites, some bloggers have bought into the rhetoric and dismissed Brownback and his campaign as 'wingnuts.'" But Richard Davis of Brigham Young University doesn't think they make much of a difference. "Sites like these don't sway undecided voters or push away (Brownback's) supporters. I think the biggest effect is that it's embarrassing for the candidate."

The Web on the Candidates

The web is turning political novices into political organizers, writes the Lehigh Valley (PA) Morning Call. Two months ago Michele Tims, a social worker in Allentown, "started an online group for the Democratic senator, hoping for little more than a few new friends. Instead she finds herself leading a community of about 35 Obama enthusiasts in the Lehigh Valley." Outsourcing organizing to a campaign's supporters has, for Obama, resulted in more online fundraising than any other candidate. The article features some intensely local examples of how Obama supporters are taking up organizing and fundraising after joining the campaign through my.barackobama.com.

The Candidates on the Web

Barack Obama gave a big foreign policy speech yesterday to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, and his promotion of it has changed the tone of his home page, at least for now. Although there's no video of the speech on the site yet (let's hope it's coming), you'll find the full text of it, which is a marked change from the supporter's testimonials the site usually features. Obama has often been criticized for his reluctance to talk hard policy, but this speech seeks to alter that perception, and his home page as changed to suit that goal. Will the site return to the supporter-testimonial model, or will we see more of a focus on policy and the issues?

At the Politics Online conference yesterday, a number of people questioned some of my comments on this site. The general theme was "TechPresident is supposed to be candidate neutral, but you seem to spend a lot of time beating up on McCain". I was asked why I don't give equal criticism to Romney, Giuliani, and the other GOP candidates.

To set the record straight, I would love to treat all of them equally, but the simple fact is the others aren't doing anything. Other than MittTV, which I have beat up on for it's reliance on a sender/receiver model of communication, the other GOP Presidential hopefuls are doing very little online that even attempts to innovate.

TechPresident reader Patrick Rodriguez sent in a chart he compiled showing which presidential candidates are hot on Digg, and whose stories are most frequently buried (hidden by users).