The 1st internet President

11-11-2008

by Ralph Averbuch

Something interesting happened just a few days ago. Perhaps for the first time in the internet’s very short history, it played a pivotal part in electing the 44th President of the United States. As recently as 2004, when Howard Dean was using the web to help be selected Presidential candidate for the Democrats, there were no significant social networking sites and video portals like YouTube were in their infancy. Now, however, there’s been a sea-change exemplified by the sheer force of numbers that Barack Obama’s team were able to muster through sites like Facebook and YouTube. In the USA media is so utterly fragmented that TV resorts to 30 second sound bites which seek to sum up a candidate’s position. Yet, with the web some 6 million people were able to watch and listen to just one 30 minute speech given by Barack Obama without the same level of traditional media interpretation and intervention. People literally had limitless time and space to make their own judgments in a manner long since eradicated from traditional media outlets. For Barack Obama his team’s use of social networking and even mobile messaging was a master stroke which almost certainly allowed him to initially take on the might of the Clinton machine, winning his party’s nomination and then drive massive numbers of young voters to participate on polling day. Unfortunately for John McCain, being the oldest nominee in history for the office of President was perhaps the biggest Achilles heel he had. He didn’t and perhaps never could appreciate just how much the world has been changed by the web. Barack Obama may shortly be the 44th President of the United States but he’s the first president to win power thanks almost entirely to the networked generation who supported him through the internet.