Viral Video and Campaigns

Over at Article 6 Blog I've posted some interesting links and thoughts (which I hope are also interesting) about the use of viral videos in political campaigns. What's a viral video, you ask?

The term viral video refers to video clip content which gains widespread popularity through the process of Internet sharing, typically through email or IM messages, blogs and other media sharing websites. Viral videos are often humorous in nature and may range from televised comedy sketches such as Saturday Night Live's Lazy Sunday to unintentionally released amateur video clips like Star Wars kid and Gary Brolsma's Numa Numa dance. While the viral video phenomenon has occurred in a largely unstructured manner, a number of organizations are attempting to find marketing strategies that rely on the distribution of viral video, with mixed results.

These are going to be big in campaigns. If you want to check into this more, go to YouTube
and search for the name of any politician now running for office. Then realize that any of those videos can be e-mailed, and you'll see why I think we're going to see more and more of this.

Update: Read Robert Cox's piece in the Washington Examiner. If he's right, I'm a little worried.