Va-Va Video
The following guest entry was written by Julie Barko Germany, deputy director for the Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet.
Candidates rise and fall in public opinion, but this election season had one constant: YouTube is the media darling 2006. We e-mail YouTube videos to each other work. We read about the latest and funniest on our RSS feeds. We turn on the news and watch yet another segment on the YouTubization of politics.
Video is all the rage. But video evolved in a new way this season, and it didn’t happen on YouTube. It happened on your mobile phone. The DeVos for Governor campaign in Michigan launched a campaign ad designed for mobile phones from its very own .mobi Web address.
If you view www.devos.mobi on your Web browser at work, it is underwhelming. View the site on your mobile phone while you stand in line for coffee or wait for the train to work, and you access easy-to-read (on a two-inch screen) content, as well as a short, just-for-mobile campaign ad.
Sure, you can download your favorite political ad on your iPod from your Mac or PC and carry it around in your pocket just waiting for 30 seconds of boredom. Or you can watch real media in real time on your mobile phone. It’s immediate, and – most importantly – it’s interactive.
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