Myspace Primary

It reads like an headline from The Onion, but it appears Myspace plans to hold a presidential primary. This could be quite influential, as candidates are placing an increased emphasis on their online, video, and social networking campaign efforts. And being as Myspace has more registered users than the country of Mexico, its influence should not be underestimated.

According to Michael Arrington at Techcrunch:

The MySpace primary will be held on January 1 & 2, 2008, before any
of the official state primaries. Every user will be asked to vote for
their favorite candidate.

Arrington later goes on to highlight one of the potential shortcomings to this approach: Fake voters.

I actually think it would be much more interesting for Facebook to do
this than MySpace. Facebook’s user accounts are each tied to an email
address or cell phone, resulting in far fewer fake or duplicate
accounts. Given the low quality of the MySpace user base (multiple
accounts, no identity check, etc.) it would be relatively easy for a
campaign to create a significant number of fake accounts to stuff the
ballot box in their favor. Facebook can also tie their users to U.S.
residency much easier than MySpace. The results would actually be
interesting.