Obama as the First “Wiki-Candidate”

Thanks next great thing for this run down on how Obama understood and utilised social media and technology in his campaign.June 25th, 2008 by David

During the primary election, Barack Obama rocked his own shortcode, Twittered to supporters and even created his own social network. Major publications are crediting Obama’s embrace of digital innovation and social networking as key to his success this election season. Here, we recap the highlights:

• The New York Times’ Noam Cohen suggests that Obama’s approach to politics mirrors the ethos of social media and the structure of the Internet itself. In a roundup of media coverage on the topic, he cites Obama’s success in mastering “Facebook MySpace, Twitter and YouTube. politics;” the parallels between his rapid success and that of a “classic Internet startup;” and how his highly successful online fund-raising has leveraged the social networking potential of sites like
• Andrew Sullivan, writing for London’s Sunday Times, says social networking was fundamental to Obama’s win over Clinton: “She was still AOL; Obama was Facebook. Clinton was the PC; Obama was a Mac.” Sullivan notes that Obama’s use of the Internet to attract smaller donations and from more contributors than his Democratic rival helped him build an unstoppable fundraising base.
• Rolling Stone magazine cites the Obama campaign for having “shattered the top-down, command-and-control, broadcast-TV model” in favor of a grassroots strategy aimed at leveraging online social networks to generate campaigning by the masses offline. Obama’s social network, known as “MyBo” and available at my.barackobama.com, claims more than half a million members and more than 8,000 affinity groups, and lets users organize by state, profession, or hobbies to find and create events, organize caucusing, and download phone lists of potential voters.
• Joshua Green of The Atlantic Monthly magazine recognizes the Obama social network —as well as Obama ringtones, text-message updates, and regular e-mails from Obama staff —as successful examples of tools that encourage voters to “give money, volunteer time, bring in new friends, and generally reorient [their lives] in ways that were made to seem hip and fun.” Green points to Obama’s courting of successful Silicon Valley upstarts who are creating new technology and fundraising tools that have helped Obama raise nearly $200 million online.
• Marc Ambinder, in his The Atlantic Monthly magazine article “HisSpace,” says that “online fireside chats,” Google-like databases detailing federal spending, and blogs enabling citizens to comment on legislation will likely be the norm in an Obama presidency.
• New York Times columnist Frank Rich opines, “You could learn a ton about the Clinton campaign’s cultural tone-deafness from its stodgy generic Web site. A similar torpor afflicts JohnMcCain.com, which last week gave its graphics a face-lift that unabashedly mimics BarackObama.com and devoted prime home page real estate to hawking ‘McCain Golf Gear.’ (No joke.) The blogs, video and social networking are static and sparse, the apt reflection of a candidate who repeatedly invokes ‘I’ as he boasts of his humility.”