YouTube, although only two years old, has rapidly become the number one destination for television on the Internet. It’s estimated that viewers watch 100 million videos on the site every day and anybody can supply material to appear on the site.

Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama launched their US presidential campaigns on YouTube so Frank Chambers decided that he could do the same. Chambers is the oldest candidate in the constituency. He believes that posting a clip on YouTube will help him keep in touch with the youth of Co Mayo and from his kitchen in Newport, he makes his message.

John O’Mahony has also taken advantage of the growth in the website’s popularity, having posted a two and a half minute video. Apparently a bigger budget clip than Chambers’, it shows the Fine Gael candidate at a number of locations in the county and, according to a statement: “with the haunting ‘Green and Red of Mayo’ by the Sawdoctors as a backing track, it is particularly atmospheric.”

“I can’t ignore the internet and it’s a fact of life that people today do spend an awful lot of time online,” said O’Mahony. “No one had heard of YouTube until a couple of years ago but now it’s the most popular site of its kind in the world. I decided to post a video on it so that people who spend a lot of time online and who may have become tired of the traditional form of political campaigning could see what I was about and what Fine Gael stood for,’’ he said.

YouTube users can comment on the clips of footage broadcast, offer a rating of between one and four stars and can post their own responses, though adding comments has been disabled for O’Mahony’s video.

A comment added to Chambers’ clip says: “Good man Frank, if for nothing else for embracing this technology and being aware of its impact not like most of the Neanderthals that represent your party.”

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