Tech Joy

How Barack Obama Used Web 2.0 Technologies to Win the Election

Ad Age recently awarded Barack Obama the title “Marketer of the Year.” So how did Barack Obama beat out marketing powerhouses Nike, Apple, and Zappos to win this award? More impressively, how did Obama go from a relatively unknown senator from Illinois to the Democratic presidential candidate in less than two years? By using a powerful combination of web 2.0 technologies to mobilize, organize, and recuit volunteers, fundraise, virally spread his message, and connect with his constituents. Should the election results come in tonight with Obama as the winner, Internet-based social media will clearly establish itself as the most influential form of media, above television. His campaign has much to teach marketers who will no doubt try to emulate his successes in establishing a fervent community of proud supporters in the important 18-25 demographic.

As Jon Fine, marketing and media columnist for BusinessWeek, said in the Ad Age article about Obama’s win: “It’s the f—-in’ Web 2.0 thing.” Here’s how he did it:

Central Desktop
During the primary season, Obama’s campaign workers in California started using a wiki-based collaboration platform called Central Desktop to successfully organize the first grass-roots campaign effort that the state has seen since Bobby Kennedy.  The campaign first used Central Desktop internally to manage information, documents, tasks, calendars, and train and organize volunteers. They then opened the platform up to 6,000 precinct volunteers to access and manage information. When the Obama campaign moved from California to Texas, it took the Central Desktop platform with them. Central Desktop made it easier for Obama to connect with his volunteers, and provided them with a tool that they could use to organize themselves, which made his grass roots efforts scaleable.

MyBarackObama
Obama didn’t just use established social networking sites to get the word out about his campaign: he created his own social network called MyBarackObama.com. Once registered for on the site, users could create a profile, add friends from the site, discover events to attend, sign up to volunteer, read Obama’s blog, create their own blog, and become a fundraiser.

Twitter
Obama’s Twitter account has over 115,000 followers to whom he has sent 262 messages during the campaign. Obama frequently twitters about his most frequent stop on the campaign trail and provides links to videos of his speeches. Interestingly, when you request to follow Obama on Twitter, he follows you back, so Obama is one of 3 people following me right now on Twitter. I’m sure he enjoyed hearing that I ate oatmeal for breakfast on Sunday. Incidentally, John McCain didn’t send his first text message out until the week before the election.

MySpace & Facebook
If anyone needed further evidence that Facebook has eclipsed MySpace as the social network of choice, consider this: Obama has about 20,000 friends on MySpace, and well over 2.2 million on Facebook. Obama uses his Facebook group to issue updates to his supporters, mobilize them to take part in events, donate money to his campaign, and link to his YouTube videos and blog. When Facebook users become Obama supporters, their friends are alerted through the Newsfeed feature, which then places a link on all of their pages to the Obama support page.

YouTube
Obama has relied heavily on YouTube to spread his message over the web. Obama seems to understand that younger voters would rather watch videos than read lengthy emails, and video is the ideal format to show off his excellent public speaking skills and natural charisma.  Obama has over 117,000 subscribers to his YouTube channel, and has logged over 18 million channel views.

Flickr
Obama even has his own Flickr account with photos from the campaign trail.

How have these tools helped Obama? Exit polls are showing the voter participation among young people may be at its highest ever. While other presidential candidates have been able to win over young people, they haven’t been as effective as getting them out to the polls as Obama has. Saying that people are passionate about this election may be the understatement of the year. People have a lot of reasons to be passionate.  I suspect that for young people who support Obama much of this passion comes from a feeling of being connected to Obama like we’ve never felt connected to a politician before, and that for many this connection was established and fostered over many months by using the Web 2.0 technologies that have become a part of the fabric of our lives.