When it comes to social media, I'm a digital native. Facebook, YouTube, Twitter - these services are deeply integrated into my daily life and, to a certain extent, the lives of my friends and family. The fact that I am a native makes me well-suited to explain the technology and its uses and benefit; the cost, of course, is losing the non-native perspective.

A national election is about meeting the voter on their terms; in the technological sense, this means using most-accessible tools to reach the broadest number of potential supporters. The continued primacy of email and the campaign website serve as proof. Of course, to take a Gladwellian stance, all voters are not equal: some are highly motivated connectors, people who will knock on virtual doors or forward the message. Perhaps for this motivated bloc of connectors (and those trying to reach them), social media is nirvana - an interactive medium that empowers the motivated connector.

Throughout the course of the 2008 election, I've been trying to suss out just what role social media plays in the campaign. I'm most likely to agree with the perspective of (fellow techPresident author) Patrick Ruffini, who feels that social media contributes to momentum; voter activation occurs both online and offline, and social media can certainly compound interest, serve as a fund-raising vehicle, drive votes, etc. Feel-good YouTube videos about Barack Obama reinforce opinions more than they create new ones, perhaps.

In this election, a significant number of voters are interacting with candidates in the social media space. The millions of views on YouTube, hundreds of thousands of Facebook friends - these contribute to the information ecology around the candidate, and in certain cases they serve very important functions (i.e. Allen '06). So who is the social media voter? Obviously, there are many types, but I thought I might illustrate a few. Caveat - this is not a systematic analysis, but rather the result of a brainstorm, so take it with a grain of salt.

Type 1: The Window-Shoppers
Based on analysis from various Pew projects, almost 70MM Americans have a profile on a social network site. Countless million more have viewed online videos. The window-shopper represents the vast majority of social media voters; they participate from the sidelines - viewing videos, watching friends take political stances in social networks - but they do not use social media to pass political messages. Regardless, the election information ecology reaches them, perhaps not on a regular basis. Pew estimates that nearly a quarter of Americans get some political information online; this might give us an idea of how many window-shoppers there are out there.

Type 2: The Toe-Dippers
The Toe-Dipper is a next-step from the window-shopper, as they actively communicate their political interests in social media. They'll Facebook support a candidate or use traditional communication channels (email, IM) to pass along viral political messages. The overall volume of messages passed is limited, however. Toe-dippers may skew younger as the pool shrinks as compared to window-shoppers. For example, Pew reports that 3% of Americans have befriended a candidate on an SNS, with 8% of those age 18-29 doing so.

Type 3: The Communicators
The communicator is somewhat of a digital native, using a blog, forum or social network to broadcast political information. This doesn't mean the communicator is necessarily a political blogger, but they are someone who uses a social media venue to pass along political information from time-to-time. In the Blogads 2006 survey, 17% of political blog readers also had their own blog; the communicators are the important producers of the social media ecology.

Type 4: The Mavens
Continuing to narrow, we find mavens at the center. These social-media mavens are early adopters; they are among the 14,000 following Barack Obama on Twitter, the people creating and uploading political videos to YouTube, and the folks who have made their Facebook profiles all about the candidate. The mavens made friends with John Edwards on 14 different social network sites. The mavens also tend to be clustered; I know quite a few of them. Of course, mavens serve an important role getting viral campaigns started, communicating with other powerful communicators, and serving as a testbed for new initiatives.

What is interesting is that between the groups, we see similarities. Window-shoppers and mavens may donate online, visit the candidate's website, subscribe to mailing lists, etc. In my opinion, the turn isn't consumption of information, but production and communication of information. Of course, any attempt to taxonomize such a wide swath of the population is problematic. I've drawn on survey and intuition to create the list above, and you may agree or disagree. The purpose of making this list, however, was to conduct a thought experiment about the types of social media voters out there and where they fit in to the ecology of a national election.

Social media is interesting, of course, because everyone who wants to have a say can theoretically do so. The campaigns, with well-funded media campaigns, are more equal than others, but messages that are distributed through mavens can, and do, get national play. In a national election, however, campaigns can't ignore the facts - that most of us are window-shoppers at best, that TV is as important as ever, etc. We mavens may not be as important as we hope, but over time, we may see a reshaping of the system as more voters emerge as social media natives. Of course, this is a long-term shift, and somewhat inevitable.