"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.

An eager diner-goer auctions off Barack Obama's half-eaten waffle; Google bombing the truth about Obama; Steve Grove starts blogging; John McCain fights the North Carolina GOP about a new TV ad; a prescient Obama memo wasn't actually leaked, but handed, to the press; and a handful of Members of Congress discover blogging and the web.

The “YouTube debates” are neither real debates, nor a serious use of the internet's potential. Worse, as blogger Jason Rosenbaum cogently argues, "By heavily moderating the questions, and by deliberately choosing silly, fluffy, or offbeat videos to show the nation, CNN is reinforcing the old media idea that the Internet entertains, but does not offer real, serious discussion or insight." Instead, they want you to turn to the real "experts"...on CNN.