YearlyKos becomes Netroots Nation; a new widget gets out the women vote; a state-by-state study of voters' web habits reveals unsurprising results: IA and NH are the most tuned-in states; and Hillary Clinton launches a new rapid-response site, shows a renewed effort to control the flow of online information.

Caroline Giuliani likes Barack Obama; Fred Thompson goes 2.0; Huffington Post exposes the money chase; vote-trading gets legalized; bloggers debate diversity issues; Mitt Romney defends his religion on YouTube; and Elizabeth Edwards explains that "We can't make John black, we can't make him a woman."

Howard Dean on "the most extraordinary invention for empowering ordinary people since the invention of the printing press: ....speaking for myself, even after the campaign four years ago, I didn't realize what a powerful tool this is.....It has re-democratized America. There is an enormous shift in power." More after the jump...

The bigfoots of the press were all in Chicago this past weekend for YearlyKos, and they churned out lots of coverage. So did the littlefoots of the web. Plus, Ron Paul beats Barack Obama on YouTube!

The Web on the Candidates -- Still at YearlyKos

Continuing the theme about YearlyKos becoming so big, so quickly (it's only in it's second year), Jose Antonio Vargas, writing at the Washington Post, articulates the paradox of Kos becoming a major player in Democratic politics, yet still existing outside the mainstream. No one figure illustrates this contradiction better than Hillary Clinton. Despite being the Democratic frontrunner, she consistently lags behind John Edwards and Barack Obama in DailyKos straw polls. But it's now mandatory that she pay heed to the netroots and attend YearlyKos, a fact that underscores the netroots' power. "Look, the fact all the major presidential candidates are attending means that the Net roots, in a very short time, has earned its seat on the big table," says Simon Rosenberg of the New Democrat Network (as Micah Sifry reports, Clinton will be participating in a Presidential candidates forum on Saturday but not in a "breakout" session immediately after. The news broke last night at the first keynote; the crowd booed loudly). Kos namesake Markos Moulitsas Zúniga is realistic about YearklyKos and DailyKos' effect on Democratic politics. "The fact is, the Net roots cannot win elections by ourselves," he says. "But we can be a key component to a winning Democratic strategy."

[UPDATE] Peter Daou, Clinton's Internet Director, has announced that Clinton will in fact attend the breakout session. "After seeing the mix-up, and knowing that the organizers have worked very hard to pull together a great event, Hillary asked her staff to rearrange her schedule and we have been working with the organizers since early this morning to work out the details," Daou writes.

The Web on the Candidates -- Yearly Kos Edition

Byron York at the National Review concludes that since YearlyKos is attracting the Democratic establishment, its "Kossack" minions (the "Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy") have therefore become an important wing of the Democratic establishment. "The turnout in Chicago shows that the Kossacks and colleagues from other activist websites have taken their place as the newest wing of the establishment in Democratic-party politic," York writes. "They’re not exactly the new bosses; it’s not as if the unions and interest groups have disappeared, but it is true that the netroots now rank alongside them. A candidate who wants to win can no longer ignore the netroots, even if he or she would like to." True enough. A huge movement has been built over the last two years, one that has grown faster than the Goldwater-inspired Republican movement of yesteryear, and now all of the candidates need to pay heed to the netroots.

Jonthan Kaplan tells readers of the Hill about this Kos thing, explaining that "the three-day convention allows left-leaning political activists, policy entrepreneurs and citizen pundits who pay a $275 registration fee to strategize with Washington’s heavyweight pols and policy wonks and flaunt their power in front of the mainstream media." It's true; I'm currently watching a burly netroots blogger pump up his muscles in front of an unimpressed CNN exec... But seriously, it's really about the parties. "The party getting the lion’s share of the early attention as 'the place to be' is a Friday night bash sponsored by Time magazine." I admit it. All roads lead to the Swampland soiree. Sue me.

Let's see what the griefers do with this: supporters of Barack Obama have constructed an apparently unofficial Obama HQ in Second Life. Right now it's rather sparsely decorated, and when I went this afternoon there was only one other avatar there.