Candidates As Consumer Electronics

Unfortunately, my previous post about my new computer failed to ignite a flamewar in comments.  There's a story in the NYT today, though, that might help fan the flames.

The differences between hillaryclinton.com and barackobama.com can be summed up this way: Barack Obama is a Mac, and Hillary Clinton is a PC.

The article is really about the different website designs between the two candidates more than it is about their character, though it is interesting that both candidates' sites have managed to reflect the general tone of each campaign.  The best analysis comes from

Emily Chang, the cofounder of Ideacodes, a Web designing and consulting firm, [who] detected consistent messages, and summed them up: “His site is more youthful and hers more regal.”

That sounds about right.  The nice thing is that both sites are a great improvement from 2004.

By the by, have you been to John McCain's website lately?  There's two photos of him on the main page, and he's smiling in both of them. 

Wow.

Comments

[CellphoneSavant]

I agree that both sites have greatly improved. I liked the article in the NYT. Thanks for the post.

[tom.a]

I give Obama's the edge, both in style and functionality but it's obvious the Dems have the web people on their side. While McCain gets one point for trying something different, the thing he tried was to not use color. Why would the oldest man in the universe go with a mostly black and white website of all things?

[fasteddie]

netcraft.com shows that Hillaryclinton.com is indeed running on Windows. (McCain too) BarackObama.com runs on Linux, not Mac.

This makes sense. Both Hillary and McCain are the "corporate" candidates, so using Windows - from large corporation Microsoft, makes sense. Obama is not ttherered to old ideas (or big corporate money) and can use what works best - and it doesn't hurt that it is cheaper. Obama is about change even on the web server. He's got my vote.

http://toolbar.netcraft.com/site_report?url=http://www.barackobama.com
http://toolbar.netcraft.com/site_report?url=http://www.hillaryclinton.com
http://toolbar.netcraft.com/site_report?url=http://www.johnmccain.com