There was a time, if your only source of information was the Internet, when it seemed Ron Paul was a shoe-in for the Republican nominee. Internet reality is not always true reality—then again, what’s reality matter in politics? What really matters is narrative, and in that sense, the Internet is a mirror of the brick-and-mortar world, and there are lessons in political campaigns for businesses about controlling your online story.

During the last SES, we discussed the importance of a corporate narrative—the importance of narrative in general, too, which has spanned millennia. We’ve come a long way in how we store those narratives, from stone to paper to 20th Century media, and now the Internet is where we keep them. The battle for control of the narrative is no more currently raging or in flux than with the US Presidential race. In a perfect world, even a virtual word, the truer narrative wins.

But this is not a perfect world, virtual or otherwise. Just like in the outside world, the Internet holds endless ways to look at reality and endless ways to access it. Lots of people likely start with Google. Others go to YouTube.

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