We're excited to announce the launch of 10Questions.com, a new kind of online presidential forum, one that aims to make the most of what the internet has to offer to politics. On 10Questions.com anyone will be able to directly pose video questions to the candidates for President and choose which ones they most want answered. Candidates will be able answer in detail and without the time limits imposed by traditional televised or on-stage debates. And citizens in turn will be able to give the candidates feedback on whether they actually answer those questions.

Citizen-journalists chosen by Decision '08, contest for "Why are you a Democrat/Republican," what do pollworkers of the 21st Century look like?, fears of security threats at the Democratic National Convention, Twitter scandal erupts over fake "speakerpelosi" account, and coded messages directed at Evangelicals in John McCain's "The One" ad.

Hillary Clinton has been talking up online diplomacy, as Micah Sifry and Nancy Scola reported in this space, and her husband is getting in on the act, too.

The New York Times convened several tech experts this weekend to debate online privacy and the "overuse of social networking tools." Professor Clay Shirky stole the show, recounting a college tequila run that ended with his hair on fire. That youthful indiscretion was a harmless secret for Shirky, back in the days went you had to be physically present to witness a private event:

Society has always carved out space for young people to misbehave. We used to do this by making a distinction between behavior we couldn’t see, because it was hidden, and behavior we could see, because it was public. That bargain is now broken, because social life increasingly includes a gray area that is publicly available, but not for public consumption.

So nowadays, a tequila flaming head incident cries out for instant memorialization via cell phone, Facebook and YouTube. That may ding some millennial reputations, Shirky contends, but eventually it will recalibrate societal norms to tolerate a greater range of benign misconduct – as long as adults “cut young people some slack.” So if President Clinton dabbled in pot and President Obama once tried some blow, the argument goes, then surely we can chill out on today’s kids:

Just as Bill Clinton destroyed the idea that marijuana use was a disqualifier to serious work, the increasing volume of personal life online will come to mean that, even though there’s a picture from when your head was on fire that one time, you can still get a job.

The arc of social networking does bend towards reality; a society that sees more of itself should eventually discard some delusions about its own behavior and propriety. The examples of Clinton and Obama, however, actually cut in the opposite direction.

"Mock not," pleaded blogger Andrew Sullivan as he posted an instaclassic of hyperbole, "The Revolution Will Be Twittered" in praise of Iranian supporters of Mir Hussein Moussavi who took the streets and - in some cases - used the short-form blogging services to post about the scene in Tehran.

Mock on, says I.

There is something like digital catnip on the breakfast bar for western politicogeeks in the story of Iran's disputed election and the ensuing power struggle roiling the Middle East's largest theocracy. Anything that suggests that some of the tools and tricks adopted among the wired, iPhone-wielding politically active classes in the United States may be used to - dramatic pause - start a revolution in one of the world's most dangerous countries carries the potency of a synthetic narcotic injected into the great XML vein of the Internet...

"If you're not on YouTube, you're not part of the discussion."

So said Steve Grove of YouTube in a Newsweek interview just before the first of the 2008 presidential primaries, adding, “It’s the world’s largest town hall.”

By the end of 2008, online political video had expanded beyond “macaca” and 1984. Users (and sometimes, snowmen) submitted questions for candidates to debate; candidates uploaded campaign videos that made their way to primetime without spending a cent on advertising; and a single candidate speech garnered over 6 million views.

The amount of content currently pouring onto YouTube alone — about 200,000 three-minute videos added every day — is the equivalent of 385 always-on TV channels. In July 2008 in the United States, approximately 91 million viewers looked at nearly 5 billion videos on YouTube. During the 2008 election, 4 out of 10 Americans reported watching political video online.

Are any of those eyeballs watching your videos?

Join us this Thursday, June 25th at the PdF Network, where Head of News and Politics at YouTube Steve Grove will clue us in to “Politicians and Campaigns on YouTube: What's Working,” and of course, what’s not.

To join the call (and get the opportunity to pose your questions directly to Steve), you’ll need to join the PdF Network.

Once you’ve signed up, you’ll be able to RSVP for this and any of our other upcoming calls with such experts in the tech and politics space as Katrin Verclas (MobileActive) and many more.

Oh, and if you’re coming to the PdF Conference in June, your PdF Network membership is included in your registration.

In the tumultuous days after the Iranian election, we turned to the internet for a moment-by-moment account of events on the ground -- and wondered how all of this would affect the ultimate outcome.

Supporters of opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi used the internet to campaign and organize -- but the Iranian government also used technology to its advantage.

For all of the potential of the internet to change political communications, is technology changing the fundamental nature of power?

Can the keyboard ever win against the barrel of a gun?

Fresh off her lunchtime session on the topic at PdF 2009, Katrin Verclas, co-founder and editor of MobileActive.org, will share share insights of Iranians' and our experience of this and other controversial elections through social media.

Thursday, July 9th at the PdF Network
Social Media in Crisis: Lessons from the Iran Election Aftermath

RSVP here.

And we’ve added a whole slew of upcoming calls:

July 23 | Forging Alliances Online: How MomsRising Built a Versatile Activist Force | Rosalyn Lemieux, Fission Strategy

Aug 6 | Journalists and Bloggers: Navigating the Changing Media Landscape | Scott Rosenberg, co-founder Salon.com & author of "Say Everything: How Blogging Began, What It's Becoming, and Why It Matters"

Sept 10 | How to Harness Changes in African American Participation Online | Cheryl Contee, Fission Strategy & JackandJillPolitics.com

Sept 24 | Measuring Online Advocacy & Fundraising: Learnings from the 2009 eNonprofit Benchmarks Study | Marc Ruben & Karen Matheson, M+R Strategic Services

Oct 8 | Thirty Staffers and No Office: How to Make the Virtual Organization Work, the MoveOn Model | Ilyse Hogue, MoveOn.org

Oct 22 | Mobile Volunteers: How to Harness Microvolunteering for Your Cause | Jacob Colker, The Extraordinaries

Dec 3 | A $10 Challenge Turns into $25 Million: The "Nothing But Nets" Case Study | Shannon Raybold, UN Foundation

Missed a call? Listen to a podcast of any one of our previous calls and learn about how to Google for votes, fundraising and organizing through Twitter, evaluating returns on investment in social media, how to pitch (and not pitch) a political blogger, building a social network, longtail nanotargeting, and more.

Here's the video of Michael Wesch's keynote talk from the second day of Personal Democracy Forum 2009. Wesch, a professor of anthropology at Kansas State University, first gained acclaim as the author of "The Machine is Us(ing) Us," a video about how the internet is changing society (that has been viewed more than 9 million times), and I was thrilled that we were able to get him to speak at PdF this year.

6.3 million: that's how many people viewed Obama's 2008 race speech on YouTube. 8.7 million clicked to see him dance his way onto the Ellen show.

By the time the Democratic and Republican national conventions of 2008 rolled around, Obama's team had uploaded about 1,110 videos on the candidate's YouTube channel -- more than four times what the McCain campaign had uploaded.

Is there a secret to moving a video messages online? What's the right mix of content, quality and, yes, quantity?

Join the PdF Network on Thursday, February 4 as Kate Albright-Hanna, formerly Director of Video for New Media, Obama for America, and now at VBS.TV, shares tips on building the right mix of compelling video content online.

Thursday, Feb 4th at the PdF Network
Digital Conversations: Using Online Video to Grow Your Campaign
1-2 p.m. EST

Join the call!

Check out our upcoming PdF Network calls...