Political Hubs for 2008

"The Internet political mafia" -- that's what blogger Andrew Rasiej calls the consultants and tech vendors who gathered last week at George Washington University. Topic of the conference was online politics, and it looks like the 2008 presidential election will inspire many interesting experiments.

There are already a number of projects worth noting, including YouTube's You Choose '08, which the Washington Post describes as a "centralized hub of candidate channels," and Community Connect, which is "encouraging the candidates to interact with members at its specialty social networking sites."

A trend seems to be emerging -- hubs that help people connect with existing commmunities. It's consistent with what we've been observing in the larger world of online communication. It makes little sense -- especially in the political arena -- to develop more silos. It would be better to help stitch them together.