Facebook "friends" could be pivotal in presidential race

This time around, online video sites like YouTube have garnered most of the headlines.

But social networks are likely to play a more substantial role when college students go back to class this autumn and the general public starts to pay more attention to the presidential race, experts say.

Facebook had 52 million unique visitors in June, while MySpace had 114 million.

Democrats outnumber Republicans 5-to-1 on Facebook and 3-to-1 on MySpace, said Bentley College professor Christine Williams, who studies online politics.

"There is a generation gap here that cuts in favor of Barack Obama and against Rudy Giuliani at this point," Williams said.

Obama has drawn 299,000 supporters on the two networks to the 169,000 of his front-running Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, according to techPresident, a Web site that tracks technology and the 2008 election.

Former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards ranks third among Democrats with 64,000 supporters. Edwards has also reached out to lesser-known social networks like Ning, Bebo and Care2.

Among Republicans, Ron Paul leads with 75,000 supporters, though he barely registers in most opinion polls.

Giuliani has drawn only 7,400 supporters on MySpace.

Campaigns will have to work hard to transfer those online friends into votes, said Kathleen Barr, director of research at Rock the Vote.

Dean, notably, was unable to turn strong online financial support into votes in the early primary voting states of Iowa and New Hampshire, hastening his exit from the race eventually won by President George W. Bush.

Minnesota Democrats, however, point to success in last year's midterm elections.

The party was able to easily identify liberal-leaning students through Facebook, said Alex Cutler, a St. Olaf College student who headed the effort. The result was larger-than-expected crowds and a boost for Senate candidate Amy Klobuchar among young voters, he said.

"We were shocked, to be honest," Cutler said. "We didn't know if all these people on Facebook would show up."