With the race for the White House hotting up every day, what
can be more needed right now than a social network built
entirely around the 2008 US presidential Election.
Taking political social networking up a notch, we get Election
2008 TV.
This social network for the political set is focused on video
as their
social medium of choice. It’s a nice way to make the election process
more personal.
Support Your Candidate Of Choice
Election 2008 TV gives users a place to put their political
videos
supporting candidates, to see candidates in the news, to see the videos
put up by others about candidates, and more.
Each video has a way to
comment and discuss the content, and the site offers you a way to
“friend” people who share your views on the candidates and politics in
general.
Clunky Site Interface
I thought the site appearance was somewhat crowded, clunky and
unattractive, but I like what they are doing enough to soldier through.
The video upload process for my test video was simple. I am
not very
good at working with video – words are my medium of choice – so to have
an easy way to upload is key for me.
I was able to upload a test video,
then delete it (it was only a test of the upload system, not relevant
to the site) in a matter of minutes with no lag time at all.
Once your video is uploaded, Election 2008 TV offers you a
variety
of ways to get the word out about your candidate or party
platform.
Embed Codes & More
They offer embed codes, widgets and links that work on your MySpace, FaceBook
and other social networks, web sites, blogs and emails. They’ve gone
out of their way to make sharing your political views easy.
The site offers traditional social options like groups and
friends.
It also gives you a way to favorite items so can come back and see them
again later.
Conclusions
Election 2008 TV seems to have taken all of the positives
of video sites like YouTube,
combined
them with social networking sites and forums and created a nice way to
give and get visual inputs about politics in this election
year.
It
isn’t the best I’ve seen, but it does exactly what it advertises, which
is nice. With a better visual impression and some navigational
improvements it could have staying power.
Leslie Poston is a contributing author discussing the social networking world, her work can be found on Profy.com
