'You've got mail' (from John Kerry)

While a boisterous crowd in downtown Pittsburgh was the first to hear Presidential candidate John Kerry (D-MA) say that Senator John Edwards (D-NC) would be his running mate, over 1 million subscribers to Kerry's Web site were the first to see the news thanks to an e-mail from Kerry. How did he get all those addresses? Visitors to www.johnkerry.com are immediately confronted with a request for an e-mail address. The use of e-mail as a campaign weapon underscores the rising importance of the Internet for managing political campaigns.