A month ago, Nicholas Sarkozy caused quite a stir when he posted a comment on the blog of a movie director critical of his policies.

Now, he’s broken new ground again by being possibly the first major politician to do an interview by Podcast.

The video interview (in French) is here

I’ve previously written that Sarkozy’s use of the Internet could make him the Howard Dean of European politics; during the interview Sarkozy discusses the use of email campaigns and blogs, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he decided to use the Internet to his competitive advantage in the 2007 presidential elections. He clearly is more comfortable in the medium than any of his major rivals.

Some other comments/thoughts:

• Within two days of being posted, the podcast was seen by 10,000 people
• Rodrigo Sepulveda makes a ***very*** interesting observation that podcasts fall outside the regulations of media airtime of candidates. The politician that can figure out how to be "virally heard and seen" on the internet will have a very big advantage of exposure over those that don’t
• The interview was conducted by Loic Le Meur, a French serial entrepreneur and SixApart’s European head. When was the last time a European politician accepted to be interviewed by a blogger, or rather, someone not a professional journalist?
• Sarkozy was ok with being addressed in the informal "tu" form during the interview. This is pretty cool. I can hardly imagine Jacques Chirac accepting to do the same.