Man, if only everyone would figure this out.  Myspace is a monsterous tool for networking and advertising and hardly any Dems are there.  It's just sitting there waiting, for free, for any candidate that wants to reach youngish, net-savvy but not necessarily politically engaged folks.  I've said it before, I'll say it again.  I could manage 50 candidate Myspaces in my spare time probably, and I'm sure there are plenty of volunteers out there who would make sure I didn't have to do that many if someone would just ask.

Suggestions:

Lucas is right on the money--ADD more photos on a regular schedule, and more importantly, change the default picture to a new image every week or so.  The best thing to do on Myspace if you want a lot of page views is to set up a page that seems living, dynamic, and fluid.  The page you have right now looks a little static due to the default background.  Customizing it will go a long way.  You can do a quick google search for tips on how to customize Myspace pages.

Another thing--video.  If you have a youth-oriented Youtube clip, by all means, embed that stuff on the profile.  Feel free to even include another photo in the "About Me" section.  It really helps.

Also, people really like it if you leave a comment on their page when they add you as friends.  But, since Jack isn't actually running his own page, I'd understand if you were hesitant to do taht.

Great idea. It was interesting watching the myspace battle in the California Gubernatorial primary.

One thing we kept on the DL about the Hackett campaign is that we had a couple of people spending all day and late into the night reaching out over myspace to local youth during the final push. The feedback was astonishing, people seemed as interested to talk as they are when you knock on their door. Peer-to-peer is such a stronger model than top down, I'm glad to see you taking advantage of this.

Right now, I think Russ Feingold has the most friends (4,129) of any Democrat followed by Phil Angelides (1692).

Of Senate Candidates, mydd'er Pete Ashdown has 430 friends and Ned Lamont has 50 (get on it Tim!).

Anyone I'm missing?

Great to see Jack Carter's use of MySpace.  I have long been arguing that we need to reach out to online communities beyond the standard liberal blogosphere.

I hope a lot of you also check out Ned Lamont's campaign MySpace and add him as a friend.  (He's currently at 50.)

Also, my one comment is, try to get people who can immerse themselves in the MySpace community.  As a 46 year old, I'm not the best person to speak MySpace Lingo, but I did give it a try in this blog post:

Like Joe is so Emo.  Stop by, read it, and hopefully have a chuckle.

More thoughts:

Connect with Dem networks. Specifically Democratic Party, MySpace Democrats, Save The Internet, etc.

As you get some high profile friends (for example, the ones I mentioned), edit your top friends to reflect your networking.

Finally and most importantly, add Matt Stoller.

Facebook is similar social network software for college students.  Ask most college students about it and they will tell you that they log on almost every day.

Make sure you have your interns set up Carter facebook groups at their schools.

Carter events near campus can be publicized with the event feature.

You can search for liberals, people from a certain town, people interested in politics, etc...  It's the ultimate in targeting.

Facebook advertising is incredibly cheap -- 3000 people for $5!

Hey Sarah.. Keep up the great work.  I hope this race gets more attention from the netroots.  I sent just sent Jack a contribution this morning.  Just a thought... I wouldnt use the term "viral" to describe outreach.  It has bad feel to it, and can be a exploited liability.  

How do you keep track of identified supporters? Lets say lots of people who are actually registered voters in our state were to visit the site, and even express support, is there any way to track their support and mobilize them to vote?

The classic problem of any political campaign is that the campaign has lots of people say "I like you and want you to win." Being able to get those people to actually vote is another thing entirely.

I remain skeptical and while I think its great you're doing it, I do think that it creates a false perception that this is reaching out to people who wouldn't already be voting.

As you have probalby learned by now, Democratic areas in NV tend to max out at about 70% turnout and the ones that are the most vote-rich are not the ones on MySpace -- they are blue collar white and Latino precincts.

Keep it up but lets not confuse this with actual party-building on the ground.

I'll look at adding Jack as a friend.

I know that I've found a myspace page for John Laesch's campaign.  Maybe someone should put together a list of all the candidates who are on myspace.  I would, if only I had the time.

Florida gubernatorial candidate Rod Smith has a myspace profile. Check it out:

http://www.myspace.com/rodsmithforgovern or

Another note for you or any other candidate reading this who's interested in Myspace...have someone check the friends requests at LEAST twice a day.  Get them in as quickly as possible, before they forget they added you.

'm managing a state senate campaign in Rhode Island and we've already got two Facebook groups (and we're working on getting more) and we've just put up a MySpace group (www.myspace.com/patrickin2006).  Our familiarity with MySpace puts us in pretty much the same boat as Sarah, but the bottom line is that it's still really exciting to see that we can get other young people involved.  

One suggestion that I have is having college volunteers set up faux facebook profiles of your dad, which some politicians have already started doing.  That way, as on MySpace, you can put up more personal information and make it easier for the college kids to relate to him.  

No, I don't mean to try and mislead people, I think that, as long as you're clear about who the actual person behind the group is, it can work.  The "elect this candidate" groups are great, but if you have a really committed volunteer at some school who's clear that they're the person behind the profile, you can include information that wouldn't make sense in one of the groups (such as favorite books).  It's also a very different way of seeing information about a candidate (largely like having a MySpace profile).  It's not a strategy for garnering a large number of votes, but it's one small part of having people remember who you are or something about you.

We're working on a David Hahn for Governor MySpace page in Nebraska.  Here's one of my concerns: do you screen out what look to be sexspammer profiles?  How do you manage the comments?