November 9th, 2008 by Brett Hurt Founder and CEO
So much has been written about the recently concluded Presidential campaign, so I will be careful not to rehash it here. But if there is one lesson coming out of this period that is relevant for you, as the readers of Bazaarblog, it is that social media defined this campaign. Back in June, I wrote about Obama and The Open Brand (a reference to Kelly Mooney’s brilliant book). Then my good friend and fellow entrepreneur Auren Hoffman wrote an article for BusinessWeek in August about technology being the defining factor in election campaigns. From Obama’s social network to the will.i.am music-video community-collage to his exceptional use of the Web as a fundraising vehicle (raising an amazing 400% more than McCain), Obama’s use of social media has defined a new era for election campaigns. Remember that Obama’s innovation adoption of social media comes at a time where five social networks, including Facebook, have recently moved into the top-ten most trafficked websites in the world (reference my June post on Mary Meeker).
When voting moves online, as it undoubtedly will (just think about all of the tax money we would save if we did not have to set up temporary voting centers everywhere), the marriage of social media and election campaigns will be that much more profound.
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June 4th, 2008 by Brett Hurt Founder and CEO
As everyone now knows, last night was a historic one in the U.S. But did you also know that Obama made history for how innovative his online campaign was?
We had the pleasure of hosting Kelly Mooney, President of Resource Interactive and my peer on the Shop.org Board of Directors, as one of our keynote speakers at our Social Commerce Summit last week (note: the event was amazing, see the recap post from Sam Decker, our CMO). Kelly was great, as always. Her interview of Ze Frank, one of our Advisory Board members, was fantastically thought-provoking and entertaining. Hey keynote presentation on The Open Brand, her new book (see my interview of Kelly), was also top-notch. What I remembered most from her presentation was the "Yes We Can" shared community video produced by will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas. Kelly blogs about it here (her blog is one of the few that I personally follow). The video is an awesome expression of community participation and user-generated content (note: mouse over the mosiac as it plays).
Whether or not you support Obama, his innovative use of the online channel will be emulated for future democratic elections. And as politics gets more "open", that will benefit us all. Just like customer-generated reviews benefits all with better products and services (at our Summit, I learned that Wal-Mart drops any product nationwide after it gets a certain number of negative reviews online), so will politics as candidates engage in openness.
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Last Sunday, I wrote a post on the Obama campaign’s use of social media. I guess I’m less busy than TechCrunch (hard to believe), but they just posted a more comprehensive social-media analysis than me, including good detail of his win, voter turnout, and suggestions about how he uses social media going forward, and it is definitely worth reading. This is an especially important read considering that Obama announced he will be employing the nation’s first Chief Technology Officer.
