New Media in the White House

It is the 1000 pound elephant in the bedroom... no its on the bed! How is the internet going to change public policy, politics and government?

Ultimately, politics and government is all about the interaction and management of human relationships. If the changes driven by the internet on our interactions over the past fews years is any guide, I believe big changes are on the way on how politics and government will function. It will be a very interesting change to bear witness.

As much as the Obama campaign will be remembered for breaking the racial barrier, in the long run political analysts of the future will probably point to a breakthrough in its tech-savvy adoption of a proto-type online, distributed, network-powered grassroot organization.

Hidden in the story http://voices.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/11/20/obama_raised_half_a_billion_on.html of how the Obama campaign raised $500m online (out of $680m total) are these increadible figures:

- Obama's e-mail list contains upwards of 13 million addresses. (Four years ago, Sen. John F. Kerry had 3 million e-addresses on his list; former Vermont governor Howard Dean had 600,000.)
- Over the course of the campaign, aides sent more than 7,000 different messages, many of them targeted to specific donation levels (people who gave less than $200, for example, or those who gave more than $1,000). In total, more than 1 billion e-mails landed in inboxes.
- A million people signed up for Obama's text-messaging program. On the night Obama accepted the Democratic nomination at Invesco Field in Denver, more than 30,000 phones among the crowd of 75,000 were used to text in to join the program.
- On Election Day, every voter who'd signed up for alerts in battleground states got at least three text messages. Supporters on average received five to 20 text messages per month, depending on where they lived -- the program was divided by states, regions, zip codes and colleges -- and what kind of messages they had opted to receive.
- On MyBarackObama.com, or MyBO, Obama's own social network, 2 million profiles were created, 200,000 offline events were planned, about 400,000 blog posts were written and more than 35,000 volunteer groups were created -- at least 1,000 of them on Feb. 10, 2007, the day Obama announced his candidacy.
- Some 3 million phone calls were made in the final four days of the campaign using MyBO's virtual phone-banking platform. On their own MyBO fundraising pages, 70,000 people raised $30 million.
-The campaign set up a grassroots finance committee through which supporters were trained to collect small-dollar donations from their friends, relatives and co-workers.
- Obama has 5 million supporters in other social networks. On Facebook, where about 3.2 million signed up as his supporters. A group called Students for Barack Obama was created in July 2007. It was so effective at energizing college-age voters that senior aides made it an official part of the campaign the following spring. And Facebook users did vote: On Facebook's Election 2008 page, which listed an 800 number to call for voting problems, more than 5.4 million users clicked on an "I Voted" button to let their Facebook friends know that they made it to the polls. (Talk about online peer pressure.)

One interesting fact is that the chief of Obama campaign's "new media" division, a guy called Joe Rospars is 27 years old. One of the creators of MyBO is Chris Hughes, who was a co-founder of Facebook, is 24 years old. [On a seperate note, Obama's chief speechwriter Jon Favreux is also 27 years old, his chief of his massively successful field operations comprising 2m volunteers is Jon Carson a 33 years old]. I do not even remember what we were doing at age 24 or 27! The powers of youth in the Obama campaign is simply staggering. In 2008, we may be seeing the first wave of techno-entrepreneurs-innovators of the political/governing world.

The question is - is this a one-off? Will it remain at the campaign level? How well does it transfer to the business of government?

One sign is this announcement 2 days ago. Julius Genachowski who is the guru of Obama's new media operations has been appointed by the transition team to head a policy group, called" TECHNOLOGY, INNOVATION & GOVERNMENT REFORM". Think about it, when have you heard anyone linking "technology and innovation" with "government reform"?

All I can say is: watch this space. Something very interesting may be going on.

*Update*
Many pundits were stumped when he appointed someone outside his inner circle - Ms. Ellen Moran, the Executive Director of Emily's list - as the White House Communications Director. That is normally a prominent White House post usually to reward the main communications /message aide of the winning campaign. In Obama's case, his communications cheif Robert Gibb became White House Spokesperson while campaign spokesperson Dan Pfeiffer was made Deputy WH Director of Communications instead. Pundits either did not have a view or mentioned something like he is rewarding Clinton-loyalists (Emily's list supported Clinton in the primaries before switching to Obama).

I don't think Obama operates with that kind of pure political calculation. We know he is a strategist not just political tactician. Instead, I see it as a move to transform the task of the White House Communications Office, to reach out beyond the congress, media and pundits - and in order to connect better with Obama's base of supporters i.e. those 10m email addresses he has.

When you think about it, Emily's List is a grassroot activist political organization (to support Pro-Choice female candidates to political office); mobilizing grassroot support is what they do. When Obama puts the managerial and organizational chief of that organization into the White House and gives her a budget and all the grassroot infrastructure the campiagn has built up including those 10m emails, it becomes obvious that Barack Obama intention is to build a Whie House operations that reaches out directly to his supporters and the public in general.