2012: Let's go!

   2012 / buzzfeed / election / Emily / foursquare / Google / mention machine / nbc / twitter takeover      Posted on January 3, 2012 by Emily

The presents have been opened, the champagne's been popped, and Campaign 2012 is officially underway! 

Everyone's gearing up for what promises to be a heated - and important - election year and more than ever they're looking at online sites, interactive tools and social networks to track the campaign, engage the electorate and predict outcomes.

On the media side, NBC announced a partnership with Foursquare last month to track candidate campaign stops in real-time on the newly launched NBCpolitics.com. Last week, BuzzFeed launched its political section (the site's first foray into original reporting), helmed by new E-i-C Ben Smith (nee of The Politico). And yesterday, Google unveiled its 2012 Politics and Elections site (the first website Google has dedicated exclusively to elections), which promises to be a huge resource for any and everyone following the presidential election. 

On the candidate side, the Republicans hopefuls are taking to Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Foursquare and even Tout to share information and engage supporters. The Huntsman campaign, which is mostly sitting out Iowa, is attempting an ongoing “Twitter Takeover" -- asking supporters to make sure Huntsman’s name is mentioned on the micro-blogging service at least 1,000 times each day. The payoff of this strategy can be tracked on the just-launched Washington Post "Mention Machine," which tracks the volume of Twitter and media mentions each candidate receives. And Obama? If you haven't been invited to have dinner with him and Michelle yet, you've probably been living under a rock. Our favorite thing that we've seen from them in this brand-new year is a homepage takeover of the Des Moines Register on Caucus day. Savvy.

And we're off!