To hear MySpace tell it, some of the top contenders for the 2008 White House race are making it big on the Web. Think Rolling Stones big. Or Beatlemania big.

“When the biggest presidential candidates on the MySpace have larger groups of friends than some of the biggest bands in the world, you know you have reached a landmark,” MySpace SVP of public affairs Jeff Berman told us. “[Barack] Obama has close to 200,000 friends and if you go and look at some of the biggest bands in the world … many of them are actually smaller.”

For the record, Obama has logged more than 180,000 MySpace friends on his page, while Democratic party rival Hillary Clinton comes in second with about 140,000 friends. Rudy Giuliani may lead Republican candidates, but on MySpace he’s signed on 6,500 friends.

MySpace told us it teamed up with PayPal to let candidates and charity groups raise funds on its pages with a new widget that members can even copy onto their personal MySpace pages and share with friends.

Berman described how the newest generation of MySpace voters, or future voters, sees affiliation with a political candidate or social interest group as comparable to posting pictures from their favorite rock star.

Here’s what he said:

The MySpace generation isn’t going down to the corner store to pick up a newspaper every day. They’re learning about what’s happening in the world … online and partially on MySpace.

What we’re trying to do with the whole of this is to enable people to discover content and culture in a political news context the same way they discover content and culture in the entertainment world.

For most of our users there’s no distinction … it’s all an opportunity to express themselves. So just as I might discover a great independent band and put their song on my page I might discover a candidate or a cause I care about and express myself by putting the viral fund-raising tool on my page.