50 Best Websites 2007

Each of the 17 people running for President has their own YouTube channel, now helpfully grouped by the service under the banner You Choose '08. The candidates work, to varying degrees, to feed their public's appetite for stump speeches, talk-show interviews and TV ads, and more casual video-moments like Tom Tancredo bashing the Senate immigration bill while driving. And sometimes the candidates do try to have fun with the medium. Hillary Rodham Clinton's May 16 clip asking "the American people" to suggest a campaign theme song generated some good buzz, and racked up nearly 600,000 views in three weeks. (It also gave critics an opportunity to get their licks in, by suggesting "Maneater" and "Cold as Ice"). You Choose '08, which launched March 1, allows video responses, text comments and viewer ratings by members who subscribe to a candidate's channel, but the channels are, in the end, products of the official campaign. Like any YouTube user, a candidate can remove responses at their discretion, so if you want to see the embarrassing stuff, the parodies and the gaffes, you'd have to search elsewhere—like on YouTube's main page.

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