There is an excellent article in this morning's New York Times about Obama's strategy in using social networking to build his campaign: The Facebooker Who Friended Obama. It is also an excellent profile of Chris Hughes, the strategist behind the development and deployment of My.BarackObama.Com.
Chris Hughes is one of the founders of Facebook who left that company earlier this year to work on the Obama campaign. Another excellent article appeared earlier this year as the cover story in the April issue of FastCompany Magazine: The Brand Called Obama. These articles give a great behind-the-scenes look at how Obama was able to come from seemingly nowhere and mobilize thousands of people in simultaneous campaign initiatives stretching across the continent.
Two key points that come from these articles: first, that good technology doesn't matter if it isn't something that people want to use; and secondly, that the key to the success of this campaign was not simply creating a way for the campaign to reach the people - but to give people a way to reach each other. And that is a revolutionary idea in politcal campaigning.
These articles are a great way to introduce people to My.BarackObama.com who may not be using this really valuable tool at present. The more connected we are to each other, the more effective our collective effort becomes in getting Obama elected in November.
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