IP Democracy: Obama Embraces Web Video in Presidential Bid

Beet.TV’s Andy Plesser has this item today about rising Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama and his campaign’s embrace of Internet video. The Obama campaign kicked off his exploratory committee yesterday with a three-minute video powered by Cambridge, MA-based Brightcove.

Plesser says that Brightcove’s support of the campaign will be “multi-faceted,” going beyond simply the support of the Brightcove player and system, but extending to the creation of an Obama “channel” on Brightcove and setting up a mechanism by which the campaign can publish videos automatically to blogger and other web sites.

The 2008 presidential campaign is still in its infancy, and yet, as we can see with this development, the role of the Internet in the election is already ramping up to surpass even the potent impact of the web during the mid-term congressional elections.

Update: Rachel Sklar at the Huffington Post offers her take on Obama’s announcement, which bypassed the traditional broadcast media and went straight to voters via the web. She says it was pretty savvy move, one that has quietly captured the attention that a big traditional media splash might not have.

Pretty savvy move, actually, on Obama’s part, with the obvious bounty of media coverage to come (never mind in the lead up), to say nothing of the suddern traffic possibilities on his website (if he slaps Google ads up there quick he can totally rake it in!). That’s why it’s savvy— Obama knows that he’s been the object of scrutiny and fascination, obviously, and this is a great way to sow he’s not courting it (even though the citizen journalism touch will provide additional play).

Posted by Cynthia Brumfield on January 17, 2007 8:13 AM to IP Democracy