New numbers haven't come out yet, but as of February 13, there were over 70,000 user accounts on my.barackobama.com. I imagine that by now, there are well over 100,000. To follow up on my last post, I decided that I would explore the core function of Barack Obama's social networking site: by actually attending a meetup.
Here is the organizing page. Here are the photos I took at the event.
I enjoyed going to this event because it gave me some perspective on how social networking is going to be impacting the political process. First off, I noticed that many of the people there were meeting face to face for the first time, but already knew each other through my.barackobama.com. For at least a few, this was the first time they had actually met someone in person that they'd first had contact with online. A few mentioned that they had never joined a social networking site such as MySpace or Facebook. Interesting.
The main purpose of this meeting was to start connecting people interested in supporting Barack Obama's run for office. While this meeting was mainly focused on introduction, many were already asking about what they can do to help. Going around the room, there seemed to be a common theme in between the different motivations for attending this event: Everyone seemed to resonate with Barack Obama's message of finding a new politics. Someone made the comment that Obama's message is very reminiscent of John F. Kennedy and his famous "Ask not what your country can do for you..." speech.
Listening to everyone and their stories, it struck me just how many people that Obama is inspiring into becoming politically active for the first time. Through the inspired use of social media in his campaign from the get go, he's also enabling a large number of people to become politically active extremely early in the election cycle.
We live in interesting times indeed.
Currently, my main criticism of my.barackobama.com is that it doesn't have a clear focus with regard to action. What it does well is enable communities to form, but beyond that, local leadership is still needed to figure out what the next steps are. Luckily it seems that there is experienced leadership available here in the form of Georgia for Obama, but I have to wonder what kind of opportunity is lost in communities where there is no such experience.
By being the first candidate to come out with a social networking site tied to a campaign, it's pretty much guaranteed (to be frank) that this new application of social software is going to suck compared to what this space is going to look like in the future. I'm sure what effect it would have in this particular election cycle, but I'm convinced that the first candidate who figures out the sweet spot in creating a viral social networking site that enables communities to form and then further helps them mobilize into action is going to have a major impact on the future of political process and democracy.
