There are features on the Kerry site that I'd never seen before, such as "MeetUp". Clicking on that link would take you to an independent website which organises meetings around the world for people who share common interests. Over a million people in more than 50 countries have registered for the service, and they meet to discuss nearly 4,000 different topics, of which the John Kerry campaign is only one. If you register for the site, you can agree with others who share your interest on a date, time and place for a meeting, and you then meet up. Kerry's campaign is using this well – over 40,000 of his supporters have already signed up through this site to meet face to face.

Another surprising feature on the site is the long list of weblogs linked to the campaign, nearly all of them unofficial – weblogs with names like "Moms for Kerry". The campaign seems to be encouraging its supporters to create their own online journals and is giving prominence to these, even though they're not under the control of the campaign. Naturally, there's an official web log as well, updated daily.

There's an "online action headquarters", with a list of suggestions for things activists can do without getting out of their chairs. These go way beyond conventional things like signing up for a mailing list or downloading campaign material. They include an online discussion forum, a web ring, joining online networking groups like Friendster, Ryze and Tribe, and sending emails to editors of online publications.

It goes without saying that you can watch all the candidate's television advertisements and most of his interviews and speeches through the website. You can donate money, and Kerry's campaign raises a lot of money through the web.

What amazed me about all this is that Kerry's campaign is not the one people point to as being Internet-savvy; Howard Dean is the one who is supposed to have made such great use of the web. Nevertheless, the Kerry website can teach trade unionists much about how to use the Internet to organize and campaign, how to raise money and organize face-to-face meetings, and how to build strong networks of volunteer activists. I've never seen a trade union web page as exciting as the Kerry page – but there's no reason why we couldn't be using many of the same tools Kerry does.

John Kerry's official website is located at:

http://www.johnkerry.com/