The 2008 presidential election crowned the Internet as the king
of all political media, ending the era of the television presidency
that started with John F. Kennedy. Barack Obama’s pioneering
use of social networking and other information technologies not
only transformed campaign politics, but it could influence the way
government and business work as well.
Obama used a range of technologies to recruit and cement
relationships with supporters. He asked them to supply their cell
phone numbers and sent them regular text-message blasts, even
announcing his running mate via a text message. Using a custom
social networking site, created with the help of a Facebook
co-founder, Obama supporters could log in and find lists of people
to call, or whose doors to knock on, to try to persuade them to
vote for their candidate.
That kind of networking will likely transform the White House as
well, says Joe Trippi, a consultant who pioneered the use of the
Internet in managing Howard Dean’s presidential campaign in
2004 and who managed John Edwards’ campaign this election.
Trippi expects Obama will create a similar social networking site
for his legislative initiatives. “Congress will be put
between a rock and a hard place if millions of citizens sign up to
help the president pass his agenda,” he says. “If the
president says, ‘Here are the members of Congress who stand
in the way of us passing health care reform,’ I would not
want to be one of those people. You’ll have 10 or 15 million
networked Americans barging in on the members of Congress telling
them to get in line.”
The Obama administration is expected to build on a foundation of
grassroots support in its private social network and on Facebook,
YouTube, and Twitter. YouTube users spent 14.5 million hours
watching official Obama campaign videos, and that doesn’t
include user-generated videos, Trippi says. Adding that amount of
TV network time for political commercials would have cost $46
million, he says, and while YouTube users requested the videos and
therefore probably watched them, there’s no way to tell
whether anybody’s watching TV commercials.
Obama’s official Facebook application has 161,000 active
users, who used it to share news items, blog posts, speeches, and
videos. The BarackObama Twitter account has about 123,000
followers, making it the most popular account on Twitter, according
to tracking site Twitterholic.
The Obama campaign also used Google Maps mashups to help volunteers
find local campaign resources and people to contact. And, of
course, it used the Internet to solicit donations: Some 3.2 million
people donated to the campaign through its Web site, Trippi
says.
Joe Baker, an Obama volunteer, praised the Neighbor to Neighbor
application on the Obama site. There, supporters in swing states
could get phone lists of people in their neighborhoods. Baker and
his colleagues in Chico, Calif., used the site to coordinate with
Democrats in Reno, Nev., to get out the vote in that state. Baker
also built a virtual Obama headquarters in Second Life, where
supporters could download campaign literature and get in
discussions with other supporters, undecided voters, and even John
McCain supporters.
Obama’s Internet candidacy should be a lesson for business as
well, Trippi says. “You have to change your whole way of
thinking,” he says. “You’re going to lose control
of your brand to a large degree unless you create networks to
change your brand.”
Historically, businesses have sought to be big and controlling.
“You don’t want to be Goliath anymore,” Trippi
says. “You want to be the guys handing out the
slingshots.”