Social Networking as a Presidential Campaign Tool
I was on LinkedIn a couple of days ago and found Barack Obama had
posted a question: "What ideas do you have to keep America competitive in the years ahead?".
Curious, I had to check out his profile. There he was. US Senator, Presidential Candidate. He was a super-node, i.e. he had 500+ connections. And over 2900 people had answered his question.
Of course, I had to invite him into my network. I used the default LinkedIn invitation, plus a sentence indicating I'd be voting for him in November. I wasn't sure if I'd get a reply, but today...
I think it's cool that our future president is in my network (though I'm sure it's a team of campaign lackeys handling all the the friend requests). It further validates what I've seen of him thus far: he understands technology and how to use it strategically (of course he was going to accept my invite!). He's asking a fairly well educated crowd their opinion, and there are some good answers in there (this exercise is left to the reader to find the good answers -- that's not what this post is about).
If you haven't read Marc Andreesen's post about Obama, it had left an impression with me, especially Obama's line "Watch how I run my campaign. You'll see my leadership skills in action." I've been impressed with his ability to manage and lead and his, or at least his campaign team's, creativity. His use of LinkedIn to solicit feedback and his non-use of public campaign financing are two good recent examples. He's going to run circles around McCain.
I figure there were hundreds of thousands that would add him to their networks. I would think it would affect their friend updates feature, expanding it exponentially. However, I've not yet received any updates that says who Barack Obama has added as a friend, so I'm guessing his network privacy settings are maxed.
For those that didn't think to add him as a friend, there's also a Barack Obama LinkedIn group, as well as links to his web site BarackObama.com.
For any of you McCain supporters out there, does he really not know how to use a computer?
Curious, I had to check out his profile. There he was. US Senator, Presidential Candidate. He was a super-node, i.e. he had 500+ connections. And over 2900 people had answered his question.
Of course, I had to invite him into my network. I used the default LinkedIn invitation, plus a sentence indicating I'd be voting for him in November. I wasn't sure if I'd get a reply, but today...
I think it's cool that our future president is in my network (though I'm sure it's a team of campaign lackeys handling all the the friend requests). It further validates what I've seen of him thus far: he understands technology and how to use it strategically (of course he was going to accept my invite!). He's asking a fairly well educated crowd their opinion, and there are some good answers in there (this exercise is left to the reader to find the good answers -- that's not what this post is about).
If you haven't read Marc Andreesen's post about Obama, it had left an impression with me, especially Obama's line "Watch how I run my campaign. You'll see my leadership skills in action." I've been impressed with his ability to manage and lead and his, or at least his campaign team's, creativity. His use of LinkedIn to solicit feedback and his non-use of public campaign financing are two good recent examples. He's going to run circles around McCain.
I figure there were hundreds of thousands that would add him to their networks. I would think it would affect their friend updates feature, expanding it exponentially. However, I've not yet received any updates that says who Barack Obama has added as a friend, so I'm guessing his network privacy settings are maxed.
For those that didn't think to add him as a friend, there's also a Barack Obama LinkedIn group, as well as links to his web site BarackObama.com.
For any of you McCain supporters out there, does he really not know how to use a computer?
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