Obama's website, My.BarackObama.com , effectively creates a community of Obama supporters through the use of several features that encourage participation and interaction among its members.
On the “dashboard,” or the individual home page of each mybarackobama.com account, there is an “activity tracker” that rates your participation in the campaign based on how many blog posts you’ve written, how many events you’ve attended, how much money you have donated, how many groups you have joined, how many people who have donated because of you, how many events you have hosted, how many calls you have made, and the number of doors you have knocked on. It encourages people to work harder for the campaign, to become a 10/10 supporter by doing each of these activities. By encouraging people to take the traditionally campaign coordinated activities into their own hands, the campaign passed off the control over their message and incited a grassroots movement that used energized supporters rather than coordinated volunteers. People could participate on their own time and in their own way. By placing the responsibility in the hands of the supporters, the campaign revived the public’s sense of efficacy. They literally made the difference in the campaign, which made them feel important.
On the website, each member is encouraged to create a profile, much like a blogger or a tweeter would. You post why you support Barack Obama, as well as your favorite quote and the issues that matter to you. You can also choose to link this profile to Facebook. When I made my account, my Facebook picture was automatically pulled to use as my profile picture on mybarackobama.com, which felt a bit like a security breach to me, but was so advanced on the part of the campaign that I let it go. This profile gives each supporter an online identity, making them feel like a part of the campaign community.
Each member has their own blog that they can add to with Obama-related blog posts. (For the sake of demonstration, I have doubled this blog on the myBO website). People post pictures, stories, and comments on the issues to share with other people, and can comment on stories that they like. This encourages each voter to share their campaign experiences with others and to motivate them to participate so that they can feel like an important member of the community.
The website also has a store that is updated frequently with stickers, cups, hats, and apparel that people can wear to spread the message. The campaign has created the logo that they now use on all of their merchandise, and is another way to spread the message online.
Obama’s website has a column on the right side of the page called Obama Everywhere, with links to his Facebook page, Twitter, Batanga, Glee, Flickr, YouTube, MySpace, Asian Ave, and several other networking sites. By using his campaign site to connect to several ancillary sites, Obama spread his campaign into every corner of the web. He reached out to every social community on the web, including the Hispanic, Asian, gay and lesbian communities, as well as the mainstream ones like Facebook and MySpace.
The entire MyBO site can be linked to an individual user's Facebook, allowing important campaign announcements and updates on each individual’s activity within the website to appear on the member’s wall and newsfeed. So, for example, when I posted to the blog on Obama's website, a post appeared on my Facebook page and my friend's home pages notifying them that I had made "x" post on MyBarackObama.com. The interconnectivity of these sites allows the user to spread the word via the campaign on the sites they already network and that their friends already read.
During the campaign, the website effectively facilitated conversation and action, as well as spreading of the message through merchandise and fundraising. This site contributed to Obama’s success by capitalizing on the new literacies and emphasizing the grassroots movement that the internet inherently encourages. In the end, it was the emphasis of the new that allowed Obama to gather up such a broad base of supporters and come out victorious. His campaign will be the new paradigm in the elections to come.
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