As the 2008 US presidential election campaign finally approaches full steam, presumtive nominees Senator John McCain and Senator Barack Obama are facing off in the media to win hearts and minds. But which candidate is making the most of the of online social media services?

A visit to www.barackobama.com shows that the Obama campaign has established itself firmly in the social media world with an offical presence on major services such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, LinkedIn and more specialist sites such as Glee, Eons, MyBatanga, AsianAve and Faithbase.

On the Republican side, John McCain's presidential campaign has developed its basic Web presence with a mult-faceted Web site but McCain lags far behind Obama in terms of presence and supporters in the key online social media battlegrounds.

The McCain campaign currently maintains Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn pages, but lacks a major presence in specialized sites and doesn't currently have an official Twitter presence, though a supporter is currently operating an unofficial Twitter page tracking the candidate's progress in the battle for the White House.

A look at the respective campaigns' Facebook pages is symptomatic of the gap between the campaigns in social media. Obama has a massive lead over McCain on Facebook, where Obama recently surprassed 1 million supporters, as opposed to John McCain's official page which has just 149,505 buddies. The picture is repeated on YouTube where Obama's channel has ten times the number of subscribers of McCain - 58,023 to 5,824.

On MySpace McCain also lags far behind Obama's support with only 55,323 Friends, compared to Obama's 401,807 (maybe John should ask MySpace and Fox owner Rupert Murdoch to give him a hand). John McCain's MySpace page also demonstrates the need for candidates to carefully manage their online presence. John McCain's home page includes a friend comments from user name 'F*ck Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan', hopefully not a indication of McCain's plans in the foreign policy arena.

The social media presences of the two campaigns are summarised below, and as the election continues, we'll come back and review the progress of each as they try to harness support in both the online and offline world.

Election 08 Social Media Showdown

Senator Barack Obama

• Twitter http://twitter.com/barackobama 40,400 Followers
• Facebook http://www.facebook.com/barackobama 1,019,657 Supporters
• MySpace http://www.myspace.com/barackobama 401,807 Friends
• YouTube http://www.youtube.com/barackobama Subscribers: 58,023 Channel Views: 14,495,498
• LinkedIn http://www.linkedin.com/in/barackobama 500+ Connections

Senator John McCain

• Twitter Unofficial Site http://twitter.com/JohnMcCain2008 1,166 Followers
• Facebook http://www.facebook.com/johnmccain 149,505 Supporters
• MySpace http://www.myspace.com/johnmccain 55,323 Friends
• YouTube http://www.youtube.com/johnmccain Subscribers: 5,824 Channel Views: 739,510
• LinkedIn http://www.linkedin.com/in/johnmccaindotcom 500+ Connections