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Candidates in some top political races are raising big sums of money using software that taps donors' social networks, an endeavor that lets the donors track their friends' donations with the zeal a fantasy baseball team owner uses to monitor player statistics. Republican gubernatorial candidate Charles Baker in Massachusetts and two GOP Senate candidates, Marco Rubio in Florida and Rob Portman in Ohio, are among those using a software-based fundraising tool called BlueSwarm to successfully tap their social networks for campaign cash. The Democratic Governors Association also plans to use it. The software democratizes the fundraising process by letting average citizens not just donate, but raise money themselves from their Outlook contacts or their Facebook friends. The traditional political fundraising model relies on experienced bundlers to hustle money from a small set of well-connected donors. In contrast, BlueSwarm and similar software lets users work their friends...

A rating for British party leaders' online popularity has been made available with the use of social networking websites such as Twitter and Facebook. MPs and candidates were said to be turning to the popular social forums as part of their campaign to test the political waters. And one company, Yomego, has assessed their "social media reputation scores" (SMRs), based on the "noise" and "sentiment" surrounding the politicians, The BBC reported. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown was said to have a popularity score of 68.20, out of 100, while that of Lead of the Opposition David Cameron's was 58.98, compared to leader of the Liberal Democrats Nick Clegg's 68.49, which was the highest.