Drag 'em, Drop 'em Mayor Tangled In 'Next Gen' Web

As posted by CatCubed:

Web 2.0 and Design geek with zeal for blogging about blogging, Colin Fahrion, visits the candidate's websites to peel back the presentation layer and see who's GUIer:

• The ever Flexible and Intuitive "Drag 'em, Drop 'em" Gavin Newsom, or
• All Business 2.o and "Next Gen" Showman Chicken John Rinaldi?

Chicken’s joined facebook too on the advice of Scott Beale of LaughingSquid. Chicken’s also on that den of iniquity and bad design myspace and tribe. Next thing we know he’ll be on Twitter, Flickr, Pownce, Digg, Delicious, and of course YouTube — well actually Chicken is already on YouTube with a video of him eating a lightbulb.

So let’s tally up the scores of who’s the more 21st Century political candidate…

Google Name Recognition:

• Gavin Newsom - 698,000 search results and an extensive wikipedia entry
• Chicken John - 78,300 search results and a pitifully small stub of a wikipedia entry

Web 2.0 Social Aptitude:

• Chicken John - 1 facebook profile, 1 myspace profile, 1 tribe profile
• Gavin Newsom - 3 facebook profiles, 3 myspace profiles, and one Gavin Newsom Sucks myspace profile. {While Gavin wins by sheer number of profiles I have a strange feeling they aren’t really him, so I had to give this one to Chicken}

NOTE: MySpace just inexplicably locked us [Gavin Newsom Sucks] out with over 15oo friends. What's next?

Blog-o-Sphere Cred:

• Chicken John - 1 fresh off the presses mayoral blog written by the man himself (when he doesn’t have the cold that is); hosted at Wordpress.com but with his own domain which adds a couple more cred points
• Gavin Newsom - 1 boring PR spewing pseudo-blog written by the mayoral toadies in Newsom’s name; hosted as a subdomain on Typepad. And 1 other boring PR spewing pseudo-blog with an unknown CMS with a lousy old HTML 4.01 Transitional doctype.

YouTube Stardom:

• Chicken John - Aforementioned Chicken John eating a lightbulb and Chicken John Bus Trip to Locke, CA (footage of the Chicken John Bus Trip to Locke with footage of Dammit the Wonder Dog).
• Gavin Newsom - Gavin’s meltdown and Gavin Newsom & the Man Code (reflect poorly on Newsom).

From a mayoral gravitas perspective, I don’t think either candidate wins in this department.

So there you have it! Chicken John is the better 21st century political candidate! Gavin is more searchable by far, but Chicken’s web presence is more personal and web 2.0 connected — quantity vs quality.

Unfortunately, for elections it’s quantity that wins. No matter though it’s always worth it to add that little something else to spice up the pot, so go help Chicken John!

San Francisco has a matching funds program for public elections. Chicken's holdin' $21,247 with a 5:00 deadline, Tuesday. If the $25k goal is met, they match 4:1 So $25k gets you $50k for a total of 75k - sweet!