On Jan. 5, millions of students logged on to their social lifeline: Facebook.
But there was something different that day, as students found themselves looking at an advertisement for the ABC News/Facebook New Hampshire Debates airing that night.
When every vote counts, campaigns are now turning to sites like Facebook and YouTube to get their messages to young voters.
In 2004, "Howard Dean discovered that online efforts could be spectacular," said Donald Kettl, director of Penn's Fels Institute of Government.
Kettl said Dean's campaign "raised everyone's senses" about the Internet's potential to bolster a young, voting demographic.
And in this election cycle, political outreach online is particularly evident.
On Facebook, students are showing their support by joining applications and groups. Facebook efforts have also helped young people volunteer for campaigns.
Around a year ago, national organizers for Barack Obama contacted Jon Kole, a College junior who had previously volunteered for the senator in Chicago, about starting a Penn chapter of Students for Barack Obama.
Throughout the year, Kole and his fellow founders recruited members online and sold shirts to raise money.
The efforts paid off, and, by the time of the New Hampshire primary, the group was prepared to send volunteers.
"We sent seven members and used the funding from the shirts" to subsidize the trip to New Hampshire, said Kole.
YouTube has also become an increasingly important part of the election cycle.
In addition to establishing YouChoose '08, an online video database of the candidates' remarks, YouTube has joined with CNN to broadcast the CNN/YouTube Debates, fresh with questions from online contributors.
"The interactivity is great," said Zac Byer, a College sophomore and president of the College Republicans.
"Hopefully, it'll get more people our age excited about [politics]," said Byer, "but I hope that it doesn't water down the important issues."
The influence of this new medium is still unclear, however, in its ability to translate interest into votes.
"No one knows what will happen in the future," said Kettl. "We're at the wildest period of innovation."
Facebook is hardly representative of the voting population, either.
On the ABC News/Facebook application, 35 percent of Republicans on Facebook are reportedly supporting Ron Paul, who received just around three percent nationally in a recent ABC News poll.
Over the winter break, Spencer Scharff, a 2006 College graduate, volunteered in Iowa for Obama, where he says the Internet played a crucial role.
Scharff believes the Internet serves as an integral part of the modern campaign process, but that nothing beats "face-to-face voter contact."
"Going door-to-door in 14 inches of snow and zero-degree weather can't be replaced by online communication," Scharff said.
