Google, Yahoo Set Up Websites For Elections

Google and Yahoo have launched special sites dedicated to coverage of the coming Lok Sabha elections starting April 16. Google estimates that 25 million of the 45 million internet users have attained the voting age and will actively look for election information and status online. Not only Google and Yahoo, the internet has emerged as a good media for people to discuss and debate about the coming elections which include social networking sites like Facebook and Orkut.

A tool on the site, called "Your Manifesto," also allows users to select issues of importance that let politicians know what interests them. "This feature will be of tremendous value for political parties, because it provides an insight into what is going on in the voters' minds," Krishna (VP for Emerging Markets, Yahoo India) said.

I guess the main intention of Google and Yahoo to come up with the sites for elections is only to build brand in the Indian community and to cash-on the advertising revenues. BJP is already put lot of investment in Adwords. Not only this, other political parties have also come up with their own websites. Few of them which I was able to gather are (not sure how many are official)-
http://www.aicc.org.in/, congress.org, manmohansingh.org, rajeev.in, lkadvani.in, bjp.org, prajarajyamparty.co.cc, narendramodi.in, telugudesam.org, soniagandhi.org

L K Advani a la Obama?

I do not have much interest in writing on politics or giving my opinion on the elections outcome. But, when I came across a banner of Shri LK Advani / BJP on one of the websites when I was browsing, I was intended to click on it and see what is in it. Next, it made me anxious to know his presence in online and social media.

Looking at the past there was no role of marketing or online strategies for the campaigns. And now, the advantages of leveraging social media and internet technology to connect directly with people has not gone unnoticed and the bug has bitten our political parties. The political leaders are trying to ride on the internet technology wave especially to connect with the 100 million first-time voters who would start voting from this general election. But, the way Obama leveraged the social media and networking for online campaign, I guess Advani is trying to follow the same foot-steps (I mean only in online and social networking strategies). I was suprised that the first adopter to this social media is not the young leader Rahul Gandhi or Sachin Pilot, but the 81 years old — Shri. LK Advani.

I have read in a news article that Advani’s team has started with a Web 2.0 and blog, and now his team is leveraging YouTube, Facebook, Orkut and Google Adwords to reach out to the young voter.

However, what remains to be seen is whether he can pull it off the way Obama managed. I just want to have your check on the stats which I got for one of the news article. (Source: RWW)

Facebook: Obama has more than 5.4 million supporters and 570,000 plus wall posts.
YouTube: Obama’s YouTube address garnered nearly a million views.
Twitter: Obama sent out more than 260 Tweets to 144,000 "followers”, updating supporters on his whereabouts.
Other Online tools: The “My Barack Obama” community beautifully used online tools to organize offline activities and generate donations.

In shortl, Obama’s managed to raise $600 million from 3 million people, mainly through small contributions made online.

If we look at the stats of Advani’s team (Source: My own findings. The above numbers can be inaccurate):

Google Adwords: Search on Google for the keywords – Rahul Gandhi, Sonia Gandhi, BJP, TDP, blog, elections, Narendra Modi, Manmohan Singh, Mayawati…may be more. You will see Advani’s ads linking it to his website or his blog. Suprisingly, they are not bidding on ‘Laloo Prasad Yadav’ as the keyword.
Website: His website is buzzing with activity. It has blog, discussion forum having more than 5000 posts, speeches and more. As soon as I went to the page there is welcome note from Advani (You need to have QuickTime plug-in to listen to it. The website does not has mp3 or mp4 audio). It has achieved an impressive Alexa ranking of 13,914 as on yesterday. A Google page rank of 4/10 for the home page. But no page rank yet for inner pages. The visitors traffic to the website is about 400,000 visitors in the last 30 days. Impressive numbers for a website to start with.
Blog: Has well written posts, but infrequent. The last post is dated February 1, 2009. And I see as on date, 122 comments posted here. I did not want to click and read the comments though.
Facebook:Has only 140+ supporters and not much activity happening.
Orkut: He has 531+ as supporters.
YouTube: His channel has 191+ videos and 82+ subscribers as of now.
Twitter: I read on one of the blog that Advani himself does not update the status but his support group does it. The profile used to say so. Ironically, this account was suspended on February 15, 2009 so I can’t provide the number of followers.

Nevertheless, a good beginning and I just imagine that many more Indian politicians engaging online with their voters in the near future. Also, I would love to chat with Laloo Prasad Yadav some time.

My question here is can Advani (or any political leader or party) gain similar support from Indian people who browse the web? Obama won the elections because he is Obama. By walking on the marketing tactics of Obama will not make Advani or anyone else the PM. Of course few net savvy guys may change their mind and vote for Advani, but the question will be how many? Next, Obama used the social networking for Americans. Advani is doing it for Indian audience.

Update on Mar 4, 2009: Oh God! After posting this on LK Advani, my whole blog is carrying his ads and banners. So, do click them and see what BJP has in store for us...