“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…”

YouTube allows you to potentially reach everyone with an internet connection. It’s an easy way to connect with your fans and supporters but it’s just as easy (or easier) to be ignored by the masses.

Senator McCain’s YouTube Channel

Total Videos = 217
Total Channel Views = 784,981
Video with the highest # of views = 390,543
A total of 7 videos with over 100,000 views

Senator Obama’s YouTube Channel

Total Videos = 1,146
Total Channel Views = 14,725,339
Video with the highest # of views = 4,616,204
A total of 7 videos with over 1 million views

If you take just a cursory glance at the two YouTube Channels you quickly see one really big difference.

Obama’s channel has videos of regular people talking to the camera. A feature that is noticeably lacking on the McCain channel.

People want to be famous and see themselves on camera, just watch the jumbo tron at a ballgame. If you interview 100 people and upload the videos on YouTube I can guarantee most of them will watch the video and tell their friends to watch it as well. To paraphrase Seth Godin, be remarkable, meaning be worth making a remark about.

Watch these two videos and ask yourself, “If I supported this candidate, which video would I be more likely to tell my friends to watch.” It’s that simple.

Web Ad: Jobs for America

Unite for Change National Wrap-Up

Now it’s YOUR turn to share your thoughts and comment.

Crossposted at MyMcCainBlog.com

I conducted a little facebook experiment and thought it fitting to post prior to Sam Brownback leaving the race (hums tune "Another one bites the dust")

Here are the numbers of facebook friends for each republican candidate as of September 12th.

1. Ron Paul 23,141
2. Mitt Romney 17,204
3. Fred Thompson 12,718
4. John McCain 9,989
5. Mike Huckabee 4,548
6. Sam Brownback 2,664
7. Rudy Giuliani 980
8. Thomas Tancredo 851
9. Duncan Hunter 654

Total Friends 60,063

Ron Paul in the lead, no suprise there. Rudy Giuliani still in triple digits! That was a bit of a shocker.

Here are the results as of today October 18th (% change in parenthesis)

1. Ron Paul 31,617 (+36.6%)
2. Mitt Romney 19,431 (+12.9%)
3. Fred Thompson 17,688 (+39%)
4. John McCain 12,001 (+20%)
5. Rudy Giuliani 7,041 (+618%)
6. Mike Huckabee 6,489 (+42.6%)
7. Sam Brownback 3,061 (+14.9%)
8. Thomas Tancredo 1,007 (18.3%)
9. Duncan Hunter 822 (+25.6%)

Total Friends 99,157 (+65%)

Best Status Update:"Thomas [Tancredo] is challenging Mitt Romney to a trap shooting contest, loser drops out."

Worst Use of FacebookDuncan Hunter - A Flag for a profile picture, no information, no applications, no photos and no mentiont that he is even running for president.

Best Growth - Rudy Giuliani 618%Followed by Fred Thompson 39%Worst Growth - Mitt Romney 12.9%Followed by Sam Brownback 14.9%

According to these numbers the next to drop out will be Mitt Romney and Thomas Tancredo :-)

I'll be continuing to track these numbers and will be interested in see how the friends count compares to the actual vote. I've also got the numbers for the democrats and they put the republicans to shame. Obama has more friends than all the republicans put together.

What do you think about this data?

It's that time of year, time for pirate costumes, pumpkins and presidential primaries. Everyone it seems is trying to get a piece of the primary pie.

One trend is for startups to find a way for vocal techies to use there new service to promote a candidate.

One company to do this is Jott Networks. They offer a voice to text service. Sign up for an account then call their number, say who you want to contact (a friend, your blog, twitter) then record your 30 second message.

Jott then transcribes your message and sends it out to wherever you want it to go. I use it to twitter on the go without bothering to type in a text message.

Best of all... it's free!

So how does this affect a presidential candidate? Well Jott created a new sister site called JottTheVote.com where you can call in, record a message for your candidate of choice and a short while later it appears on the site. Like magic :-)

I think Jott cares more about getting people to use their service than they do about the 2008 elections but it is still a cool device to try. In case you were wondering Ron Paul has more Jotts than any other candidate. Others are still in single digits.

It's a good way to see how tech savvy a candidates supporters really are. Click here to see my Jott for John McCain.

Another thing that makes this unique is that Jott is sending all the comments directly to each campaign. I'm interested to see how this goes.