Social Networking in the Presidential Debate

About an hour ago, I was flicking through channels and caught an interesting CNN segment regarding social networking in the 2008 presidential debate. It featured the new Rolling Stone magazine cover story that helps explain Senator Obama’s popular Internet campaign that has surpassed any other by far.

They’ve married the incredibly powerful online community they built with real on-the-ground field operations. We’ve never seen anything like this before in American political history.

The whole article is five pages. I’ve read it twice, but plan to read it more.

Note - the following Facebook links require a Facebook account before viewing.

A main premise of the article points to Obama’s own social networking site, plus how he’s using similar opportunities such as his Facebook page.

Senator Obama isn’t the first politician to use social networking. In fact, both Senators McCain and Clinton have their own Facebook pages.

The same goes with “Yahoo Answers”. All three remaining candidates have official profiles, although none of them have utilized it very much. The first I saw it was over a year ago while viewing an inquiry from Senator Clinton regarding health care.

Another note - This is from a social networking point of view and not an elephant/donkey/indie point of view.

One thing I really like is how the Obama team has integrated social networking with their ground campaigns. This hasn’t been done before and I can see the push vs. pull marketing aspect.

We all see the TV ads where politicians of all parties try to push their opinions on us. These social networking pull campaigns allow us to view and be solicited from whom we choose.

The above example could also be useful for marketers whether they are focused on traditional or online search efforts. It’s one thing for consumers to see you, but it’s another for consumers to react.