I am not interested in discussing politics right now and I'm not endorsing John McCain for President. (Sound Familiar?)
John McCain launched his Presidential campaign website this weekend. The design of the site is fabulous. At first glance it appears to be very similar to Barack Obama's seminal site. There is a blog. There are some well done, very high quality videos. There is "McCainSpace," which is an obvious play on MySpace and appears to be the beginnings of a vertical social networking site. But the similarities stop at the visuals.
As I did on Barack Obama's site, I signed up for a McCainSpace account.
On my.barackobama.com I was able to sign up for a blog account and post within seconds. Here was my first test post. On McCainSpace, this was not so simple. The sign up process is a three step process - the last step being email verification. I filled out a form that included more personal information than I would have to give on any other blog platform, including address, city, state and zipcode. When I tried to activate the page, I was presented with an error message. I've been trying to get it approved for the past 30 minutes, but with no luck.
It does not appear that this is ready for prime time. They may have been in a hurry to get something out in response to Obama. When I'm able to get my McCainSpace site verified, I'll post a link to my first attempt here in the comments.
Further evidence that this may have been hastily thrown together can be seen when you click on the John McCain's Blog link. There isn't actually a blog there yet. It gives some great instructions on how to create your own blog, and a message that McCain's blog will be coming soon, but no actual blog. It also talks about joining the "Virtual Town Hall Via YouTube." Again, on first glance, I was excited. But I then found that only a few McCain hand selected videos would be presented to the public.
Also, one of the things that was brilliant about Obama's site was how his video section was set up. Each video has controls to allow you to get the "embed code" to put that video on your own site. [see the graphic to the right] McCain's site does not allow you to share his videos, email direct links to the videos or embed the videos into your own site. It's very difficult to mount a viral campaign if you don't allow information to be easily shared.
Overall, the impression I was left with from McCain's site, as it stands now, is that I was being spoken to, not spoken with. It was like looking at a well designed, but static, real estate website, as compared to reading a well done real estate blog. JohnMcCain.com has the appearance of Web 2.0, but is clearly a work in progress. He has a good deal of work to do before his site will have that "power of you" feel.
;)
;)
OK. I was finally able to get McCainSpace to verify my account. The link is http://jwturner.johnmccain.com
The page came preloaded with a fundraising goal set to $200. A bit presumptuous. I tried editing it down to zero and think it will work, but the site is not dynamic. What I mean by this is that the changes are not instant. I also tried to hid my email address and location, but when I submit a change, any change, the following message is displayed, Your information has been saved and should be available on your site shortly.
After several minutes, I finally went in to "delete" the fundraising message. But the delete button doesn't work. So, I made it private. But that didn't remove the fundraising plug, just hid the total dollars donated from public view.
There is also no "logout" link on the site, and it appears to be sensing my ip address, so unless I go delete some cookies, I can't view it as you will view it.