Let's start with the man of the hour--John Edwards. Edwards has his full website up--complete with links pointing to his his biography, news, events, multimedia, blog and the obligatory donation button to the Edwards campaign. There is a One Corps button which links to a separate social networking page for the Edwards campaign.
John Edwards site.There are plenty of links here to play around with on the Edwards website. As for the Edwards blog, the staff has created an online diary site, where anyone can can create an account and post diaries and comments, similar to the Daily Kos. Overall, it is not a bad site, considering how early it is in the presidential campaign.
Our second stop is Hillary Clinton's website. Or perhaps I should say Hillary for President? Hillary's website is also pretty clean, red-white-and-blue-styled theme with the standard links for her biography, "Take Action" button to contribute or volunteer to the campaign, a newsroom for press releases, a blog, and the Contribute button for soliciting campaign contributions. Hillary Clinton's site is a lot cleaner and easier to navigate through over that of John Edwards’s site, which might just overdue it on the links.
Hillary Clinton's site.Clinton's site has a link for a blog, however the blog is not yet posting. The Clinton blog is running a First Guest Blog Post Contest, where supporters are free to submit their own entry for the guest post of Hillary's blog. I'm sorry, but that is a little too tacky here. Clinton would be better off either creating an open blog, where anyone can post diaries and commentary, or have her own blog staff create postings for her blog. Why should I even bother trying to submit my own post in this Hillary Blog Contest, when I have my own blog to write and publish? A second question that I would have to ask is once Clinton's campaign staff selects the winner of this first guest posting for Hillary's blog, will they also publish the rest of the contestant blog entries, or provide links to their blogs, so that we can compare them to the winning blog entry? Guess we'll find out when Hillary presents the winner to her First Guess Blog Post Contest.
Now let's turn to Barack Obama's website and blog. Obama just formally entered the presidential race today. What is even more surprising is that both his website and blog are completely up.
Barack Obama's site.Earlier this morning, Obama's blog was not yet up--the blog link on the home page was there, but it was still linked to the home page. Obama is also putting up a community blog. But Obama's blog is rather interesting. Obama has incorporated his community blog into a complete social networking site. On this site, you can create links to your friends, view messages, start your own fundraising drive, create your own groups, and write your own blog posts. John Edwards has a similar social networking site, called One Corps, but it is separate from his blog. Obama also has the same links on the top of his page--Home, Learn (a biography), Issues, Get Involved, Blog, Newsroom, and a prominent, red Donate button for campaign contributions. However on each of the web pages, you can still access the social networking site through clickable buttons, set up as My.Barack.Obama.com. Obama's site is an excellent example of the soliciting of netroots support by incorporating a social networking site directly within a political website. Obama's website is really the future of political websites.
Next is Governor Bill Richardson's website. Richardson's site appears to be a fairly standard website with links to Home, About Bill, Issues, News Room, Blog, and a Support Bill for campaign contributions or volunteer.
Bill Richardson's site.The Richardson website doesn't have as many links or content on the home page, preferring to redirect such content within the top link buttons. In fact, the Richardson home page is mainly directed towards soliciting political campaign contributions--the real content of the site is found within the top web buttons. The Richardson blog is a standard blog written by the campaign staff, and not a community blog. The Richardson blog does not allow you to post comments. Richardson's website does allow you to connect into a social networking site through My Space. In fact, the Richardson website has links to Partybuilder, a Democratic Party networking site, YouTube, Flickr, Facebook, and Zanby.
Those are the main Democratic Party presidential candidates here. I know that Senator Joe Biden is running, and you can see his website and blog here.
Joe Biden's site.However, with Biden's latest missteps, I seriously doubt that he has a chance against either Clinton, Obama, or even Edwards--unless all three totally screw up somehow in the next year and withdrawal from the race. Ohio Representative Dennis Kucinich's website and video blog can be found here.
Dennis Kucinich's site.Kucinich is really ahead of his time here. Instead of creating a standard written campaign, or community blog, Kucinich has created a community video blog, where participants can upload their own YouTube videos on Kucinich's video blog. Kucinich's community blog is through the comments section on front page postings, and a forum section where anyone can log in and post content. Both Edwards and Richardson have YouTube links where supporters can post videos, however Hillary Clinton's website does not have a YouTube video link--Hillary Clinton's site has a video link, where campaign staff will post videos of Clinton speeches.
It is time to take a peek over to the Republican side of the websites and blogs. We'll start with Arizona Senator John McCain. McCain's website is still an exploratory site, with very little content, links, or really anything. The only thing you can do on John McCain's site is donate money, or join the McCain team. There is a biography of McCain, and a couple links to some McCain speeches, but that is it. The McCain site does have a future link for creating your own McCain social networking site, but all that is there is a request for contact information. For a supposedly front-running Republican presidential candidate, McCain's exploratory website is a complete wasteland.
John McCain's site.Then again, McCain may be more interested in pandering to corporate interests, Religious Right-Wingers, and the rich elites rather than ordinary Americans.
What about Rudy Giuliani's exploratory website? Surprise! Rudy Giuliani's exploratory website has more information than McCain's site!
