viral video

• The New York Times reports that 6,400 voters in Colorado may be disenfrachised thanks to dishonest trainings and misinformation distributed by the Republican Secretary of State's office. Our friends at New Era Colorado are featured prominently in the piece fighting back against the disenfranchisement.
• The Obama campaign raked in the cash in September, pulling in more than $150 million. If you missed it, campaign manager David Plouffe noted that Students were one of the top donors to the campaign, along with retirees.
• For some reason, I've never seen this before. Check out YDA's Young Voter Revolution. Take the pledge and check out the tools and resources.
• The Wall Street Journal business and technology blog looks at some data from Rapleaf and says that different swing states favor different social networks. For instance, Wisconsin youth favor Bebo, while Virginians favor Black Planet and New Mexican youth are on Hi5. This bears more looking into.
• The National Review commissioned a hit piece on Campus Progress. Over at Pushback, Jesse Singal ably rips NR's piece to shreds.
• Zack has an awesome idea to make FaceBook an even greater peer pressure machine to encourage voter turnout and political discussion.
• Skaters in Wasilla fought Sarah Palin and won.
• The LA Times has a rundown on celebrity PSA campaigns.
• Meanwhile, Visible Measures tries to measure the impact of those viral videos to Get Out the Vote. The site looks at which of 4 major GOTV PSAs has the most views, and finds that Leo DiCaprio's celebrity-studded "Don't Vote" video comes out on top.
• The Hill looks at the campaign's presence online and finds Obama ahead, but McCain catching up.
• Are your parents pestering you about ACORN and "voter fraud?" Send them this article from the election law blog.
• Mashable! tries to show a correlation between online activity on FaceBook and offline events in swing states, but doesn't do that convincing a job of it.
• In The Nation, Cora Courrier asks if youth will finally swing the election.
• Finally, a little music to start your day:

Update: Micah Sifry has the best take on this so far.
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If you haven't seen this yet, watch it. I've talked before about how there would be all kinds of viral video in the '08 cycle, and not everything would be as political/satirical as Jib Jab or Vote Different. Here's an example of that. It doesn't seem to have gone viral like the Hillary/Vote Different ad . . . yet . . . but with Tech President and ABC news both reporting on it, it might only be a matter of time.

Update: Kristina Rizga of WireTap takes down that New York Times poll Josh mentions in the comments.
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A few articles worth checking out today:

• Adam Conner discusses the role of FaceBook in dealing with yesterday's tragedy in Virginia.
• Harvard's Institute of Politics has released some new youth polling. Check back later for more in depth-analysis of the results.
• Finally, I don't usually read Mother Jones, but ended up with a copy this week and was surprised by this article about Ava Lowery, a 15 year old girl who is apparently internet-famous for making her own viral videos protesting the war in Iraq. Last week were were talking about making Internet TV; Ava has been doing it for over a year now.

Cross posted at MyDD

The compelling "Hillary 1984" video recently introduced on YouTube represents "a new era, a new wave of politics ... because it's not about Obama," said Peter Leyden, director of the New Politics Institute, a San Francisco-based think tank on politics and new media. "It's about the end of the broadcast era." - Full Article

This strikes me as right, but it's amazing to me that, in all the great discussions of the anti-Hillary Vote Different ad remix, no one is following this train of thought to its logical conclusion.

Everyone is convinced - rightly I think - that this represents the beginning of the end for top-down campaign messaging - or at least a significant shift in the balance of power. Supporters and critics alike now control the message in a remix free-for-all that is more powerful than stale, traditional political advertising, and this represents a radical advance in the public' ability to participate in the democratic debate. Hallelujah, the broadcast era is over!

. . . so why do we keep trying to measure the impact of videos like Vote Different with the same metrics as we do those same stale campaign ads we're so eager to replace?

Krempasky (emphasis mine):