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...

In the 2008 election, women turned out in droves to raise money and to cast their votes.

Still, they were unpredictable till the end, making up 60 percent of all undecided registered voters just two weeks before the election.

How do you harness a constituency that is engaged and looking for real answers -- not to mention one that’s too big to ignore?

You can start with one group: mothers. In 2006, the U.S. Census estimated that mothers make up 55% of women ages 15-44, and 80% of women 40-44.

Thursday, July 23rd at the PdF Network
Forging Alliances Online: How MomsRising Built a Versatile Activist Force
1-2 p.m. EST

Join the call!

Since it was founded in May 2006, MomsRising members have taken over a million online and on-the-ground actions on issues ranging from paid sick leave, to healthcare and fair pay. MomsRising works with over 90 aligned organizations, leveraging its grassroots base to achieve their shared policy goals.

Earlier this year, the customizable “Momsrising.org Mother of the Year” video went viral. It gained more than 10 million views to date -- and more than tripled the organization’s membership in just a few days.

This Thursday, Rosalyn Lemieux of Fission Strategy and Katie Bethell of MomsRising will show us how they’re using technology to band moms together nationwide.

Join the call!

Upcoming PdF Network calls:

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

RSVP here!

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

RSVP here!

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.

"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.

For the very first time in the recorded history of all of humanity, the 2008 election saw adult Americans who went online to engage in the political process outnumber those who didn't. Pew's Internet & American Life Project has a new report out that finds a full 55% of American grown-ups got on the Internet to get news about politics or the campaign (60% of adult Americans did this in '08), talk about politics with others (38%), or use specific tools -- i.e. Twitter, IM, email -- to send or receive messages about politics (59%).

One finding that jumps out from the Pew report is that Americans are trending towards relying upon sites for news and commentary that share their political perspective. In 2004, 26% of people who go online for politics reported that most of the sites they visit are in line with their political point of view, rather than a neutral source. In 2008, that moved up seven notches to 33%. The numbers are more striking for younger folk. In 2004, 22% of online users between the ages of 18 and 24 reported that a majority of the sites they visited shared their point of view. This cycle, that nearly doubled to 43%.

But that doesn't necessarily mean we're all wallowing in a pit of likemindedness. It might, instead, just mark the fact that we're consuming news for more sources. Even if I obsessively read the (objectively non-partisan) New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post online everyday, I'd only have to hit four ideological blogs in a day to make "most" of my sources slanted ones.

Here's another statistic from the Pew report that might catch your attention: supporters of John McCain were more likely than supporters of Barack Obama to be Internet users, 83% to 76%. Pew attributes that to the finding that Republicans tend to be wealthier and more highly educated than Democrats -- both strong predictors of Internet use.

The full report is here.

Big Think aims for highbrow web intellectualism and networked conversation -- is it working?

Our "2008 Web Video Odyssey," which was produced by the good folks at PoliticsTV, is up on YouTube: