“How Campaigns Can Use the Internet to Win in 2012″ is a comprehensive guide to effective online political campaigning, including detailed overviews of online advertising, volunteer management, digital fundraising, political email campaigning, Twitter, Facebook, Internet-enabled field organizing, online video and more. Its focus is practical, avoiding abstract musings and concentrating instead on using today’s digital tools to elect candidates in tough political fights.

"Politics and the Internet" timeline, a living archive tracking how technology has started to change politics, government and civic life in the United States, worldwide and online, from 1968 to present. (U.S.-related events are color-coded blue, international events are in purple, and online developments are in green*).

The timeline starts with the first vision of the "networked society," as described by J.C.R. Licklider and Robert W. Taylor, in early 1968, and the release of "Request for Comment-1," the first of many open standards planning documents that created the protocols of the Internet, in early 1969. And then it slowly unfolds, from the invention of email and the rise of the first online communities, to the release of the first web browser, the creation of the first congressional website, and the first major legislation governing online speech. And then in the mid-1990s history starts to accelerate, as political activists start organizing online and bloggers start getting arrested for their online activities. And that's just the first 30 years.

With every election there seems to be increasing numbers of politicians jumping into social media to connect with potential voters. The younger generation have been at it for years, but we are starting to see more well-established politicians throwing their hats in the social media ring.

Social media is a major tool in the modern-day politician’s arsenal. It provides an opportunity to connect with voters on a one-to-one basis without the need to walk for hours around the neighborhood. Yet, despite it’s positive potential, social media can also be a metaphorical nail in the coffin for those politicians who fail to use it properly. Everywhere you look there seems to be case studies of ‘what not to do.’

Provided below are some tips for the social media newbie politicians.

Cookie-based voter-file targeted ads (like those getting scarce in battleground states) aren’t the only arrow in the digital advertiser’s quiver: Mitt Romney’s now trying to connect with voters via Pandora internet radio, too.