Nice piece on Politico.com about the hoaxes that have hit people's mobile phones after Democrat Sen. Barack Obama's campaign announced it would text people when the vice-presidential running mate choice was announced (it's widely expected to be by tomorrow).

No, it won't be Olympic swimming hero Michael Phelps, and, no, it won't be Hillary Clinton on Obama's ticket, as some of the fake txts have "announced."

What the story does convey, is how Obama's campaign is using the Web and online media to generate excitement and chatter about the candidate, especially since he has recently slipped in the polls against that other presumptive nominee for President, Republican Senator John McCain.

The L.A. Times quotes new data from Nielson to point out that Obama pulled in 3.3 million unique visitors to his site, BarackObama.com, in July. That's compared to 1.6 million unique visits to McCain's site, JohnMcCain.com:

But McCain picked up some ground there, gaining 353,000 unique visitors in the month, compared with 239,000 by the Obama site.

The place where McCain really gained ground was website video streams. Possibly because of McCain's controversial ad comparing Obama to Paris Hilton and Britney Spears, total streams viewed on JohnMcCain.com more than doubled in July to 1.01 million, Nielsen said. (The ad was immensely popular online, although it didn't appear on the site until July 31). Videos viewed on Obama's site dropped to 502,000 in July from 967,000 in June.

The Obama campaign still enjoys a stronger presence online; its fund-raising success early in the primary is credited with the campaign's ability to topple the Clinton machine. And although McCain has admitted he's not computer savvy, it's looks like his campaign has studied how Obama's using the Web. This is getting interesting.