First, have a look at the Political Video Barometer, to see the rising professionalization of metrics regarding the spread of political videos.

Then watch this video discussion flagged by Cause Global, where it is argued that “the internet has killed Karl Rove politics”:

“”Check out this panel discussion from today’s Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco about the role of social media in Barack Obama’s election win on Tuesday.

New York Magazine writer John Heilemann moderated Huffington Post Founder Arianna Huffington, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, and political strategist Joe Trippi, who concluded that Obama’s victories in the Democratic primaries and the presidential election would not have been possible without Internet-empowered fundraising and social networking. “Were it not for the Internet, Barack Obama would not be president,” Huffington said. “Were it not for the Internet, he would not have been the Democratic nominee.” By contrast, she said, “…the McCain campaign didn’t have a clue [about Web 2.0]. …The Internet has killed Karl Rove politics.”

More commentary below the video.

Here’s a good summary by Cause Global citing some metrics of Obama’s internet success:

“Indeed, an analysis of the vote today by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press says that without a doubt, “the overwhelming backing of younger voters was a critical factor in Obama’s victory.” Obama drew two-thirds—or 66%—of the vote among those younger than age 30, Pew reports. In addition, Trendrr, an online statistics mashup tool, shows Obama had a clear lead in using social media to connect to his audience, as well as an overall lead in winning the attention of the blogosphere as a whole. On social networks, Trendrr says, Obama held a big lead over McCain, with 844,927 MySpace friends compared with McCain’s 219,404. Between November 3 and 4 (election day) alone, Obama gained more than 10,000 new friends, while McCain only gained about 964. On Twitter, says ReadWriteWeb, Obama gained 2,865 new followers between November 3 and 4, for a total of 118,107, while John McCain’s Twitter account only had 4,942 followers in total.)

Team Obama also saw an opportunity in exploiting the flagging credibility of mainstream media—again chiefly among younger voters. “[Obama’s team] leap-frogged the mainstream media by producing content that they knew would get distributed for them [via social media] once it was uploaded,” techPresident’s Rasiej said. Especially in the final days before November 4, Obama’s campaign sent daily emails and text-messages directly to supporters, urging them to vote with friends, participate in phone drives, and volunteer at campaign events—even offering up a contest in which last-minute donors could be selected to attend Obama’s election-night party in Chicago.”

Adds Rasiej:

“What we really saw here [with Obama’s Internet strategy] is the reaction of a new network publicsphere—or, you could argue, a whole new political media ecology, a generational shift that’s empowering an entirely new human experience of participatory, civic engagement. It’s taking our former notion of civic engagement and redefining it as something that should be continuously very relevant to people’s lives.”