This morning I stumbled across a report from TechCrunch that said MySpace was planning to hold a Presidential primary in January 2008.  As Michael Arrington points out in the TechCrunch article, most of the candidates have MySpace profiles and the MySpace primary will occur before any of the official state primaries.

Arrington also suggests that Facebook would be a better platform for holding such a primary.  His reasoning is pretty sound:  Facebook accounts are linked to an email address (at the very least) while MySpace profiles are not.  You can have as many MySpace accounts as you want.  And while the same can be said about Facebook, it's much more difficult to fake accounts on Facebook.

The technicalities behind each platform aren't what made this article stand out to me.  The fact that such a thing is even happening is what makes it interesting.

For the first time in my life (which isn't all that long I have to admit) the Internet is being harnessed for one of it's greatest potentials:  mass communication.  Presidential candidates have had websites before.  But those sites were usually static, rarely updated pages designed to simply "make a presence".

The candidate's pages are much more than that now.  They're interactive.  They're taking advantage of the things that consumers are into:  video… social networking… Twitter… etc.  And the result is a voting population that feels much closer to their presidential candidates that probably at any time in recent history.

Now MySpace is holding primaries.  Unofficial, of course.  But it's still a pretty big development in the history of political culture in the United States.

As Arrington pointed out, population-wise, MySpace is akin to the 11th largest country in the world.  That's a lot of people.  And while the entire population of MySpace isn't part of the American voting public, the amount that is must be staggering.  And when you think about it, the use of MySpace as a mechanism for voting, polling, and reaching out to the public is soooo smart.

How many of us can be bothered to vote in an actual Presidential election… let alone a primary?  For a country that's built on the foundation of democracy our voting record just plain stinks.  Non-Presidential elections are even worse when voter turnout is considered.  For whatever reason, a lot of Americans just don't bother making the effort to cast a vote.

But do you know what they do bother making the effort to do?  That's right - they make the effort to check their MySpace & Facebook profiles.

Social networks are ripe with polls, surveys, and other places for people to quickly and easily interact.  But this time, instead of voting for our favorite American Idols, we'll be voting for our favorite Presidential candidate.  It makes great sense!  MySpace will throw some easy, clickable poll up and millions of people will vote without even really thinking about what they're taking part in.

It should be interesting to see how the results of the MySpace primary will be used by the candidates, the political parties, and the mass media.  Maybe they'll ignore the results.  Or maybe this is the beginning of a new precedent in polling.

Regardless, I think it's a great use of the power of social networking.  And I can't wait to see how the whole thing turns out.