Version 2.0 of Barack Obama Web site ready for prime time
featuresblogs.chicagotribune.com
When I checked in on the campaign Web sites of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama a few weeks back, it was before the latter had announced he was in it definitely for sure, an event of small surprise and large coverage that took place in Springfield over the weekend.
Now Obama has replaced the placeholder Web site he had up with one that aims to take full advantage of what is known as Web 2.0, the social, interactive, multimedia Web that brings us everything from YouTube video sharing to virtual societies.
Its structure should allow the site to fully harness Web enthusiasm without the problems of direct association that resulted in two bloggers whose writings were controversial leaving the employ of the John Edwards campaign this week.
The updated barackobama.com is richer than its predecessor in all the expected ways: cleaner design, a fancy O-based logo (above; anything to say about that, Oprah?), a T-shirt shop (for the slightly cloying price of $20.08 each), links to selected news stories, extensive issues areas, video (BarackTV), and a campaign blog.
But what's really interesting are the Web 2.0 components. A Flickr button takes you to "Barack Obama's Photos" on the image-sharing Web site. A YouTube button takes you to a collection of 11 videos there, including CNN's report disproving the Muslim school smear attempt.
Most prominently of all, on the page and potentially in the campaign, there's my.barackobama.com. (Click the image at left to see all of this area's options clearly.) This attempt to centralize Obama-related social networking has brought "over 50,000 new people [to] the campaign -- signing up, creating profiles, blogging, creating your own groups and networking with like-minded folks," enthused Jon Jones of the campaign's new media team on the official blog.
Another campaign blog post noted that more than 1,000 Obama groups were formed in the first 24 hours of the site being up. Now there are, apparently, some 2,700, although a high proportion of them are, so far, groups in ambition only.
"1,000,000 Americans for Obama" has, at this writing, 632 members, "Obama Worldwide" has 17 and "Boston Students for Obama" is, so far, just Boston Student for Obama. In being alone in his group, the Bostonian is far from alone. On the other hand, just plain "Students for Obama" is the most crowded group, with 1,031 members.
Meanwhile, the most meta group is, in all likelihood, "Group Administrators for Obama Collaboration Group." It's a group about groups, a group group.
This kind of enthusiasm, which happened for Obama with apparent spontaneity on Facebook already, is obviously good for a campaign, but it presents organizational challenges, as well. Expect a movement to confederate some of the similarly-inclined groups, either by geography or interest.
Any since any my.barackobama member is given space and bandwidth to write his or her own blog, there will inevitably be honest critics as well as stealth critics from other campaigns who want to come in and challenge the Obama candidacy. Will there be any attempt to harness such commentators?
It''ll be fascinating to watch how this most concerted effort yet at putting the nouveau Web to political use plays out.
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Comments
Facebook "One Million Strong for Barack Obama" has 275,512 members and getting more every minute as I write this.
JOHNSON REPLY: Indeed. As pointed out in the Facebook article to which I linked.
Posted by: C Kennedy | Feb 15, 2007 10:37:32 AM
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It will be important to keep an eye on the Facebook groups too. In "Barack Obama (One Million Strong for Barack)" for example where there are over 275,000 members, people are forming up, organizing and fundraising directly from the group.
Posted by: I Burbank | Feb 15, 2007 11:13:10 AM
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SENATOR OBAMA, IS ON THE RISE AS HE TRIES TO BRING A NEW POLITIC'S BADLY NEEDED TO OUR COUNTRY. HE'S BRILLIANT AND MAYBE THE "HERO" WE NEED RIGHT NOW....I DON'T THINK HIS (2)YEARS AS A SENATOR HAS ANYTHING TO DO WITH WHAT, THIS WONDERFUL MAN IS CAPABLE OF. HOWEVER, THE RACE IS JUST GETTING STARTED AND THE NEWS MEDIA AS WELL AS THOSE WHO DON'T LIKE "SENATOR OBAMA" ARE WORKING (24)HOURS A DAY TO TRY AND SMEAR HIM BEFORE HE HAS A GOOD CHANCE TO START OFF. BUT THE "BEST IS YET TO COME" AND SENATOR OBAMA, WILL ALWAYS HAVE MY VOTE AND MY FAMILY'S VOTE. AMERICA, NEEDS A NEW POLITIC'S AND MR. OBAMA IS THE ANSWER IF WE GIVE HIM A "SEAT"..
Posted by: LORRAINE FISCHER | Feb 15, 2007 11:34:39 AM
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Then why did you say that the group with little over 1,000 was the 'most crowded group' thus far?
JOHNSON REPLY: I think it's clear, in context, that I was talking there about the groups formed on the my.barackobama.com site. |
