“How Obama Did It” by David Talbot Response

“How Obama Did It” by David Talbot discussed the various methods implemented through the use of social networking to help Obama with his campaign. They discuss the MYBO database, micro blogging, and SMS messaging.

MYBO is Obama’s website that is not only informative or interactive but it also helped collect money from the voters to help support Obama’s campaign. The website provided a sort of meeting place for everyone to gain various information on Obama and to keep updated on how he was doing. It was different from the other candidate’s sites because it added an interactive element to it that was open to everyone and in a not so serious way. They accomplished this by allowing members to communicate with one another on the site, which also allowed them to share other tools such as video posts on YouTube. Perhaps one of the most key was that this system allowed donations to be made electronically by anyone; once or even monthly. Which the article pointed out was far more effective than the other candidate who would receive large donations per person but only once per person.

The Micro blogging efforts also helped a great deal because using sites like Facebook, MySpace, and twitter etc. really helped generate a good fan base that reached the masses because of the sites growing popularity. The article mentions that twitter alone mustered up 50,000 followers for Obama.

Finally adding SMS text messaging helped keep connected with updates that were deemed worth reading and never pointless. They also allowed supporter to forward these messages to other people and also spread the word faster.

This article helped readers understand how Obama became such a great success through the use of the MYBO database, micro blogging, and SMS messaging and without these elements it would be tough to determine how popular Obama would have not been, however because he implement the technology in his campaign Obama rose to be a beacon of hope for America.