Editor's note: This article appeared in the June 25, 2008, edition of Quirk's e-newsletter.

The percentage of Americans who regularly go online for news about the presidential campaign has increased from 13 percent in 2004 to 24 percent for the 2008 elections. Forty-two percent of young adults ages 18 to 29 use the Web as a primary source, up from 20 percent in 2004. As a whole, nearly one in four American adults regularly learn about campaign information from the Internet. A quadrennial survey conducted by Pew Research Center for the People & the Press and Pew Internet & American Life Project, Washington, D.C., explores the increased usage of Web 2.0 applications (i.e., social networking sites and online videos) for topical election news. With the Internet as a leading source of campaign news for young people, the role of social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook is a notable part of the story.
 
Overall, more than a quarter of those younger than age 30 (27 percent) - including 37 percent of those ages 18-24 - have gotten campaign information from social networking sites. This practice is almost exclusively limited to young people; just 4 percent of Americans in their 30s, and 1 percent of those ages 40 and older, have gotten news about the campaign in this way.
 
As of June 17, 2008, Barack Obama had 996,542 friends on Facebook and 398,453 friends on MySpace. John McCain had 146,151 friends on Facebook and 55,281 friends on MySpace. Obama and McCain have also created their own online communities my.BarackObama and McCainSpace, respectively. The effort presidential hopefuls put toward Web 2.0 applications may be more than a ploy to seem hip or a popularity contest, but only time will tell how well Web 2.0 can predict a president or rock the vote.