This was bound to happen, right? Indian politicians will now try their luck by campaigning online. LK Advani made his move by launching a fully blown website and blog on November 8, 2008. What is worth noticing is the utilization of Google Adsense for promotion of Advani's web presence, which I am sure has got his website a lot of traction.

However, to pull off the way technology helped Barack Obama (e.g. website,blog, among other things) is not merely about having a web presence. Politicians in India need to realize that long sermons on issues is not what catches the attention of the target audience. What they need to put across needs to be crisp, clear, and concise. And using the web for campaigning does not simply mean having a website or a blog – these are platforms which should allow participation, have offline elements that compliment the campaigning, have regular updates, so on and so forth.

Here is an idea, want to target the Orkut and Facebook addicted Indian youth? Get developers to make applications in the lines of 'As an Indian, which party should I vote for?', 'As an Indian, what am I expecting the ruling party to do for the country?', 'Which politician am I?', etc. Believe me, the youth love to find out 'Which F.R.I.E.N.D are you?', 'Which career is suitable for me?' and then show it off. And I am not talking run of the mill boring app, I am talking something that can deliver a youthful twist, a kick. There are lot of startups in India who I believe can help independent candidates and politician parties with their campaigning by a lot of innovation, which even Obama perhaps did not use – you never know.

Going further, if politicians are planning on leveraging social media for campaigning, here is one more bit of info - BJP’s V K Malhotra, (@VKMalhotra) is on Twitter as well as on Facebook too (report). All other candidates should be too.

PS: I was drawn to make this blog post after I saw Advani's AdSense campaigning splurging many websites I was visiting on a daily basis. I saw some independent candidates mentioning in comments on various blogs that they too are planning to campaign mainly or only online.