Political Social Networks: Election TV

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.

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.

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. 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. 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.