HAVING already launched a generation of Gwen Stefani clones and death-metal bands into fleeting Internet fame, MySpace the largest social-networking site is now setting its sights higher: to help elect the next president of the United States.

CLICK THE VOTE A prototype of the Impact channel, going live this week.

This week, the site will introduce a section dedicated to politics, with an emphasis on the 2008 presidential election. Called the Impact channel, it will be an online version of a town square, a collection of links to political MySpace pages that will make it easier for the sites 60 million American users per month many of them from the traditionally elusive and apathetic youth demographic to peruse the personal MySpace pages of, so far, 10 presidential candidates.

The channel will be much like those on the site already devoted to music or video. By clicking into it and on the separate campaign pages, users will be able to read candidates blogs, view their personal videos and snapshots, and link to other sites that discuss pet issues. Then, theoretically, users will add their favorite candidates to their friends list, and their friends will add them, too. The campaigns will spread virally, in the 2008 campaign strategy of the moment.

Some observers believe that such efforts by MySpace and other social networking sites might make them influential among voters in 2008. Or, in tech language, such sites aspire to be the killer aps of this election cycle, reminiscent of what talk radio (particularly Rush Limbaugh) was in 1994, when it whipped up enthusiasm for the Republican landslide in the midterm elections, or what MoveOn.org was in 2004 when it emerged as a potent force to raise funds and drum up volunteers for the Democratic Party.

Part of the motivation is seeing how Howard Dean jumped on the blogging trend in 2003 and established that as a powerful force, said Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Internet & American Life Project. A lot of candidates dont want to miss the boat on what could be the next big thing.

Mr. Rainie added: Theres now a sense in the political establishment and the consultant community that this year feels qualitatively different in the online world. So rather than being tepid in their embrace of it, theyre grasping it in a bear hug.

Conversely, while other the social networking sites have welcomed their rising political profiles, the move by MySpace (which comScore Media Metrix reports has nearly four times the number of individual users in the United States as Facebook, its closest rival) is the most notable bid so far to establish a presence in the 2008 race.

From MySpaces perspective, the move is a way to stay competitive within a rapidly evolving environment in which both candidates and rival online companies are making moves to dominate the virtual landscape for the next election.

Not surprisingly, MySpace executives predict that the site, founded in 2003, can help candidates influence younger swing voters. Some 86 percent of its American users are voting age, and even younger users are on campaign coordinators radar. The election is a little less than two years away, said Christian Ferry, the national e-campaign director for John McCain. A 16- or 17-year-old today is going to be eligible to vote in 2008.

Tom Anderson, 31, a MySpace founder, said, MySpace has a method of reaching people who are historically not interested in voting and may not read newspapers or watch news on television. He added: A MySpace profile could excite their interest in ways they are used to. In the same way they learn about their friends, they could learn about a candidate.

The Impact channel will also feature voter registration tools that are intended to function as a cyber version of the Rock the Vote youth drives of recent years. And perhaps most enticing to the campaigns, the site will start a one-click payment function to help contenders solicit campaign contributions. This online tool will appear on each candidates official MySpace page, and can be easily dragged onto a users own page. And from there it can be dragged to a users friends page, theoretically as easily as MySpace members now swap songs by their favorite bands, said Mr. Anderson and his fellow founder, Chris DeWolfe.

In the same fashion, they can drag candidate ads onto their own pages digital yard signs, for lack of a better term, Mr. DeWolfe, 41, added.

An official announcement of the Impact channel will be made on Monday, they said.

Already, campaigns are showing interest in the potential of the site.

MySpace is definitely one of the tools well be using to engage Internet users, said Jen Psaki, a spokeswoman for the Barack Obama campaign, and were well aware that young people are the ones who are engaging the campaign through the Internet, more so than other age brackets.

Besides Mr. Obama, the Democratic contenders John Edwards, Joseph R. Biden and Dennis J. Kucinich have set up MySpace pages, as have the Republicans Ron Paul, the Texas congressman, and Mr. McCain. In coming weeks, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Rudolph W. Giuliani and Mitt Romney will also launch their official MySpace pages, a MySpace spokeswoman said.

The candidates were moving onto MySpace even without the lure of the Impact channel, which is expected to be operating Monday.