Technosailor.com

There are a couple of election related Twitter projects going on including Twitter Vote Report, which we covered the other day.

Not on our radar at the time, however, was an interesting project from Tropicana that will take the expected high velocity Twitter coverage of the election all day and present it in a unique way.

As a conservative who is also supporting Barack Obama (Yes We Can) this fall, I’m fascinated watching the efforts both campaigns are making to reach out to an internet savvy Generation Y. With mixed results, mind you.

John McCain has been flogged for his gaffes surrounding the internet. Phrases likes, “I’m aware of the internet” are not gaining any points in the arena of internet geek public opinion. It is clear that Barack Obama is winning this critical demographic of 18-35 year olds with a grass roots campaign that encourages small several dollar donations from average web users.

I have a good amount of respect for Jeremiah Owyang. He’s an analyst at Forrester who has done some good work on social media.

On the other hand, why he isn’t well-informed enough to avoid asking really, really stupid questions makes me question whether I should take him seriously as an authority on technology, or at least makes me think he should avoid politics. He asks:

What we see in this presidential election are two approaches to “getting a message out”. On one side, you have McCain’s campaign running a largely traditional political campaign. Sure, they are embracing some bloggers, but largely the GOP machine (which is actually a historically highly efficient machine) is running a tried-and-true campaign, engaging the media, putting out press releases, accepting high dollar donations, etc. Low risk, yet will inevitably be effective as it’s tested and Republicans are very good at it.