With the 2008 presidential campaign suddenly intensifying, it's a good time to lay down some baseline references for watching the race online. I spent a couple of hours last night tracking down various numbers on the Democratic campaigns, which I report below. Tomorrow, I'll get to the Republicans.

I looked at a couple of indicators of online sentiment: the number of friends each campaign has tallied on MySpace; the number of wall posts they've garnered on their Facebook pages; the number of incoming blog links on Technorati; and the number of photos with the candidate's name mentioned in the description on Flickr. There are some additional measures to look at, which we'll get to later, but these four are pretty clean to compile so we'll start there. (The following numbers are from Sunday January 21, 2007.)

First, and perhaps the most newsworthy: Despite having a far less developed website and online team than the other top tier candidates, Barack Obama is leading the Democratic pack in terms of bottom-up enthusiasm online. He is beating Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and the rest of the Democratic pack across three of these four measures.

As of Sunday, Obama had the most friends on MySpace (22,538), the largest number of wall posts, where Facebook members add comments on his official page in support of his candidacy (2,637), and the largest number of incoming blog links according to Technorati (2,988). Only on Flickr was he outpaced, by John Edwards (who had 1,590 photos with his name in the descriptive text, compared to 882 for Clinton and 798 for Obama).

That said, Hillary Clinton is also doing very well online. Her MySpace page boasts 16,930 friends; on Facebook she has 2.240 wall posts; and her site has 2,222 incoming blog links. Edwards isn't that far behind, with 8,991 friends on MySpace (plus another 1,369 attached to his wife Elizabeth Edwards' page, which is not an insignificant factor), 649 wall posts on Facebook and 1,318 incoming blog links.

The other contenders are far behind in their efforts to attract support online, though nearly every campaign is pointing potential supporters to social network hubs like the sites we're surveying. Tom Vilsack has 1,096 MySpace friends, just 71 wall posts on Facebook, 300 incoming blog links and 278 photos on Flickr. Dennis Kucinich isn't doing that poorly considering how little respect he gets as a candidate: 510 MySpace friends, 103 Facebook wall posts, a healthy 1,355 incoming blog links (a reflection, no doubt, of longstanding interest in him going back several years in the blogosphere, as with some of the others), and 160 Flickr photos. Joe Biden has 1,346 MySpace friends, another 518 friends on Facebook (he hasn't claimed his official page there, hence the data on his number of friends is visible), just 120 incoming blog links and a paltry 67 Flickr shots. Chris Dodd is lagging badly, with only 59 friends on MySpace; 123 on Facebook; 93 incoming blog links and just 64 photos on Flickr. Lastly, Bill Richardson, who just announced his campaign, has only one friend on MySpace (Tom, who else?), zero friends on Facebook, only 92 incoming blog links and 138 Flickr photos.

There's lots to glean from these numbers, as well as from looking at how the various campaigns are faring on other major social hubs like YouTube and on the Democratic Party's own social network hub-let, PartyBuilder. I plan to get to those topics in due course (and we'll soon be launching more intensive coverage of all of these topics here at PDF). But for now, just an overview comment. It's really interesting to see how the online numbers roughly mirror offline support, such as it may be, in early polls. People are talking about Obama around the coffee machine at work; they're also talking about him online on the blogs. And whether it's a bumper-sticker, a lawn sign or a wall post or a friending, they're declaring their affinities in all the places where they can. Same with Hillary, and to a slightly lesser extent, Edwards.

But what remains to be seen is how these online social hubs not only mirror public opinion, but also--perhaps--become engines for shifting opinion as well. Some of that will depend on how the campaigns relate to their supporters online; will they see them mainly as cash machines to be milked, or will they figure out how to turn these early motivated quasi-supporters into active volunteers who can multiply their impact on the race? Will they push activities and issues at their supporters, or will they use the new technologies to engage them in dreaming up what the campaigns should be about and what the candidates should be for? The answer will play out over the coming year...

Technorati Tags: Barack Obama, Bill Richardson, Chris Dodd, Dennis Kucinich, Elizabeth Edwards, Facebook, Flickr, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, John Geraci, MySpace, PartyBuilder, Technorati, Tom Vilsack, YouTube

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