Barack Obama announces his decision to opt out of public financing in a video sent straight to supporters; McCain launches his first Facebook app: a video tour through the "Straight Talk Express" bus; a new Google maps gallery mashes up political data and geography; Capitol Words offers a daily extraction of Congress's most popular word; and more.

Obama hits the one millionth Facebook supporter mark and we wonder who gets the digital toaster; an effort to Google link McCain to some unfavorable press reports success; the battle between bloggers and the Associated Press continues, with the AP laying out a price scale for excerpts; a new Off the Bus feature makes it trivial to get access to campaign press calls; and more.

Barack Obama is about to get his one millionth fan.  The Democratic candidate's official Facebook page saw a sharp increase right around when Sen. Clinton dropped out earlier this month, and has climbed steadily since.  Lucky #1,000,000 will arrive tonight.

A quick note about the Law of Unintended Consequences in action: A post on Crooks and Liars earlier this afternoon reported that the RNC's Facebook group had surpassed the DNC's group in membership, and the RNC was actively shopping the story around to reporters. The progressive Netroots hit back swiftly.

I hate to risk alienating my new BFF Mark Zuckerberg, but has Facebook's moment in the sun as a hot political tool passed? And if so, what does that tell us about the future of social networking sites for online political organizing, and even about the future of Facebook itself?

(This story was originally published on AlterNet and is crossposted with the permission of the excellent folks over there. -- Nancy)

As an organizing tool, Facebook has had a couple of ugly weeks of late. Students at Michigan State University recently used Facebook to revive Cedar Fest, an old campus tradition that had been outlawed by local officials in the late 1980s after it frequently escalated from a party into something more akin to a riot. This time around, after violence ensued, East Lansing police officials vowed to hold those Facebook users accountable. News headlines ran along the lines of "Facebook: Tool for Chaos?" and the social-networking site was demonized as a means for the rabble to wreak havoc. But it's only right to hold up the recent commotion in south-central Michigan against other Facebook-fueled collective action. Facebook is revolutionizing the way collective political and social actions are organized today, blowing the doors off old models of how volunteer lists are amassed, funds raised, and messages honed and delivered.

The HuffPost breaks more news, this time about Hillary's closed-door comments; two strategists weigh in on why there's no conservative MoveOn; the perils of Obama's social networking strategy; a million strong Facebookers are united against Hillary; now you too can become Hillary, Barack, or John; and Time tackles the roots of liberal dominance of the web.

I was shocked to discover that Mark Penn's book Microtrends has its own Facebook application.

Clay Shirky talks to Salon about online organizing, Obama Girl, and more; polls show Obama Girl is getting tiresome; the Hillary Clinton Deathwatch is keeping a close eye on Hillary's chances; Jeff Jarvis asks who should be the nation's CTO; now all of the candidates have produced versions of Hillary's "3am" ad; The John McCain Facebook Challenge encourages Republicans to befriend the McCainiac; and McCain's campaign hires a new web guru.

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.