The battle to become arguably the most powerful man on earth has entered the digital age this time around as both candidates for the US presidency look to utilise digital channels to gain votes in the election race.  The BBC reports how both Barack Obama and John McCain have used the web as a medium for the election campaigns.  Both candidates have used the power of YouTube to broadcast debates and speeches from their campaign creating their own channels with Obama going as far as integrating Google checkout for charitable donations! Barackobamadotcom johnmccaindotcom

Barack Obama has even gone as far as using in game advertising to try and reach the youth audience taking out ads in 18 video games including Guitar Hero, Burnout Paradise and Madden 09!  The ads were to promote his website, vote for change, and are an openly stated as an attempt to “reach young males 18-34″.  How successful these campaigns are remains to be seen, I suspect YouTube is a far more useful medium than Guitar Hero!  I can’t say that I’m concentrating on anything more than rocking out the next big riff and thrilling the crowd with some smoking solos! But maybe that’s just me!

Was it a plant? Wasn’t it a plant? The guy who posted the video on Youtube and Nintendo claim that there is no link between them and this is not an attempt at social/viral media which has gone wrong. In reality the arguement is unimportant as Nintendo will have benefited massively from the exposure Wii fit has gained through this story so whether it originated from them or not doesn’t actually matter, it is still a huge success. Im not sure whether the viewers on Youtube are marvelling at the technology behind Wii fit but they are showing an interest in something!

Some of the articles relating to this story:

Wii Fit Underwear Girl a Marketing Hoax
Wii Fit YouTube clip gets two million admirers
Wii Fit turns YouTube sensation

And here is the link to the video, I would have embedded it but for some reason it is messing up the page layout!

Wii Fit YouTube Video

A useful little list of video search providers.

Search Innovation Spotlight: Video Search
by Bob Heyman, Friday, April 6, 2007

THIS MONTH’S spotlight falls on video search.
While Google and Yahoo offer this service, smaller companies are also making a stir.

Blinkx is a category leader in dedicated video search. The Blinkx technology combines voice recognition with image and contextual analysis. The company has a partnership with Microsoft to power the video search on MSN and Live.com. Blinkx claims the deal made it the “single biggest video search engine on the Web.” Blinkx already powers video search on AOL, Lycos, Times Online and other major sites. It also indexes video clips from around the Web and allow users to search them on Blinkx.com and partner sites.
Here are several other competitors:

Flurl is a Belgium-based video search firm in which Brad Greenspan, the founder of MySpace, has acquired a majority stake. Flurl claims to be the “leading independent video search engine.” In addition to video, Flurl also indexes images, audio and flash content.

SearchVideo is a video search engine and directory created by AOL that lets you search for videos by categories and relevance. Users can also search within specific video channels like MySpace and YouTube. SearchVideo classifies videos according to 10 general categories. It has a feature that allows users to filter videos by cost, length, quality and format.

PureVideo is a video search engine that enables users to search within the most popular video directories and video sharing sites. It also provides a celebrity video directory. Every search result has its own RSS feed, and you can track its status through any feed readers.
Singingfish is a video and audio search engine that enables searches within hundreds of online video channels and video-sharing sites. It allows users to search videos by format and length, and also save search results and email them to friends. There’s also a safe search filter available to block adult content.

ClipRoller allows you to search across the most popular video sites — and as you continue to log in and search for videos, ClipRoller learns your preferences to deliver content that you would like. It also allows you to easily syndicate a video to any other Web site. There is also a ClipRoller ticker to search for your favorite videos from the desktop.

Users of Pixsy can search across dozens of video sites and can save searches and single videos to watch again. Pixsy displays a description of the content of each video, when available, and enables emailing search results.