Update: Via Marshall at SplashCast, I have found a site absolutely dedicated to tracking the presidential candidates’ use of social media. (Better them than me.) It’s called techPresident. (By the way, I think we can all just go right ahead and start separating our words again and even capitalizing them correctly. No, seriously. Go ahead. You’ll feel good.)

Also, Marshall has compiled all the YouTube videos by candidates into one channel. Check it.

Update: MySpace has created a page devoted to…well, I don’t know really, but it’s got all the candidates’ MySpace pages in one place.

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I have listed below the websites of the principal candidates who’ve either declared their candidacy for the 2008 presidential campaign or started exploratory committees and filed with the Federal Election Commission. I’ve also indicated which candidates are using which social media tools. If a candidate didn’t even bother to create a web site, I did not list them.

According to the FEC, “As of December 31, 2006, 109 individuals had filed a Statement of Candidacy and/ or Statement of Organization for the 2008 Presidential Election.” It goes without saying I have no intention of making this list exhaustive.

Perhaps I shouldn’t have been, but I was surprised that none of the Republicans are so far using any social media (except for a couple of feeds), but the Democrats are making quite a use of it.

There is also a great use made (well, by the Democrats) of shared media sites, like Flickr, Facebook, YouTube, MySpace, LinkedIn and so on. Well, this is the first presidential election since most of these sites were developed so I guess it makes sense. I have no sense, however, regarding what difference it will make. But the presence of social media, that is, the opportunity for conversation, does make politics more intriguing and less obviously pointless to me.

(By my definition, a page with embedded-player video on it is not a “multimedia page” unless it has comment fields or some other way of supporting or extending conversation.)

DEMOCRATS

• Hillary Clinton (campaign site): no feeds; no blog (placeholder)
• Joe Biden (PAC site): blog; blog feed
• Chris Dodd (campaign site): site feed; blog; some interesting innovations including Start the Convesation feature (uploading supporter audio and video via Evoca and YouTube) and the DoddPod (Dodd’s playlist); social media sites: Flickr, MySpace, YouTube and Facebook
• John Edwards (campaign site): site feed (doesn’t work for me); blog; blog feed; multimedia page; social media sites: Facebook, Flickr, MySpace and YouTube
• Mike Gravel (campaign site): no feeds; blog; forum
• Dennis Kucinich [ah, jeez, really?] (campaign site): site feed; supporter vlog; vlog; forum
• Barak Obama (campaign site): no site feed; blog; blog feed, social network (very impressive); social media sites: Facebook; PartyBuilder; YouTube; Flickr
• Bill Richardson (exploratory committee): no feeds; no blog (one post); social media sites: MySpace, PartyBuilder, Facebook, YouTube, Zanby (yeah, me neither) and Flickr
• Tom Vilsack (campaign site): vlogcast feed; vlog; social media sites: YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, PartyBuilder, LinkedIn, Daily Kos; MyDD (wtf?)

REPUBLICANS

• Sam Brownback (campaign site): no feeds; no blog
• John Cox (campaign site): no feeds; no blog
• Rudy Giuliani (exploratory committee): no feeds; no blog
• Duncan Hunter (exploratory committee): no feeds; no blog
• John McCain (exploratory committee): no feeds; no blog
• Ron Paul (exploratory committee): no feeds; no blog
• Mitt Romney (exploratory committee): news feed; no blog
• Michael Charles Smith (campaign site): blog; blog feed
• Tom Tancredo (exploratory committee): no feeds; no blog
• Tommy Thompson (exploratory committee): news feed; no blog

election, social_media, 2008, president, campaigns