12th Annual Year in Review

This was The One.

For 12 years, we at PoliticsOnline have been chronicling and cheerleading new developments and the growth of online politics in the US and around the globe. And this year is The One that we have been waiting for and talking about all these many years.

Barack Obama and his campaign were the perfect storm - a unique combination of the right candidate, the right political environment, the right message, the right opponents, the right campaign and most of all, the right technology. When it all came together, the storm surge overwhelmed the existing power structures (first the Clintons and then the Republicans) to fundamentally change politics and political communications.

In short, it was a Revolution.

We have long said that it was only 10am on the first day of the Revolution - well now its high noon and the citadel of traditional, broadcast based, 'politics as usual' has fallen and the rebels are firmly in control.

Though they face enormous challenges both at home and abroad, if they don't screw it up (and there is no indication they will) then the Obama folks should have an eight year run. I don't think any of us today can imagine all of the political changes that they will enable via the new technology that will empower people to take action both at home and abroad.

Obama often ends his speeches with the charge 'Let's go change the world'.

He will. So stay tuned - you ain't seen nothing yet!




Phil Noble
Publisher

Obama Quotes

• "Through the Internet and the enthusiasm of this campaign, we've created a model for being able to compete at the highest levels of politics without being dependent on big-moneyed interests, and I think that's a real positive." - April 11, 2008



• "What I didn't anticipate was how effectively we could use the Internet to harness that grassroots base, both on the financial side and the organizing side." - June 5, 2008



• "That, I think, was probably one of the biggest surprises of the campaign, just how powerfully our message merged with social networking and the power of the Internet." - June 5, 2008

Obama's Online Operations Final Stats

The Washington Post reports that in his 21 months of campaigning, Obama raised 745 million dollars online. Equally impressive is Obama's online operations stats:

• 3 million donors made a total of 6.5 million donations online adding up to more than $500 million.
• Of those 6.5 million donations, 6 million were in increments of $100 or less. Obama's e-mail list contains upwards of 13 million addresses.
• In total, more than 1 billion e-mails landed in inboxes...To put this in perspective, John Kerry's '04 campaign collected 3 million email addresses and Howard Dean had roughly 600,000 email addresses on his list.
• Obama's e-mail list contains upwards of 13 million addresses.
• A million people signed up for Obama's text- messaging program.
• 2 million profiles were created on Obama's social network, MyBarackObama.com in addition to the 5 million supporters in other social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace.
• MyBarackObama.com housed over 400,000 blog posts. Individuals in all 50 states created 35,000 volunteer groups and organized over 200,000 offline events. Each member was measured on an activity index including events hosted, events attended, calls made, doors knocked, amount raised, and groups joined. The higher the activity index, the more access that member was given to training tools and key campaign staff. Personal fundraising pages told others where each member stood and why they should be supported.

Obama ePolitics First

Announcing Obama's Running Mate Via Text Message...(NYTimes) Barack Obama, just like the cool kid in study hall, sent a text message announcing his pick for vice president. The ploy may seem silly - the fad candidate adopts the latest tech fad - but it's an important part of one of Mr. Obama's most under-recognized campaign efforts.
Full Story

Obama '08: The Official iPhone Application
Obama '08 is your official, comprehensive connection to the heart of Barack Obama and Joe Biden's campaign, giving you the tools you need to make an impact and stay in the know.
Obama iPhone app
(NYTimes) It's Obama on the iPhone

Obama in the News

The First 21st-Century Campaign
(The National Journal) In scope and sweep, tactics and scale, the marathon struggle between Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton has triggered such a vast evolutionary leap in the way candidates pursue the presidency that it is likely to be remembered as the first true 21st-century campaign. Full Story

Obama Ushers In The Age Of Web Politics
(InformationWeek) In capturing the Democratic nomination for president, Sen. Barack Obama has made a historic leap: becoming the first African-American candidate for president from a national party.
Full Story

The Facebooker Who Friended Obama
(NYTimes) Last November, Mark Penn, then the chief strategist for Hillary Rodham Clinton, derisively said Barack Obama's supporters "look like Facebook."
Full Story

Obama's Wide Web: From YouTube to Text Messaging, Candidate's Team Connects to Voters
(Washington Post) This is Triple O -- Obama's online operation.
Full Story

History Unfolds Online As Obama Is Sworn In As 44th President of the United States of America

Thanks to the Web, people across the world were able to watch history take place as Barack Obama was sworn in as the 44th President of the United States of America.

