Google-owned YouTube has jumped on the political bandwagon with the launch of a new politics site Thursday.
"The new YouTube Politics site will feature the latest campaign ads, parodies, gotchas, and speeches, offering you a 360-view of the election," said YouTube on its blog.
YouTube news and politics manager Ramya Raghavan told POLITICO, "We wanted to paint a really holistic view for what politics looks like on YouTube."
"We’re seeing that citizens have an enormous appetite for getting political information online."
Earlier, microblogging site Twitter started its political advertising. Social networking site Facebook — already a prominent player in the 2008 presidential elections in the US – launched a political action committee (PAC) in the run up to next year’s presidential elections in the US. Networking site for professionals LinkedIn sprang up a surprise by holding a town hall meeting for President Barack Obama last month. YouTube has launched a Town Hall online platform earlier this year.
However, the YouTube Politics goes a bit further than just aggregating videos of speeches by candidates. The video blogging site promises to provide a "holistic" view of the candidates on the 2012 campaign trial, supplemented with graphs, charts and other tools that projects a snapshot of their popularity among voters. YouTube Politics will also display data of video views, search queries within YouTube, subscribers and video shares.
YouTube said on its blog, "As the 2012 election heats up on YouTube, we want to make it even easier for you to keep your finger on the political pulse.
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"Wondering which candidate is surging and which candidate is falling flat on YouTube? The channel will also let you take a deep dive into each candidate’s YouTube stats, so you can see which one has the most video views, subscribers and shares, as well as how they stack up against each other."
YouTube added, "There’s a long way to run in the 2012 electoral race, but one thing’s for sure – there will be some unforgettable YouTube moments along the way. Youtube.com/politics will help you keep up with the story."
