The U.S. presidential election of 2008 will no doubt be the most innovative in U.S. history (and perhaps in the world), but not necessarily because of any candidate or any policy in particular.

As was the case in recent election cycles, the Internet has become a powerful tool for any political campaign, collection of funds and civic engagement. But what makes this election cycle so interesting is the fact that many of the innovations that are happening are being made by the American public.

If in 2000, when the American public began to use the Internet, much of the available online content was produced by professionals or people with technological expertise (The online publication had as a pre-requisite technological skills and the ability to produce large amounts of quality content), now everything has changed since the innovations such as Web 2.0 made it much easier for the voters create online communities and produce content through millions of blogs.

The interactivity has soared. The biggest example is perhaps the growing importance of sites like YouTube, Facebook and Flickr.

Moreover, the channels of news, such as MSNBC, CNN and FOX have become high, because each one of them was keen to take a part in the campaign.

Anyway, it seems that these elections are a milestone in history. The information age finally came to the elections.

Via: NYT.