In recent times, social networking sites like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter have paved the way for connections among people around the world. One of the various ways that social networking sites have helped in recent times is by spreading the word about candidates. So many candidates have utilized these services, including Barack Obama, John McCain (who has claimed that he doesn’t know how to operate such systems) and smaller candidates, like Ron Paul.
Barack Obama’s campaign greatly utilized the various social networking sites in this past election. His Facebook page currently has over three million supporters. So far they’ve posted 1,823 videos of campaign ads and speeches on his YouTube page. The page has 135,064 subscribers. The campaign’s Twitter page, which posts campaign stop updates and other related news, has 127,272 followers. They’ve posted behind-the-scenes pictures on Obama’s Flickr page, including pictures of the Obama family watching the Election Day results come in. There are currently 52,926 photos from the campaign on the photo-sharing site. Obama even established a social networking site as part of his campaign! The Obama campaign clearly made good use of the social networking sites to promote the campaign, get the vote out and eventually win the election.
Meanwhile, John McCain’s campaign somewhat utilized the various social networking sites in the past election, but definitely not to the extent that Barack Obama’s campaign did. His Facebook page has over 600,000 supporters. His YouTube page has posted 330 videos and all campaign ads, and has 29,177 subscribers. The apparent official campaign Twitter page has 4,846 followers. The official campaign site didn’t really seem to exploit any social networking programs. I guess that they didn’t want to look like Jesus or anything like that.
The other candidates, mainly the third party candidates and others, had to rely on social networking to get the word out about themselves. Ron Paul was one of the Republicans who didn’t throw in the towel until late. He appeared to be one of the cleanest and most decent Republicans running. Currently, his YouTube page has 55,693 subscribers and has posted 136 videos, including ads and television appearances. He has 106,321 supporters on Facebook. Ralph Nader, the Green Party candidate who has been in plenty of recent elections, has 482 supporters on Facebook. Bob Barr, the Libertarian candidate, has 10,745 supporters on Facebook. Apparently Paul was the most popular of these candidates, and I have no idea as to why.
So in all, social networking was a major factor in the recent election. The obvious candidate with the largest number of supporters was Barack Obama, and probably because of this, he won the election. If you need glasses to see that, you might need to get your eyes checked.