2.12.07: Primary 2.0: BarackObama's social networking site needs work
By Richard Koman - February 11, 2007
Hand in hand with Barack Obama's official entry to the Democratic race is the launch of BarackObama.com, which includes Web 2.0-style social networking features as an integral part of the campaign.
There are "thousands of blogs" being created by supporters, as well as 1,000 groups, available from the site, links to Facebook, and more. At least, that's the hype. But it seems that many of the groups have only one member. With the boost he's getting from the launch of the campaign, there's sure to be an explosion of participation on the site at first, but will social networking have legs for this campaign?
If the Howard Dean online campaign illustrates anything, it's that campaigns "need to fire on all cylinders." Obama is no doubt a stronger, smoother candidate than Dean, but the campaign will need to work on traditional fundraising and organizing as well as online.
Fred Wilson, http://avc.blogs.com/a_vc/2007/02/thats_not_how_y.html">writing on his A VC blog, notes that the site doesn't actually tap into the blogosphere or the big social networks; the site wants all its supporters to revolved around BarackObama.com.
I saw that they let you write your own blog. That's smart too. But what if you already have one? No way to import my political blog posts into my profile. The people who are most likely to blog for Obama already have blogs. It's silly to shut them out.But despite all the bungles today and they made a bunch, I do think Obama's team gets the net. They just have some work to do to get it right. The Obama website is certainly a lot better than Hillary's. So is Edward's for that matter. Both Obama and Edwards have links to flickr, youtube, facebook, and myspace pages on their home page. That's smart.
That strikes me as on the money. These Obama blogs aren't real blogs. Real blogs will be written on Blogger and TypePad and WordPress. They will already exist. Online campaign staff will have to do the harder work of finding out what the blogosphere is saying and finding away to "participate in that conversation" as we say. Actually, that sounds like what Hillary says.
On ZDNet, Donna Bogatin raises another good point: What about the people who arent in the blogosphere? Most people will be "just curious."
When a typical, not particularly net-savvy, prospective voter clicks on the branded “My.BarackObama.com, "This Campaign is About You” homepage link, a typically non user-friendly generic “you must login” form is the "welcome," requiring the standard ecommerce like password set-ups, zip code entry…If the campaign is really all about “you,” you would be extended a friendly invitation to be part of it in a more usable and natural way. Moreover, “you” are not as welcome, if you don’t “have an account” and proceed to make “friends,” join “groups,” “blog”…
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