BEING SOCIAL NO LONGER MEANS TALKING

MySpace and Facebook dominate the social networking sector of the Internet. And political candidates have embraced both of them to help their campaigns.

Senator John McCain has a MySpace and Facebook page: McCain's MySpace, McCain's Facebook. Senator Hillary Clinton has pages at: Clinton's MySpace, Clinton's Facebook. Senator Barack Obama also has a presence: Obama's MySpace, Obama's Facebook.

All of these sites are built to reach the large audience that the network reaches. Barack Obama has had a large Facebook group created in support of him, which touts a plan to reach 1 million members. It currently is at 705,326. Late last year, former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani received negative attention when it was discovered that his daughter was part of this particular group supporting Obama's campaign. After being questioned by the media about her connection, Caroline Giuliani withdrew from the group.

The social networking phenomenon has extended from the favorite pastime of high school students into being a serious arena for politicians. There may not be many other 71-year-olds on MySpace to talk with John McCain about senior issues, but embracing the youth vote is what every politician has always tried to do and the current way of reaching that younger demographic is definitely MySpace or Facebook.

Tomorrow we will be continuing this series with "One is the Loneliest Number," which will discuss individual candidate Web sites. UPDATE: Part 3 is now available here