John Edwards Announces Presidential Bid on YouTube
Posted on December 30, 2006
John Edwards has always been a tech savvy politician. He has blogged. He has used podcasts. He gave the keynote speech at Gnomedex. So it was not a big surprise when pre-announced his candidacy for U.S. President with a YouTube video filmed in New Orleans. The video is called "Tomorrow Begins Today." The Washington Post reported on John Edwards' use of non-traditional means to reach votes.
Nor did Edwards hope to spread his message by putting himself at the mercy of others. Like all candidates now, Edwards has his own Web site and his own videographer. As he did some volunteer work in the 9th Ward on Wednesday afternoon, he taped a message that his campaign posted later that night on his campaign Web site and on YouTube.com. What he said in that video was nearly identical to what he said to a bank of network and local television station cameras on Thursday.NewTeeVee reported that John Edwards' YouTube video was largely ignored by the mainstream press. A Google News search for the keywords "John Edwards YouTube" generates just 57 results. That's not very many and some these results are blogs. Technorati shows 843 results for the same keywords. But not all the MSM ignored the YouTube announcement. There are articles, editorials and/or posts from the Chicago Tribune, SFGate.com, News&Observer, Seattle Times, Winston-Salem Journal and The Southern Pines Pilot, NC.
The Associated Press called the announcement a glitch. The AP said, "Former Democratic vice presidential nominee John Edwards jumped into the presidential race Wednesday a day earlier than he'd planned, prodded by an Internet glitch."
However, a post by Jeff Pulver included a copy of the text from an entry on the videobloggers mailing list that says the video was just uploaded by Andrew Baron from Rocketboom.com. The date from the videoblogger mailing list is Wed Dec 27, 2006 6:48 pm -- so it doesn't look like the Wednesday upload to YouTube was a glitch. Where did the Associated Press get the idea that this was a glitch?