Obama's Online Campaign: Trendsetter or a Fair-Weather Facebook Friend?

It's January 2009 and Barack Obama has officially become The President that the Internet Elected. With backing from several high-tech heavy hitters such as Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Facebook Co-founder Chris Hughes, it's hard not to feel that the web-savvy generation really had a hand in putting their man in office. President Obama's Facebook inspired My.BarackObama.com had over 161,000 active users by November 5^th of last year. Think that's impressive? Check out these numbers:

1) His official Facebook page had 2.6 million supporters.

2) His MySpace page 844,927 Friends.

3) His Twitter account 123,000 Followers

4) Trendrr.com reported that his name had been mentioned in over 500 million blog posts.

5) His videos on YouTube received 14.5 million hours of playing time.

6) He even had a "virtual campaign" in the ailing cyber-reality known as Second Life.

Barack Obama's campaign was one for the record books for sure, but does he deserve all the praise he has been given for being an innovator in online campaigning?

Alex Rice of campaignsonline.org thinks so. He's quoted as saying that Obama's campaign "created the textbook of how do online campaigning." When compared to the campaigns of candidates past it's hard not to agree. For the most part, web campaigns had been limited to static sites with cookie-cutter images and messages where people could go look at what the candidate had to say-if they were so inclined.

Obama's campaign took things to another level altogether. By tapping the potential of Web 2.0 social media outlets such as Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter, Obama was able to reach out to hardcore web-heads who were used to receiving their news from online sources and who were active in distributing that content among their peers. It was like having near-unlimited human resources at the campaign's disposal and amounted to a lot of free (or low-cost) advertising by way of the Internet's vast electronic mouth.

By crossing that electronic divide, Obama created a sort of peculiar intimacy between himself and his followers. Not unlike JFK's own groundbreaking television debut, Obama stepped onto the Internet and allowed the world to see him as he was, not as how the media wished him portrayed.

Of course John McCain's campaign latched onto these utilities as well but for some reason it could not gain headway in the race for primacy in the American mind in spite of posting some staggering numbers of its own.

But I mention Kennedy's campaign because there is another interesting parallel. Kennedy did not invent the television in order to garner popular votes. He simply used the medium to the best of his ability and put a friendly, approachable face on campaigning that people had not seen since candidates regularly took grass-roots tours through small town America and spoke form the railing of a caboose. It would have seemed suspicious if JFK's campaign had been run without relying heavily upon television.

Fast forward to the present day.

The world has become a much more connected place and as Americans we expect to have things readily available on the web. Studies have shown a rapid decline in consumption of traditional media outlets such as newspapers, magazines, and television broadcasts in near-direct correlation with the rapid increase of their online counterparts. News anchors have become bloggers, bloggers have become anchors. Most news shows and even some of the most popular entertainment programming have exclusive online content. Big draw broadcasts such as Hollywood award shows and big-ticket sports events are now being simulcast on streaming video. The Internet has become an integral part of our everyday lives.

Check out these statistics:

1) According to some studies, 76% of Americans have access to the internet and many engage in online activities on a regular basis.

2) YouTube receives over 1 million hits per day.

3) Facebook has over 90 million active users worldwide.

4) Even relative newcomers like Twitter have monstrously large populations (900,000 by some estimates.)

With the popularity of web services Obama's campaign would be all but forced to take advantage of them. Not doing so would alienate a large chunk of Americans, especially the younger generations the campaign was counting on to carry the day. Indeed, statistics from inside the Obama campaign show that 14% of the electorate was less than 33 years old.

Rather than being a case of one man pioneering a new course, Obama's campaign could just as easily be viewed as the next step in electoral evolution. Had he tried to run a "traditional" campaign, the outcome of the election could have been very different.

So where did this image of a swashbuckling vanguard come from? Ironically from the traditional media sources, the ones currently being outpaced by their online counterparts. Think back to the number of news broadcasts you watched where the headlines where about Obama's Facebook followers or his quest to keep his Blackberry. How many times did we see "mashups" of YouTube videos showing the various candidates alternately spouting quotes the next generations will live by and acting ridiculous? I won't even mention the in-depth commentary that formerly respectable news outlets lavished on the fashion sense of the candidates and their spouses. In a sort of self-exciting dynamo or informational Uroboros the television fed viewers to the internet in an effort to slake its own hunger on a regular basis.

In a society of consumers it would be more accurate to see Obama as merely the first in a long line of presidents to come who must be more open, more accessible, and more engaging.

Source Articles:

http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/deeannaroberts/gGxfxC

http://www.propeller.com/story/2008/11/07/obama-election-ushering-in-first-internet-presidency/

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/155917/obama_transforms_webbased_politics.html