MySpace, the largest Internet social network, said on Sunday it has launched a politics channel ahead of the 2008 U.S. presidential elections.
The News Corp.-owned site’s politics site, called the Impact Channel, will feature links to the profiles of 10 presidential candidates — five Democrats and five Republicans.
MySpace attracted some 60 million U.S. users in December, according to comScore MediaMetrix, and about 90 million globally.
Over the past few months, candidates have vowed to use the power of the Internet to communicate directly with voters. Internet and technology-savvy young potential voters, like MySpace’s audience of teens and young adults, have been notoriously hard to reach.
Democratic hopefuls Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Sen. Barack Obama, former Sen. John Edwards, and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson have all used the Web to announce their plans.
“Our digital candidates banner will be the yard signs of the 21st Century and our political viral videos and vlogs (video blogs) are the campaign ads of the futures,” Chris DeWolfe, MySpace chief executive officer, said in a statement.
The Impact Channel will feature videos from the candidates, voter registration tools and job-listings. It will feature fund-raising tools in the coming weeks.
At launch, Clinton’s profile page claimed about 359 friends. Obama’s page listed 66,080 friends.
Giuliani’s page was locked from public view.
The channel can be found at http://impact.myspace.com.
A MySpace spokeswoman said a few candidates were making last minute changes to their MySpace profiles, which will be available shortly.