How the candidates fare in the YouTube marketplace of ideas.

The statistics are right there for everyone to see. We don't care much about the official campaign videos they are dumping over there. We want to see them in their unplanned comic moments.

... Clinton's most watched HillCast, titled "Roadmap Out of Iraq," comes nowhere close in popularity to the video showing her singing "The Star-Spangled Banner" off-key at a rally in Iowa. The HillCast has been viewed more than 15,000 times since it was posted on Feb. 17, the out-of-tune moment nearly 1.1 million times since its posting on Jan. 27.

I'd be worried sick about human nature if it were the other way around.

And what we really love is a guy like James Kotecki:

Several times a week, Kotecki, a self-described "political geek" turned YouTube celebrity, advises presidential candidates on their campaign videos -- from his dorm room at Georgetown University....

Kotecki has one recurring message to the candidates and their expensive media advisers: "The Web isn't TV." As in, Web viewers don't expect to be spoken to, they expect to be spoken with. It's a passive experience vs. an interactive one.

"The Web isn't TV." That's profound -- I mean, with respect to YouTube. YouTube looks like just an easy place to put stuff that would be on TV (if only it were way better or paid for or something). What makes YouTube not TV? The searching and sorting mechanisms, linkability, embeddability, displayed statistics and comments, the ability of viewers to put up response videos, like Kotecki's...

Let's watch some Kotecki:



Actually, Kotecki is a little too scripted and artificial for my taste. But I love the idea of this genre, talking back to the campaign videos. If the candidates do what Kotecki wants and talk back to the talk back, it's going to get mighty talky, and the candidates might get suckered into talking too much to people who are really only a sliver of the electorate. So many dangers lie ahead. So many bloggable dangers. Vloggable dangers!

Why, one could vlog advice to Kotecki about how his videos are a little too scripted and artificial. And there's another thing about the difference between the web and TV. You can't tumble into infinite regress on TV.

ADDED: Kotecki stops by the comments and defends himself against the charge that he's too scripted. Here's Kotecki's blog. Whatever I said about taste in vlog-styles, I have to approve of his taste in templates.

Here's Koteck talking with Jeff Jarvis about campaign videos.