“The revolution will not be televised!”

Joe Trippi, the former campaign manager of Howard Dean, Candidate for the US Presidency in 2004, makes a bold statement with the title of his book. But the current race to the White House proves him right in many ways. It seems that American politicians finally embraced the internet as a key factor in their campaigns. Especially Barack Obama is using social media to his benefit. His omnipresence on Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, MySpace and many other blogs, makes Obama the undisputed president of web 2.0.

Barack Obama has over six times the support on Facebook compared to his Republican opponent, John McCain. He has thousands of LinkedIn connections (including yours truly, red.). And who does not remember the sexy Obama Girl on YouTube? Obama’s most remarkable accomplishment is that he was able to get young Americans interested in politics again. Through the involvement of a target group which has been largely absent from the US voting booths in recent decades, Obama secures the attention of a neglected demographic.
Off course, the internet is also actively being used for other political purposes such as spinning the truth, smearing the opposition and generating huge amounts of political contributions. Obama’s web 2.0 efforts generate tens of millions each month for his political campaign. Ironically, a lot of that money is being spent on TV ads, proving that the traditional media haven’t lost their importance just yet. Recently Obama’s PR people launched a new blog which the sole purpose to denounce every lie about Obama and prove them wrong with cold hard facts. This is yet again, a perfect example of online reputation management.

I wonder if our national politicians will make use of social media come the next elections.

Kenneth Peeters

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 17th, 2008 at 11:39 am and is filed under General, Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.