Social media

One of the big stories of 2008 was the convergence of politics and social media- blogs, Facebook, Twitter, texting, etc. Barack Obama was the biggest adopter of these new tools and they were part of his success. The MyBO network was the central hub for his volunteers to connect with one another. Even though there were some technical glitches, his announcement of Joe Biden via text garnered a ton of publicity and cell phone numbers.

Politicians are trying to recreate the Obama magic in the next election cycle. The biggest question is: How much of Obama's success was because of social media and how much of social media's success was because of Obama? Will politicians who lack Obama's rhetorical gifts be able to inspire people to organize online?

Fast Company has a really interesting article about Chris Hughes- he has the dual distinction of being one of the founders of Facebook and being an integral part of Obama's online operation. One snippet:

It was Hughes's instinct for satisfying Facebook's users, ironically, that would lead him beyond the site. In the fall of 2006, as midterm elections approached, Facebook took the then bold step of allowing political candidates to set up modified profile pages, well before celebrities and products could have fan pages of their own. When a freshman senator from Illinois came knocking, it was Hughes who provided the customer service. Barack Obama wasn't a midterm candidate, but he wanted a Facebook profile anyway. The approach came in an email from Reggie Love, Obama's now famous body man. "I liked the Facebook idea," says Jim Brayton, then the senator's Internet director, "but Reggie really got it immediately." After Love set up the profile, Brayton says, they realized its potential for an Obama presidential campaign. "We quickly wanted to be able to do more with it. Chris got it right away."

Another example of the growing importance of technology in campaign's is visible in my own Congressional district. Ellen Tauscher will be stepping down to take a job in the State Department. The presumed favorite to replace her is State Senator Mark DeSaulnier. The only other person on the Dem side that I know for sure is running is Adriel Hampton.

I'd never heard of Adriel until a couple of days ago, but he is pretty well-known in some of the progressive politics circles. From what I can tell, he seems like a Twitter fanatic: http://twitter.com/adrielhampton

If Twitter and Ning are going to be the cornerstones of his campaign, I'm curious to see how effective his campaign can be. He's a huge underdog to Sen. DeSaulnier so he will need something to be a game changer. From what I've seen, his Twitter posts primarily consist of asking for cash and publicity- we'll have to see if he uses it to flesh out his platform.