I decided to visit the official sites for both of these presidential canidates tonight and was surprised at what I found.

barackobama.com and johnmccain.com.

I first visited johnmccain.com and found a well structured website with advertisement like buttons for volunteering, contributions, etc. Also was an easily navigated place for Press releases, multimedia, speaches etc. It wasn’t hard to find out what John McCain wanted me to know about him and his goals and his positions on things.

Then I visited barackobama.com which has a nicely done front page with a video of Mr. Obama welcoming you to his site. But that was it! No other information besides what is contained in that video. There was a place for me to give my name, email, and zip code and maybe after giving that information I might have been directed to another site or page that gives more detail on Mr. Obama.

My surprise was that John McCain wanted everyone to know where he stands and what his goals are with out asking for anything in return. Barack Obama wants your information first before he shares anything other than an introductory video with you.

Now back to McCain’s site. I was looking specifically for something like twitter.com updates or some other social networking mini update on what the candidates are doing. McCain’s site does have a blog or a few area’s where bloging is taking place. there are incentives to post comments on some approved blogs but as far as social networking that was all I found. on Obama’s site, again I found nothing because I refuse to give my info when I have no idea what I am going to get in return.

Let me know what your thoughts are on the way the canidates are using technology. Please keep yoru comments to the technology and not any political point of view.

Until the next time,

Thirteen