The Facebook Race
Democrat Barack Obama has a "tremendous advantage" over Republican John McCain in the race for the White House – at least in terms of friends on social networking sites, a report showed on Monday.
"As of early September, Obama has more than a five-to-one lead over McCain in number of friends" on the two most popular US social networking sites, Facebook and MySpace, the report by the Pew Research Centre’s Project for Excellence in Journalism said.
Obama, 47, had 1,7 million Facebook supporters and 510 000 MySpace friends, compared to 309 000 and 88 000 respectively on the two popular Internet sites for 72-year-old McCain, the report said.
"The appeal to young people, getting himself known and talked about on social networking websites, activating support online and taking that activity offline by getting people to hold community events… these aspects were very, very developed at the start of Obama’s campaign," Amy Mitchell, deputy director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, told AFP.
"McCain is trying to close the gap now but it’s a little late in the game," she added.
On YouTube, the online video-sharing site, 11 times more people had tuned into the official Obama channel last month than the McCain equivalent.
Obama’s official YouTube channel had more than four times as many videos and about five times as many subscribers, the report said.
"Obama far outpaces McCain on YouTube, no matter how you slice it," said Mitchell.
"He’s ahead in the videos posted by his campaign, which suggests differences in strategy and technique and where the energy and resources are being put," she said.
Having such a massive online presence not only boosts morale and shows that a strategy – probably of wooing young voters – is working, but also gives a campaign "a more sizable built-in audience of supporters for direct updates and appeals," the report said.
This year’s race for the White House is the first in which "campaigns and citizens have made extensive use of the web for organising, fund-raising, networking, and announcing news," the report said.
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