Text of the inaugurual address can be found here. CNN.com offers a replay of President Barack Obama's Inauguration speech in its entirety.

The Presidential Inaugural Committee is taking steps towards aggregating the various photos, videos, stories and news coverage by citizen journalists through their new website, www.pic2009.org. Using various social media outlets such as YouTube ,Twitter, Flickr to connect with those people who could not be in Washington, D.C.

Given the fact that Facebook, MySpace and Twitter did not exist during the Inauguration of George W. Bush in 2001, we should see a very different side of Inauguration coverage. Citizen journalists will be a rich source of coverage in Washington D.C. as almost 2 million people poured into the Nation's capital to watch President Obama be sworn in.

Inauguration Stats
CNN partnered with Facebook so that users could update their facebook status while watching the Inauguration live-streaming and it seemed to be a huge success:
Watching The Inauguration With All My Facebook Friends

• CNN served more than 21.3 million live streams on CNN.com as of 3:30 PM EST and 136 million pageviews.
• There was a peak of 1.3 million streams just before Obama began his speech.
• 600,000 status updates have been posted so far through the CNN.com Live Facebook feed.
• There was an average of 4,000 status updates every minute during the broadcast.
• There were 8,500 status updates the minute Obama began his speech
• Obama's page on Facebook has more than 4 million fans and more than 500,000 wall posts
• Millions of people logged into Facebook during the broadcast.

The U.S. presidential election has been dubbed the "YouTube Election", with both parties utilizing the ability to reach millions with viral videos for free on the Net. Although there have been YouTube 'gaffes' seen 'round the world, for the most part YouTube has been a critical online tool that will remain in a political campaign's online arsenal for quite a while. What was also so amazing about YouTube's role in this election was the unleashing of creativity on the Web from everyday Americans.

Joe Trippi Stat at the Web 2.0 Summit 08: The Web and Politics
People watched 14.5 million hours of the official video created by Obama campaign, not including supporters' videos, which would have cost $47 million dollars to buy those eyeballs on TV.

Dear Mr. Obama - 13,482,177 views

SNL Tina Fey as Sarah Palin - 8,329,146 views

"I Got a Crush...On Obama" By Obama Girl - 13,007,207 Views

Will.i.am - Yes.We.Can. - 15,293,209 Views

Sarah Palin & Katie Couric - 2,921,370 Views

CBS Exposes Clinton's Bosnia Trip Exaggeration - 2,031,330 views

From cyber freedom issues in China to Egypt's Facebook Revolution, 2008 saw a surge of online activism. The falling cost of technology combined with the rise in resourceful and innovative uses of technology is creating more empowered global citizens online in '09.

Pakistani Anti-terror Campaign Becomes World's Largest Online Petition with over 62 Million Signatures
The YHN Foundation, a Pakistan-based NGO, has collected over 62 million signatures at a rate of 2.5 million per day in a unique grassroots effort to combat terrorism. More people have signed up with YHN than voted in the last Pakistani election.

The campaign has five key components:

1.) YHN has stationed 6000 'ambassadors' in strategic locations around Pakistan to get people to sign paper petitions;

2.) They created a portal that is drawing massive traffic and global attention with a counter showing how many have signed the petition;

3.) YHN has launched an SMS campaign to collect 'signatures' and phone numbers in support of the campaign;

4.) A special song has been written and several videos have been produced with many different version of the song being recorded by many different singers. All are available as free downloads and ring tones;

5.) YHN Developed online tools and a space for people to 'tell their stories' about terrorism and what they are doing to try and stop it. Additionally, the site's forum has 1,977 active members and is building a larger network of concerned citizens and activists every day. The Yeh Hum Naheen Facebook groups have a combined membership of over 24,000 people and is steadily growing rapidly.

The goal of the project is to send a strong message which will be heard throughout the world that the majority of Muslims and Pakistanis do not condone terrorism and those who perpetrate these acts of terrorism do not do so in the name of Islam. The petition asks Pakistanis: "Are we the ones who deprive mothers of their children? Are we the ones who deprive children of their fathers' affection? Are we the ones who are destroying our own futures?"