Rudy Giuliani's site.Giuliani's site is still an exploratory site, mainly used for soliciting campaign contributions and volunteers. But Giuliani's site at least has multiple links highlighting his biography, and his record as mayor of New York. And Giuliani's site does provide some press news--McCain's site doesn't even provide any news links. But while Giuliani's site has more content than McCain's, it is still pretty skimpy here--there is no blog, no stance on issues, no social networking linkage, no press releases, and no linkage to video content. We have the two front-runners for the Republican Party, and they have yet to build their campaign websites--even as all the Democratic candidates have their presidential websites up and running.
I will say this. Mitt Romney's exploratory website is cartainly close to becoming his main presidential campaign website. The layout of Romney's site is pretty much a standard campaign website--with the standard biography button, a news and press release button, an issues button, a Mitt TV video button showing video content selected by the campaign staff, and a contribute button.
Mitt Romney's site.There is no blog on Romney's site. There is a simplified social networking site called Team Mitt, but there are no links through any of the main social networking sites such as My Space that can be found on the Democratic sites. It is close to becoming a regular campaign website--a campaign website like what you would see back during the 2004 presidential campaigns.
And now for the real irony about the Republican websites. The GOP long shots Senator Sam Brownback and Representative Duncan Hunter are really the only two Republican candidates that have fully functioning presidential websites.
Sam Brownback's site. Both sites will do the job that they are suppose to do--providing favorable web content on issues, biography, press releases, and soliciting campaign contributions for both presidential candidates. The layouts on both sites seem rather simplified, like they were templates from the 2004 or even the 2000 campaigns. Both sites do provide links to video content that is presented by the campaign staffs.
Duncan Hunter's site.Neither Brownback nor Hunter's websites have a blog or any social networking links. One thing that is really interesting on Hunter's site is the full page requesting campaign contributions--the Hunter campaign asks for your name, address, phone, donation amount, and credit card payment information. It is as easy to contribute to the Hunter presidential campaign as it is easy to buy a pair of shoes on any online store.
Hunter's campaign contribution page.I know that the other candidates’ websites have their own contribution pages, with credit card payment information as well, but there is something so early 2000ish about the layout on the Hunter contribution page. Hunter's site also has an email link on the front page, allowing the Hunter campaign to email a newsletter to your web address. However, you cannot read the Hunter newsletter on the website itself. Some of the other sites that have email links to newsletters include Mitt Romney's site, and John Edwards site--which actually has the newsletter published on the Edwards website iself, rather than requesting an email link. Both Brownback and Hunter's websites are solid sites, but they really lack any excitement or pizzazz for making you want to go to their sites and learn about the candidates.
Finally, there is Mike Huckabee's exploratory website. Another early 2000ish presidential campaign website.
Mike Huckabee's website.Huckabee's site is still an exploratory website that is in the process of converting into his regular campaign website. The layout is simple and clean, but still lacks any excitement or pizzazz. There is currently no video or blog content on the Huckabee site. There are links to press releases, issues, and a Huckabee Team link, which could provide a foundation for a Huckabee social networking site. But surprisingly, the real strength of the Huckabee exploratory site is Huckabee's biography. There are a whole host of links regarding Huckabee's leadership roles, accomplishments, and a number of Arkansas state issues. Huckabee's biography is probably the most detailed biography in terms of content and links that I've seen on any of the presidential candidates--either Republican or Democrat. Will Mike Huckabee's biography make him electable? I won't say anything yet, except that even Huckabee's website has even more information introducing Mike Huckabee as a candidate for president than either John McCain's or Rudy Giuliani's exploratory websites--perhaps even more than any of the presidential candidates' biographies, on both the Democrat and the Republican side.
That is it. That is the roundup for the presidential websites for both the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates. What I find rather ironic is how the Democratic websites are embracing new modes of communication--especially through video, blog, and social networking. Edwards, Clinton, Obama, Richardson, and even Kucinich have links and pages soliciting the netroots community, providing a social networking site for their supporters. The Republican candidates websites have refused to even embrace this new form of networking, instead requesting a top-down tier of asking for your contact information, then probably bombarding you with countless junk email soliciting campaign donations as the presidential campaign starts in 2008. Even looking at the page layouts on the Republican sites, they appear like they were created back in the 2000 or 2004 campaigns--and these sites are suppose to be designed by professional webmasters! Does that make the Democratic websites better? Perhaps better designed, and more open towards embracing new technologies and new means of providing web content to potential voters and supporters, and allowing supporters and voters to upload their own content to these Democratic sites. That is the big difference between the Democratic and Republican websites. The Republicans are about seven years behind the Democrats in creating new political websites, and embracing new web communications technology.
It is going to be interesting to see how the websites of both political parties fare as we get closer to the election year.
UPDATE: After cross-posting this story on the Daily Kos, I received a comment from Teacherkin, regarding this story. As Teacherken pointed out in the comments section on my Kos post, I totally missed Iowa Democratic governor Tom Vilsack’s presidential website in my original posting. My apologies for the error. So here is Vilsack’s website.
Tom Vilsack's site.The most striking thing about Vilsack’s website is that it doesn’t look like a political campaign website at all, but rather like a three-column blog. It is a very clean site, very easy to navigate—perhaps even cleaner than Obama’s site. Vilsack’s site has all the social networking links. One thing that Vilsack’s site has that none of the candidate’s websites have is an online campaign store, where you can order campaign buttons, bumper stickers and tee-shirts. Talk about slick. Teacherken does point out that Vilsack's site will be undergoing a major redesign, to be rolled out next week. It will certainly be interesting to compare Vilsack's new site, with that of his old site.
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