Original URL: https://www.theregister.com/2010/05/06/election_guide/
Tories buy YouTube home page
Plus: The Reg voter's guide
Posted in Legal, 6th May 2010 06:02 GMT
The Tories are making an election-day buy on YouTube's home page in a bid to get their message in front of "millions of voters."
As announced by a Tweet from BBC tech and econ man Rory Cellan-Jones - nom de tweet: ruskin147 - the Tories have bought the main ad on YouTube for election day. The ad - a video of a David Cameron speech - had appeared on UK browsers by midnight London time.
Cellan-Jones claims the Tory ad will reach ten times as many prospective voters as the LibDem's full-page Times ad, but cost less.
For its part, Labour has been busy touting its "I'm Voting Labour" word-of-mouth app in the waning hours of what has been the most digitized election campaign in memory.
And so in the spirit of public service, The Reg offers a polling-day round-up of the three parties' most evident digital offerings, of value to the two or three of our readers who haven't already formed a strong opinion about whom they shall mark on their precious ballots.
Or, for that matter, you may simply want to use our guide to monitor the spin-storm that's certain to whip up once the results begin to trickle in - just keep an eye on each party's Twitter feeds and Facebook walls.
To be scrupulously fair, we list the parties in alphabetical order:
Conservatives
- Twitter - @conservatives: 30,412 followers
- Facebook - also David Cameron
- YouTube
Labour
- Twitter - @uklabour: 16,346 followers
- LabourSpace ("Be the change")
- YouTube
Liberal Democrats
We could have included among Labour's assets the 1,737,460 followers of @downingstreet, but in the current climate incumbency might arguably not be best described as an "asset." ®