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Many are expecting 2008 to be the year of the YouTube presidency, with candidates using every effective communication tool at their disposal. Senator Barack Obama, who likes to pretend he may not run for president, is taking the video-sharing helm by setting up the Obama Channel at Brightcove.

Brightcove, which scored nearly $60 million in strategic funding from the likes of The New York Times Company, AOL, Hearst, and InterActiveCorp, is having a big week.

Beet.TV reports that Obama has arranged with Brightcove to implement a multifaceted online video strategy. In addition to the Obama channel, with more videos to come, the arrangement also includes syndication that allows bloggers to publish clips to their blogs.

Of course, that will be in addition to what he's got going on at YouTube.

The candidate nobody seems to know anything about but loves him anyway is already more popular online than potential Democratic candidate Senator Hillary Clinton. But then, some gym socks are more popular than Hillary Clinton.

Obama will have to fight off John Edwards online, who's no stranger to online buzz, especially if the Edwards fanboys over at Rocketboom have anything to do with it.

Increasingly, the Internet and especially social networks have become a world forum for politics. Now that the Internet isn't the cool but slow and unnecessary thing it was in the 90's, more people access it, and more salesmen (I meant politicians) use it to get their messages out.

Even the president of India has gotten in on this business. Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam, made an appearance on Yahoo! Answers asking "What should we do to free our planet from terrorism." He's gotten 7,700 answers so far.

It won't be long until we see W. on there asking, "Has anybody seen my Middle East road map?"

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Jason L. Miller is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.