
This is the John McCain installment of a series of 11 posts I am presenting today here at ElephantBiz.com surveying the social-media aspects of the websites of the 11 Republicans currently running for President. (See: "Grading the Candidates' Blogs.")
McCain's campaign website, www.johnmccain.com, is a state-of-the-art website, as you'd expect for a well-funded campaign that started off as the early front-runner in the race and attracted a lot of the GOP's top campaign talent.
The site includes a well-done blog, which accepts reader comments, and a blogroll of 21 conservative-leaning blogs, though anyone familiar with many of the blogs on the list will know that its not a "Bloggers for McCain" list of blogs supporting the McCain campaign.
The McCain blog offers RSS feeds on five topics - Iraq, Health, Economy, Spending, and Campaign, the latter being, presumably, campaign news.
McCain's website also has something called McCainSpace, an "online community" of McCain supporters where, if you register, you can "connect with other supporters to build our network of grassroots activists, take action and have fun" - and also build your own pro-McCain website.
I haven't registered for it, so I can't tell you how it is doing, but the concept of McCainSpace - a walled-garden online community - seems rather counter-intuitive. There are already big public social media networks - FaceBook, MySpace and YouTube, for starters. Why not build "McCainSpace" within those platforms, where McCain supporters might rub up against people who aren't yet backing McCain?
In terms of effective and broad use of social media, I'd give the McCain website a B.
Update: For reviews of social media efforts of the other 10 Republican presidential candidates, see the list below:






» Grading the Candidates' Blogs from ElephantBiz
After noticing that my other blog, BillHobbs.com, is listed on the blogroll of Fred Thompson's new pre-campaign website, ImWithFred.com, I decided to check the blogrolls on the websites of the other 10 Republicans currently running for president, a... [Read More]
Tracked on: June 18, 2007 10:54 PM | Permalink to Trackback