Our first virtual president?

Forget New Hampshire or Iowa, Presidential candidates should be spending their next several months in MySpace, where an online presidential primary vote will be held January 1st and 2nd. Sure, you won't get any votes for the electoral college, but the winner will get a whole lot of bragging rights.

And why not? If MySpace were a country, based on population it would be the 11th largest in the world. That's a pretty influential group of people. Now, some are arguing that the MySpace vote could be easily manipulated: people could vote multiple times or people to young to vote "offline" might actually participate.

Nevertheless, I think campaigns should take this seriously, but not because the MySpace vote will tell them much about the sentiments of the population at large. They should think of it as a giant focus group for campaigns on their position with the social networking crowd, arguably one of the most influential blocs of voters.

Sure, it can be gamed in a varity of ways, and, again, no one should imagine that the outcome will accurately reflect all of America. But it might somewhat accuratelly reflect who understands Web 2.0, and that's a pretty important criteria for the Presidency, in my opinion.