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1. Steve Petersen
   

   March 7th, 2008 at 2:55 pm

   Todd,

   I think that it might also be helpful to see if a candidate launched a issue specific site. For instance, I wrote about some candidate issue specific sites — like Biden’s Head to Head 08 and Plan for Iraq sites along with Richardson’s No Troops Left Behind and McCain’s Mitt vs. Facts (no longer up) sites.

2. Sean Hackbarth
   

   March 7th, 2008 at 3:20 pm

   It would be helpful to see what kind of feedback websites offer supporters. Do they have real-time counters for fundraising totals, number of supporters, and donors? It would be interesting to see if Ron Paul’s innovation catches on.

3. Todd Zeigler
   

   March 7th, 2008 at 5:42 pm

   Sean - good idea and we’ll definitely look at that. I’ll bet very few do it.

   I got an email suggesting we look at whether the videos are original content (like a video blog) or just speeches and stuff. That is a good thought too.

4. Joe Mansour
   

   March 8th, 2008 at 9:02 am

   Looking at whether campaigns have a presence on social networking sites (Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn) and then link to their profiles from their campaign site would be a good criteria.

   The ability to virally spread site content. I.e include links to Digg, Reddit, share on fb, or email site content, blog posts, etc.

   Also - easy to find/use email sign-up forms and email captures on splash pages.

   I’m looking forward to seeing the survey results.

5. Sam Allison
   

   March 8th, 2008 at 1:06 pm

   You should look into mobile/text message usage.

6. Brian
   

   March 9th, 2008 at 10:15 am

   I would suggest you find some way to measure whether the candidates have promoted content through their site that addresses the issues of the campaign in depth. Its probably a qualitative metric (did the candidate put numbers, and details, and make commitments in their addressing of issues) more than a quantitative metric (how many words of text were there, how many issues did they list). But, I believe its important since ultimately the substance of the debate is what will, or should, give voters the tools they need to decide which candidate best represents their interests and will guide the nation in the right direction.

   In short, please measure the content/the substance, not just the tools and activities.

7. vassilis
   

   March 13th, 2008 at 11:50 am

   There is lot of talk about e-democracy and e-dialogue as a vehicle to reengage the citizen in politics, in Europe at least we do talk about it! So, I propose to have a look at whether they promote/include such tools (e.g. e-forums, e-surveys, e-deliberation etc)…They probably don’t but it will be useful to create a tracking record.

8. Chris Linzey
   

   March 14th, 2008 at 3:18 pm

   Todd,
   2 things related to above comments:
   A) Podcasts - Look for candidates who post copies of their morning conference calls. Dave Winer has been pushing for this recently and I couldn’t agree more. When I started tracking the net’s influence on the democratic primaries this year I was surprised to find out that I could not get copies of those morning calls.
   B) Video content - I think tracking the style and content of videos may also help people get a feel for candidates. Do it for the candidate sites and the major social networking, video posting sites. I recently surveyed the difference between the Clinton and Obama presence on YouTube and their separation is quite stark; not just in volume of videos but also in the content.