How Obama Tapped Into Social Networks’ Power | Hacker News Reader

How Obama Tapped Into Social Networks’ Power

nytimes.com

15 pointsnickb9 comments

I was interviewed (and quoted) by the NY Times reporter who wrote this article. He had read my earlier essay on the topic, The Coming Digital Presidency: http://mathoda.com/archives/189

I remember my wife describing the morning of the 4th when she brought up Facebook and her feed was this giant mass of get-out-the-vote status updates from people who donated their status to Obama. I also remember getting far more tweets from Obama than McCain, and the follower counts were very lopsided. Clearly, the campaigns had different approaches in the wired and I think it at least helped enthusiasm amongst my generation.

It's not the approach that mattered, it's the money. Obama didn't have any hidden advantage or strategy that allowed him to out maneuver McCain, he just had a lot more money to throw at small niche strategies (and staffers) like Twitter and larger ones like TV ads.

There are smart-young people on 'both' sides, one side just had waaay more money to spend.

I also think it's cute how people think Obama himself was actually Tweeting them

Considering that both candidates were on twitter and both made updates, but Obama just made way more, do you think that was entirely a function of money?

I don't know anyone who thought they were getting actual candidate tweets, but people buy extended warranties too. Especially after they get a crayola oblongata.

I think the approach does matter, and is one of the reasons there is such a big difference in fund raising in the first place.

> one of the reasons there is such a big difference in fund raising in the first place.

There wasn't "a difference in fund-raising". McCain, as promised, went with public financing. Obama broke his promise to do likewise and went private.

The network was one of the ways Obama got the money. If it weren't for Obama's ability to encourage a large number of people to donate money to him over and over again, Clinton would have crushed him in the primaries.

(As the article makes clear, the money isn't the only reason Obama skillfully used the Web, but all that community-building stuff had the happy side effect of providing additional fundraising channels.)

I think this is quite mistaken. There were big differences in how the campaigns (and presumably the candidates) thought about and used technology. These differences were visible at every level, from policies right down to the format of URLs. (Edit: the article itself makes this clear - who was courting Silicon Valley thought leaders at the start of his campaign, long before the money rolled in?)

As for the idea that one campaign didn't have overwhelmingly broader support among youth, just more money... that sort of denial leads straight to the political wilderness.

>"It’s clear there has been a dramatic shift," said Andrew Rasiej, the founder of the Personal Democracy Forum, an annual conference about the intersection of politics and technology. "Any politician who fails to recognize that we are in a post-party era with a new political ecology in which connecting like minds and forming a movement is so much easier will not be around long."

Somehow I doubt any third party candidate will make a realistic bid for a long time.

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