IP Democracy: Obama's Got a Social Network

ZDNet’s Steve O’Hear flags for us this online social network set up by Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama. Called My.BarackObama.Com, it is seemingly the first dedicated social network mounted by any of the presidential candidates.

While virtually all of the campaigns have leveraged YouTube, Facebook, MySpace and other popular Web 2.0 destinations to get the word out and build support (particularly Obama’s campaign), My.BarackObama.com is a clever effort to organize supporters who visit the Obama site in order to foster local events and, of course, raise money. As O’Hear points out, when it comes to taking advantage of the range of new web technologies, the campaigns don’t have to pick and choose — they can and should be covering all their bases.

I think Obama (or his campaign team) are smart to build their own social network in addition to maintaining a strong presence across the main social destinations on the web. It’s certainly not one or the other. I’ll predict that whatever the take-up is, in terms of raw numbers, those that do join MyBarackObama.com will be highly active (both online and off-line) compared with those that simply add themselves to his Facebook group.

Posted by Cynthia Brumfield on February 11, 2007 10:47 AM to IP Democracy