The Obama campaign and new media and social networking
While I’m politically active, this blog isn’t—if you want to read about politics you probably can find a few other websites that delve into the subject.
But anyone interested in online communications and social networking has to be paying attention to Barack Obama’s campaign: Nov. 4 will be the biggest test of the real-life power of that emerging technology.
The Obama campaign isn’t just using, but is distributing quality content via
And the campaign got 2.9 million people to opt-in to receive text messages from it in exchange for being the almost-first person to know whom Obama selected to be his running mate. Think it might use that data as part of its get-out-the-vote efforts?
Will it pay off on November 4? I suspect the Obama campaign has studied Howard Dean’s candidacy in 2004 and realized what it needs to do to translate virtual support into real votes.
Tags: 2008 U.S. presidential campaign, Barack Obama, Blogs, Facebook, Howard Dean, MySpace, Podcasts, Social networking, Text messages, Twitter, You Tube
My writing focuses on travel and culture. I've contributed to The Wall Street Journal, Fox News, Air Canada's enRoute, BlackBook, Budget Travel, Deadspin, and Louisville Magazine. I'm also the editor-in-chief of Louisville.com and BlackBook's Louisville City Editor.