Social Networking in the Democratic Party Week 1: Obama is early trend setter on both YouTube and MySpace

Social networking looks like it is going to be a efficient way for the candidates to get there name and views out to the masses this election cycle. So I have decided to pick up on it and will be doing weekly analyzing of the Democrats. For the time being I will only focus my attention on the 2 networking sites who have actually made specific pages for the candidates, namely YouTube "You Choose" and MySpace Imapct.

MySpace

	Friends	Net Gain from last week	Last weeks power ranking
#1 Barack Obama	93803	-	-
#2 John Edwards	17586	-	-
#3 Hillary Clinton	8631	-	-
#4 Bill Richardson	2216	-	-
#5 Dennis Kucinich	1905	-	-
#6 Joe Biden	1494	-	-
#7 Chris Dodd	642	-	-

Barack Obama is far and away the trend setter in Week 1 on MySpace. But the true strength of his MySpace page will be seen over the coming weeks as he has a gigantic lead due in part to his carry over of his page from before to MySpace Impact. Obama and Edwards were the only Democratic candidates that did not start a new MySpace page when MySpace initiated the Impact program. John Edwards has a considerable lead over 3rd place Hillary Clinton but like I said before time will test the strength of the Edwards page.

Second tier candidates are a considerible distance behind the top tier candidates. But they are bunched together so who pokes ahead of the rest may become a viable candidate. Bill Richardson leads in the second tier pack, with Dennis Kucinich and Joe Biden in reasonable range. Chris Dodd is the bottom feeder on MySpace with only a fraction of friends of even the second tier candidates and it appears they aren't using social networking to the extent of the other campaigns.

YouTube

	Subscribers	Net Gain from last week	Last weeks power ranking
#1 Barack Obama	4086	-	-
#2 John Edwards	1477	-	-
#3 Hillary Clinton	1297	-	-
#4 Dennis Kucinich	620	-	-
#5 Bill Richardson	396	-	-
#6 Joe Biden	385	-	-
#7 Chris Dodd	138	-	-

Barack Obama is far and away the trend setter in week 1 on YouTube. Obama is handily ahead of the other top tier candidates John Edwards and Hillary Clinton who have very similar numbers to each other so far. On the other end of the spectrum Chris Dodd must not be putting much effort so far into the social networking as he is not getting much support at all. He is barely registering a 1/3 the support of his nearest rivals Joe Biden and Bill Richardson. And all to his lonesome stuck out in the middle is Dennis Kucinich whom over the next few weeks his pace will decide if he can make a move towards the top or will he fall to the trenches.