Connection Café: The Candidates Take on Social Media

	The Candidates Take on Social Media
	Posted by Brandy Reppy at Oct 09, 2008 03:25 PM CDT Categories: Social Media

With less than a month left until the election, the race is certainly heating up. Sometimes it seems like there's a clear winner, and other times we just can't be sure. I'm talking, of course, about the Presidential Score Card series we've been presenting here on Connections cafe, of course.

As it stands, the score is Obama 2/McCain 1. I thought we could take some time to look at how the candidates tackle social media.

John McCain

John McCain has two major social media components integrated into his campaign and website: McCainSpace and the McCain: Get Involved facebook application.

McCainSpace is a social network built on the KickApps platform. It allows members of the community to blog, post images, and to share videos. Members need to create accounts specifically for the application, but once they do, they have the ability to participate in the community. This is an interesting concept in that it really is a way for McCain supporters to interact with each other.

The Facebook application is clearly a more mainstream way for users of the popular social network to publicize their involvement with the McCain/Palin ticket. This application enables users to take various actions like organizing meetings, planning fundraisers and planning phone banks. As with most Facebook applications, users are able to very easily invite friends to the join them and install the application.

Barack Obama

Now let's take a look at how the Barack Obama campaign intergrates with social media. First, directly on the site there is the ability to create a MyBO account (I know, you can snicker at the name; I sure did.). This is along the same lines as McCain's McCainSpace, enabling constituents to blog, to make friends, to host events, and to donate. Most of the functionality parallels that of McCainSpace, though I did find MyBO to be a lot more usable, and it showed much more localized content based on the zip code that I entered when I registered.

The next component is where the parallels between the two sites end. On the Obama site, there is a section entitled "Obama Everywhere". This section features links to nearly all of the major players in the social networking space and then some: Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Flickr, Digg, Twitter, Eventful, LinkedIn, BlackPlanet, Faithbase, Eons, Glee, MiGente, MyBatanga, AsianAve, and DNC PartyBuilder.

In addition to all of these different methods, the Obama campaign also released Obama '08: The Official iPhone Application on October 2nd. This app allows for a quick reference to where Obama stands on issues, allows users to find local events, reference media coverage, and to quickly access news and updates. But, one of the most talked about functions of the app is the "Call Friends" function, which references all of the contacts stored in the phone, then divides them up by state. The app then lists the contacts, divided by state, listing the battleground states first. Users then have the ability to mark their contacts within the app as either called or not called, and the user can mark how that friend has decided to vote. (I know there were some issues with the reporting on this application early on - you can read about those here.)

Conclusion

If we learned anything from Howard Dean in the 2004 campaign season, it's that candidates need to be mindful of the masses who are on the internet. I think it's obvious that Obama has embraced the idea of social networks as a way to empower constituents to be not just a bystander in the election, but a part of the change. This enables actual supporters to reach out to people who may not be touched through the conventional methods of information dissemination. While the McCain campaign has taken strides in this direction, it is still behind the times when it comes to embracing the ability to harness "people power" online.

And with that Obama win, the score is now Obama 3/ McCain 1.

We'll see you at the polls!