The Web on the Candidates

• OpenLeft's Chris Bowers is back with an update on his latest Googlebombing campaign, this time directed at Rudy Giuliani. Bowers is claiming that because of his and other liberal bloggers' efforts, two of his targets -- an article claiming that Rudy is worse than Bush, and a letter from NYC firefighters to Hizzoner -- are now among the top ten Google search results for "Rudy Giuliani." Is this tactic a method of search-engine optimization (SEO) or gaming the system? William Beutler, who writes Blog P.I. and works for the Fred Thompson campaign, thinks it's the latter. "It's not making the pages better, it's not doing the organic things that Google is supposed to do," Beutler told the National Review.
• Tech blog Mashable has the goods on some new technology that will be employed during the upcoming set of "Presidential Candidate Dialogues" sponsored by MySpace and MTV. A an embeddable widget "will allow users to indicate their approval or disapproval to candidate's answers to different questions, with the real-time results displayed on both the broadcast and in the widget," writes Adam Ostrow. We can't wait to take a look.
• Matt Lewis at Townhall is tentatively looking forward to the dialogues, seeing a potential balance between liberal and conservative interests among the sponsors. "I know what you're thinking: MTV is nothing more than a liberal front-group. While this is no doubt true, MySpace is owned by Rupert Murdoch, so my hope is that his influence will at least balance out the MTV liberal agenda," Lewis writes.
• MTV will also soon be launching a new political social networking site called Think.MTV.com. According to Jose Antonio Vargas at the Washington Post, who calls it "serious," It aims to be kind of combination of YouTube and MySpace, with a bent toward social involvement. If it really is a cross between YouTube's YouChoose and MySpace's Impact, it's a sign that the flagging "music" network needs to compete with newer, hipper online channels.

The Candidates on the Web

• Barack Obama has again launched a donation-matching initiative with a twist. Essentially, you choose the amount you'd like to donate, and another supporter matches that donation. Then, you're connected to that supporter through the campaign to "let them know why you decided to own a piece of this campaign." Kind of like a feel-good, political pen-pal plan, except that the goal isn't to make friends in faraway lands but to give money to a presidential candidate. Just a little different.