YouTube doesn't want to be just a goof-off destination anymore. It just went a little C-SPAN.

Last week, as part of what the video-sharing site described as a voter education initiative, it launched You Choose '08, where voters can find the official Web videos from Hillary Clinton, Rudy Giuliani, Barack Obama et al., all listed on one page. You know, the ones that the candidates want you to see, as opposed to the unofficial videos that are some of the most watched on the site.

Savvier by the minute to the power of video sharing and social networking to reach potential voters, most of the presidential candidates had put their videos on the site on their own "channels." Now YouTube has pulled them all together, free of charge. On You Choose '08, viewers are encouraged to post text comments and video responses and rate candidate-created videos.

"The more videos the candidates put up, the more effort they put into each video, the more they're going to get out of it," says Jordan Hoffner, YouTube's director of content partnerships. "It's like when Bill Clinton took full advantage of the rise of the 24-hour cable TV in 1992. It was great political theater. I foresee this being very similar."

In this kind of free-for-all, anything-goes Web environment — where a video can be sliced up, posted, circulated on e-mails with a few clicks on a mouse — controlling the message is every candidate's biggest challenge and dearest hope. Yes, candidates can speak directly to voters. Of course, voters can speak directly back.

On the unofficial political video hit parade, there's a two-minute clip of former Sen. John Edwards fixing his hair to the tune of "I Feel Pretty." There's a 10-second clip of Sen. John McCain looking as if he's dozing off during the president's State of the Union address. ("He wasn't sleeping. He was reading the president's text," says Christian Ferry, McCain's online campaign director.)

And Sen. Clinton's off-key rendition of "The Star-Spangled Banner" is on display in a minute-long clip of a rally in Iowa. That video, posted on Jan. 27, had been viewed 1,082,254 times as of 1:30 p.m. Wednesday. Her most popular official video, "Road Map Out of Iraq," was viewed 13,054 times.

"Candidates have to remember that the more content they put out there, the more content there is for people to change and try to control," says Adam Paul, an online strategist at ID Society Inc., an interactive design and marketing agency.