elections Archive

Video search engine Truveo is announcing the launch of their U.S. presidential election video site today. I remember Truveo presenting about a year ago at the NY Video Meetup and the crowd wasn’t that excited about what they had to offer. Reviewing this presidential search this morning, Truveo seems to return a good number of videos on each candidate. For some videos like those on MSN, you have to click off to the host site to view, others you can watch directly on Truveo. Truveo notes that by going to the host site it helps the viewer to see the video in the best quality. I applaud this as it lets the video host capture the view locally along with any branding surrounding the video.

From their notes, "The election site draws on Truveo’s index of over 100 million videos which includes videos from national media sources such as ABC, AP, CBS, CNBC, CNN, C-SPAN, FOX, NBC and more; international media sources such as the BBC, DIE ZEIT, El Pais, EuroNews, France24, Reuters, SPIEGEL, The Sun, TF1, ZDF and more; local television and newspapers in Boston, Chicago, Denver, Houston, Jacksonville, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Washington, DC, and many other cities; late night shows such as A Daily Show (aka The Daily Show when its writers are not on strike) and The Colbert Report; and Internet sites such as Politico.com, Blip.tv, Dailymotion, Metacafe, MySpace, Veoh, and YouTube. Truveo’s index includes videos from sites, including Politico, ClipSyndicate, Washington Post, Townhall.com and Barely Political, currently not found by other search engines."

Not only is a great way to build traffic, it’s also a way to introduce new customers to Truveo. I certainly hope that AOL (owners of Truveo) will leverage what they have built within the AOL network of sites and the full AOL app.

Last night, here in the U.S., George Bush gave his State of The Union address along with the Democratic response. The Washington Post, for the first time ever, had a live stream of both speeches plus live online commentary from the Associate Editor of the Post.

"The State of the Union Address is a vital means of communication with the American public, and washingtonpost.com upholds its commitment to extend and expand on that communication," said Jim Brady, executive editor and vice president, Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive. "We are excited to continue pushing the boundaries of live reporting with our real-time video coverage and analysis."

As I noted on Monday, pluggd held a battle between the speakers plus their technology allows you to jump to the exact moment of the speech that you are looking for.

We have Robert Scoble and Rocketboom televising the candidacy announcement of John Edwards. This evening, Senator Edwards will host a "video discussion" about the speeches last night.

Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama also used video to announce their candidacies.

Rocketboom analyzed each video announcement and provides some interesting commentary on how each one was created and the "lies" in the videos. beet.tv says Barack won round one based on his "viralability". Andy Plesser notes, "In the election battle for the smartest use of online video, Obama wins this first one over Clinton."

There will obviously be more political blogs than ever before. Fan sites and hate sites will also become mainstream. Who will use the Internet "correctly"? Which Internet team will win?

The bottom line here is that no matter who wins, the online space will play a major role in helping (or hurting) each candidate. Use the online space correctly, gain. Use it negatively, lose. If the candidates think that dealing with the major news outlets is difficult, every pixel will be analyzed online. Part of my overall concern is whether the majority of the Internet who pick apart these messages will actually vote. If so, the Internet community could easily decide the future President.

AOL launches a set of political blogs geared towards the elections this year – isn't it a bit late? Here are some excerpts from their release:

AOL expanded its blogging network today by launching The Stump, a series of AOL News elections blogs focusing on key political races and issues of the 2006 mid-term elections. The Stump will feature a collection of experienced political strategists, educational leaders and local radio personalities that will blog about the news and provide their own political perspective on several mid-term elections.

As a leading provider of interactive election news, AOL News will offer comprehensive multimedia coverage of the mid-term elections, designed to meet the needs of all voters. AOL News features a range of interactive online platforms – polls, message boards, online debates, chats – that let voters express their political views and combines voter resources with breaking news, analysis from a spectrum of world-class political sources. Voters can find out everything they need to vote in the 2006 elections on AOL News about house, senate and governor races from breaking news to poll hours and polling places to a destination where voters can start engaging in the Road to 2008.

You can find their new blog by going to The Stump.