Founded last year, YHN strives to promote the ideas of tolerance, peace and harmony, which are the essence of the Islamic faith.

To learn more visit the YHN website and become a member of one of the Yeh Hum Naheen facebook groups.
Guardian Coverage
www.yehhumnaheen.org

Runner Up #1

New Freedom, and Peril, in Online Criticism of China
(Washington Post) In the wake of the violence that has rocked Tibet and the protests over the Olympic torch relay, online bulletin boards in China have erupted with virulent comments rooted in nationalist sentiments. On some sites, emotional Chinese have exchanged personal information about critics and hunted them down. Such situations have become so common that some users refer to the sites as "human flesh search engines."
Full Story
Internet Proves Powerful Tool for Chinese Protests
Cracking the 'Great Firewall' of China's Web censorship
Beijing Gags Anti-Western Online Anger
Chaos Aims to Crack China's Wall

Runner Up #2

Twitter Post Rescues Jailed Journalist in Egypt
James Karl Buck was bailed out of jail by a 'tweet' post on Twitter, a social networking site. The message "arrested" was seen by Buck's friends and bloggers in Egypt and the United States via the Internet. Buck, a journalism graduate student at the University of California at Berkeley, was in Egypt for a school research project, ironically focused on bloggers and journalists who use tools like Twitter to keep in step with news, when Egyptian authorities arrested him. The authorities claimed that Buck may have been inciting a riot; although, Buck was merely photographing a labor rally near a textile mill in Mahalla, Egypt.
Full Story
Egypt: Facebooking the Struggle
Egyptian Political Dissent Unites Through Facebook
How the Internet is Challenging Egypt's Government
In Egypt, YouTube Trumps Facebook

"If your country wants to have a developed economy...you basically have to open up to the Internet."- Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, Stanford University Speech Tuesday, February 19, 2008.

"Maybe [broadband Internet] is not as basic as water, but it's as basic as hot water." - Robin Chase, founder and CEO of Zipcar and Meadow Networks expresses the importance of universal Internet access during the launch of www.internetforeveryone.org, at the 2008 Personal Democracy Forum.

From US to Sweden, Eavesdropping Legislation Causes Online Uproar
Expressen, a Swedish tabloid newspaper, was responsible for creating the email script that has been used to send 6.6 million emails to flood the inboxes of the 143 Swedish lawmakers who voted 'yes' what has been called "the most far-reaching eavesdropping plan in Europe." Keep in mind that Sweden's entire population accounts for little over 9 million people.

Over the past few months, International contributing editors to PoliticsOnline have pondered the benefits of Twitter. Mark Pack, Head of Innovations for the UK Liberal Democrats, wrote about the benefits and future uses of hashtagging. Alexander Tolstrup, Campaign Manager for the Conservative People's Party in Denmark, wrote in to tell us the many benefits of micro-blogging that he has experienced.

Rock the Vote, techPresident and many others created TwitterVoteRep ort.com for election day, enabling American voters to "share their experiences and resources with one another to solve problems quickly (e.g. "don't come now, the line is too long").

David All Group's Twitter101 Guide proved to be a useful resource for those unfamiliar with Twitter.

Prediction #1- Obama's e-Revolution in government will be bigger than it was in the campaign. You can't put a genie back in the bottle and the Obama forces will uncork the biggest bottle of them all - the US Government.

Prediction #2- Sarah Palin will be the online hottie on the right. She will continue to build and mobilize her base of followers and use the online as her principle vehicle. The Republicans don't really have a clue yet and we'll see lots of mush from a group of essentially boring white guys fumbling for a message and a media. Palin has a message and she has a medium.

Prediction #3 - Expect to see some type of online breakthrough in 'peace making' - probably in the Middle East. There's lots of buzz going on here but it doesn't have a single clear focus yet. Relative speaking, it is a wired region and both sides - all sides - have shown some real technological sophistication in the past. Look for 'the people' to find a way to use online tools to breakthrough the stalemate caused by the existing traditional political leadership.

Prediction #4 - There will be a global online service initiative fueled by the Obama magic at home and abroad. Think: Online Peace Corps.