Diego Santiago
Rock stars, movie stars, sports figures and now even politicians are joining the party by adding friends to their customized pages on Myspace.com.
At least five of the official nine Democratic candidates for the presidency on 2008 have a page on the now world-famous Web site.
Candidates range from the popular Hillary Clinton (Sen. D-NY) and Barack Obama (Sen. D-IL) to the less well-known like Mike Gravel (Former Senator-AK) and Dennis Kucinich (Rep. D-OH).
With this, Myspace.com is now another way for candidates to create and advertise an image to everyone.
With slogans like “Let the People Decide” or “This IS the Moment,” it looks like every candidate is trying to influence the majority of users on Myspace, which primarily range from the ages of 18 to 25.
This age group accounted for almost 4 million votes in the presidential election in 2004 and it could easily impact future results.
“Myspace is a great way to get an edge over your opponents in a presidential race,” said Pierce College student, Lionel Huerta.
“If the younger generation is careful with all the information that is given to them, then maybe an impact in the elections could be felt.”
It should be no surprise why candidates are starting to use Myspace as a propaganda system.
It connects to millions of people across the country, important information is shared easily and, most important of all, it is free.
Running for the presidency is not cheap by any means. Just ask President George W. Bush and John Kerry, who raised a combined total of more than $300 million during the last presidential campaign.
With this new method, candidates can save huge amounts of money.
But popularity, not money, is the key factor that today’s candidates want to achieve with this Web site.
So far, Obama is achieving that goal by becoming the most popular candidate with almost 62,000 friends and extremely positive feedback.
Perhaps, this is because his page is the friendliest and most detailed.
Information like his zodiac sign, the high school he attended and even the fact that he was a student at Occidental College in Los Angeles from 1979 to 1981 aim to make his page the most attractive and welcoming to all.
His ‘friends’ mug shots mostly show young people posing with self-made Barack paraphernalia.
Clinton is second on the popularity charts among Democratic candidates with almost 15,000 friends on her page.
Some of the candidates don’t even reach 100 friends; such is the case of Christopher Dodd (Sen. D-CT).
On the other hand, Republican Party candidates are not using this system quite as much as the Democrats.
Only John McCain (Sen. R-AZ) has the most significant amount of friends, but is not close to the numbers that Obama and Clinton are posting.
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