Obama's Wide Web

Last week, the campaign texted its supporters to say that it will announce its vice presidential pick via text. Days later, Goodstein launched Obama Mobile, a site where users can access the latest Obama news and download videos on their cellphones -- a first for a presidential candidate.

Socnets Instead of Town Diners

If Triple O had a motto, it would be: "Meet the voters where they're at."

Obama was the first candidate to have profiles on AsianAve.com, MiGente.com and BlackPlanet.com, social networking sites (a.k.a. socnets) targeting the Asian, Latino and black communities. His presence on BlackPlanet, which ranks behind MySpace and Facebook in terms of traffic, is so deep that he maintains 50 profiles, one for each state. On ALforObama, his Alabama page on BlackPlanet, for example, supporters can read an updated blog, watch YouTube videos and learn more about his text program.

It's difficult to measure the value of these socnets in persuading voters to choose Obama. What's clear, however, is that online networking -- how supporters communicate with one another within their online communities -- has its advantages. A Facebook group called Students for Barack Obama, started in July 2006 by Bowdoin College student Meredith Segal, was so successful that it became an official part of the campaign. By the time Hans Riemer was brought on as Obama's youth-vote director in the spring of 2007, dozens of similar chapters were already up and running on campuses.

"Some people only go to MySpace. It's where they're on all day. Some only go to LinkedIn. Our goal is to make sure that each supporter online, regardless of where they are, has a connection with Obama," says Goodstein, who also is in charge of regularly updating Obama's profiles on these socnets. "Then, as much as we can, we try to drive everyone to our site."

All roads lead to BarackObama.com. In May, weeks before the end of the Democratic primary season, the site attracted 2.3 million unique visitors, according to the research company Nielsen Online. The latest figures from Hitwise.com, which regularly compares online traffic for BarackObama.com and JohnMcCain.com, says that Obama's site draws 72 percent of the total traffic to the two sites.

There's a design team that develops content for BarackObama.com, as well as staffers who place ads across the Web to drive people to the site. A group known as the "analytics team" tracks which ad at what time drew the most traffic and what kinds of e-mails from the campaign get opened and read most. Usually campaigns hire outside companies to do this work.

The site's epicenter is My.BarackObama.com, a socnet built and overseen by Chris Hughes, one of the co-founders of Facebook and one of Triple O's first employees. The 24-year-old left Facebook, where he has stock options potentially worth millions, and moved to Chicago in February 2007. Like Albright-Hanna with video and Goodstein with texting, Hughes was anxious to see how online networking can apply to campaigning.

"As great as Barack is, if the campaign hadn't been constituted in this idea of investing in our everyday supporters and helping them organize among themselves, I wouldn't have been as excited about the job," Hughes says.

More than a million people have signed up on MyBO (pronounced My Boh), where they can blog, plan events, set fundraising goals, join groups and volunteer. So far, about 80,000 offline events have been planned using its tools, Hughes says. While most paid staff were deployed in the early-voting states, for example, volunteers were simultaneously organizing in Colorado, Idaho and Montana. The campaign's job is to communicate with users who host events, "making sure the events are happening as planned, that the hosts have resources, that they count how many people actually show up," Hughes says.

"We were able to build a state-by-state organization during the primaries because of the Internet," says campaign manager David Plouffe. "Now we have to continue building on that -- in addition to making sure we keep getting our message across and asking our supporters to help us debunk any rumors and lies out there."

Though staffers monitor MyBO, supporters critical of Obama's positions are allowed to express their dismay. Last month, angered by Obama's compromise on FISA, a telecom immunity bill, users formed what for a time became the single largest group on the network. President Obama, Please Get FISA Right still lists more than 23,000 members.

There are hundreds of groups within MyBO, and some of the biggest include Women for Obama, Veterans for Obama and Environmentalists for Obama. Nikki Sutton, a recent graduate of Middlebury College, contacts supporters within these groups and encourages them to make phone calls and host house parties. "That way, women are calling other women, people who list the environment as their top concern reach out to people who do, too," says Sutton, 23.

To foster a sense of community on MyBO, Sam Graham-Felsen, the campaign's blogger in chief, posts stories of supporters. The 27-year-old used to write for the Nation, for which he did a story on Obama's popularity among young people online. He joined the campaign shortly after that article ran. "I wanted to be a part of the campaign instead of just writing about it," he says. When the campaign hit its goal of 75,000 donors in March 2007, Graham-Felsen contacted the 75,000th donor -- an IT specialist from Long Beach, Calif. -- and wrote about the donor's $5 contribution, his first ever to a campaign.

That small profile encapsulates the hopes behind the entire online operation.

"You can see the main difference between the Obama and McCain campaigns by going to their Web sites," says Alex Castellanos, a longtime Republican media consultant whose clients have included Romney and President Bush. "Go to McCain's. Pretty standard. Looks fine. But go to Obama's. At the very top, there's a quote."

Alongside a photo of Obama, it reads: "I'm asking you to believe. Not just in my ability to bring about real change in Washington . . . I'm asking you to believe in yours."

"Because of the Internet, Obama has built a movement. He's leading a cause. McCain is running on his résumé. He's leading a campaign," Castellanos continues. "Now what's going to win: a cause or a campaign? We don't know."