While candidates for the 2008 presidential election scramble to develop Internet video strategies, "macaca" moments -- ill-chosen words or other mishaps that get spread on the Internet -- will define their campaigns as much as or more than anything the candidates plan.

Last week, Internet video provider Brightcove said it inked a deal with U.S. Sen. Barack Obama to coordinate Internet video for Obama's Presidential campaign. This was before Obama even decided whether he had a presidential campaign; in his first video on Brightcove, Obama announced Monday that he was forming a committee to explore whether he should run.

Obama joins former U.S. Senator and vice-presidential candidate John Edwards, and Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack in putting their campaigns on Internet video.

"Internet video is going to be explosive, and change the entire dynamic of the campaign, much the way Internet fundraising did with Howard Dean and our campaign," said Joe Trippi, former campaign manager for Howard Dean's presidential campaign.

By managing their Internet video campaigns effectively, candidates will have a powerful medium for getting their messages out to the public, Trippi said.

But spontaneous moments will prove more effective. Candidates will, effectively, be under 24x7 video surveillance, from cell phones and more sophisticated cameras.

"Some candidate will think they weren't on camera and make a mistake and say something stupid. It'll get hundreds of thousands of downloads. They'll find they've critically damaged their candidacy in a way that wasn't imaginable in prior presidential campaigns," Trippi said.

That already happened in the 2006 U.S. Senate race in Virginia. Candidate Jim Webb sent an aide, S.R. Sidarth, to videotape opponent George Allen's campaign. Allen called Sidarth a "macaca") -- an obscure racial epithet used against Asian Indians. Sidarth (who is Indian ancestry, but born and raised in Virginia) caught the moment on video, and spread it over both the Internet and conventional TV outlets.

"The Internet side of it didn't make George Allen lose, but it change the dynamic of the campaign to make Allen defeatable," Trippi said.

Under the constant scrutiny of digital video cameras or even cell phone cameras, candidates will find it impossible to dissemble or present a false face to the public. "On television, consultants can hide anything for 30 seconds. We can make the meanest, hottest-tempered guy look compassionate," he said.

Internet video also gives candidates an advantage, the ability to talk directly to supporters without being filtered.

Edwards invited many videobloggers, including Rocketboom co-founder Andrew Baron, to have access to his campaign. Baron says Edwards told him "I'm ready, let the cameras come and show everything." This use of Internet video in the upcoming Presidential campaign season will allow the public to "see for ourselves who these guys are, understand that they are human, are fallible, can mess up, but can fix it, too," he says.

When Edwards flew from city to city announcing his candidacy, he met with 10-15 bloggers in each city, including videobloggers, in addition to the mass media, said Robert Scoble, one of the Internet's most popular bloggers.

Videoblogging is part of a comprehensive Internet campaign strategy for candidates, which should also include text blogging. But videoblogging has advantages over text, said Scoble, who is VP of media development for PodTech.net, an audio and video podcast network.