By Izwan Ismail

THE battle for votes in the recent Permatang Pauh by-election not only was fought on the ground, but also in cyberspace.

As shown in the March general elections, the use of the Internet and its derivatives such as blogs has proven popular and effective to get a message across. This is one step ahead than in the 1999 and 2004 elections, when the Internet was used to just post articles and pictures.

Now, more effective means of campaigning are done through video streaming and MPEG files and the use of portals such as YouTube, which can easily reach a much larger audience.

A few years from now, when broadband speed goes between four megabits per second and 10Mbps (compared to the current 1Mbps) coupled with the availability of services such as WiMax (which allows people to connect to the Internet wirelessly at broadband speed), getting information from the Internet will become even more popular. This trend also will be driven by the availability of affordable mobile devices that support wireless broadband.

With all these technologies coming together, more people are likely to get their information online. Besides that, with faster connections, people will be able to see live telecasts of events fed by people on the scene and also communicate through Web conferencing and live forums.

For political parties, the power of the Web should not be taken lightly. With the online population growing at a breakneck rate, it would be utter folly to ignore the power of the Web in canvassing support.