"After that, I think the assumption was that this was going to be a gotcha medium," says Steve Grove, YouTube's news and politics editor.
When the election ended, all YouTube videos mentioning Senator Obama had received a total of 1.9 billion views compared with Sen. John McCain's, which got 1.1 billion views.
Obama's YouTube channel alone were watched the equivalent of 14.5 million hours, with McCain's channel racking up about 488,152 hours
A Pew Research Center report titled "Internet and Campaign 2008" found that 39 percent of voters watched campaign-related video online during the election cycle.
"Celeb," which compared Obama to Britney Spears and Paris Hilton.
But Paris Hilton's response video quickly changed the tone of that discussion.
hire an Emmy-winning CNN producer to shape what the camp would post.
They even had camp manager David Plouffe—who likely took a page from Rick Davis's playbook—give strategy briefings by chatting into a webcam in his office and occasionally referring to a slide.