…and its done.  Here is a really rough Obama iama transcript you can look at until reddit comes back.

outtakes from the VB …

Ever wondered what it would be like to be the President of the United States of America? Kind of like Barack Obama? Well, head over to Reddit because the POTUS with the mostest is doing an “Ask Me Anything,” or AMA.

The President tweeted from his official Twitter today, “Hey, everyone: I’ll be taking your questions online today. Ask yours here: http://OFA.BO/gBof44  -bo”

Indeed, he even signed it “-bo,” which is the President’s official signal that the tweet did not come from an assistant handling his Twitter, but from the man himself.

Obama started off the AMA with a not about Hurricane Isaac, which is currently hitting the Gulf and Southeastern regions of the United States. He also included this verification photo, though sadly it does not include a piece of paper handwritten with his name and date on it.

We’ve reached out to Reddit for comment and will update the post upon hearing back.

Obama used a grass roots based approach building and managing the organization. Just 4 years ago, it would be hard to imagine the level of organization and communication required to build and manage such numbers as those involved in the Obama campain through traditional top down means. But with youTube, Facebook, twitter and even the iPhone and Blackberrys; social media and the hand held tools that expand their reach has changed politics.

First, lets think about fund raising, something I’m sure everyone will agree was one of the major factors in this election’s outcome. What the Obama team did was focus on small donations via the internet. Although web based fund raising is not new, the way it was done was different.  In this campaign, we saw donate buttons on web pages and emails. Then, what I consider the first markable impact of social media, the ‘yes we can’ video.

Although the lyrics are entirely quotations from Sen. Obama’s concession speech in the New Hampshire^[3] the Obama campaign had no involvement in its production.^[4] The viral music video, shot in a sparse black-and-white, features Barack Obama’s image in collage fashion; the performers (celebrities including musicians, singers and actors) echo his words in a hip-hop call-and-response manner as his voice plays in the background. The song was produced by will.i.am; the music video was directed by Jesse Dylan, the son of singer Bob Dylan.^[5] The music video (which Joe Klein of primary,Time later characterized as “brilliant”)^[6] premiered on the national media on ABC News Now‘s What’s the Buzz entertainment program on February 1, 2008.^[5] On February 2 it was featured on the Obama campaign’s community blog,^[7] and later promoted as a viral video by the campaign on its website.^[8] Obama played the clip prior to a February 12 rally of nearly 20,000 at the Kohl Center on the campus of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. cit-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yes_We_Can  at this writing, there has been 1,035,880 views on youtube.

Once this video went viral, not only did the word get out, and people become inspired, but social media links were established. As the campaign wore on, the obama campaign used all forms of social and digital media where they could, even to the point of putting ads in video games.

What really impressed me during the summer, was how the campaign was starting to show up everywhere I normally was. Twitter, Facebook, my iPhone!  I wrote about an Obama campain aid app from iPhoneDevCamp, there were plenty of twitter sites dedicated to the Obama message and discussion, the 1 million strong Facebook group, and on and on.   Have a look at this info from speakmediablog:

Election 08 Social Media Showdown – Here is a look at the activity surrounding each candidate’s social media outreach.Senator Barack Obama

• Twitter http://twitter.com/barackobama 95,758 Followers
• Facebook http://www.facebook.com/barackobama 2,047,779 Supporters
• MySpace http://www.myspace.com/barackobama 686,547 Friends
• YouTube http://www.youtube.com/barackobama Subscribers: 98,156 Channel Views: 16,966,722
• LinkedIn http://www.linkedin.com/in/barackobama 500+ Connections

Senator John McCain

• Twitter Unofficial Site http://twitter.com/JohnMcCain2008 2,102 Followers
• Facebook http://www.facebook.com/johnmccain 567,227 Supporters
• MySpace http://www.myspace.com/johnmccain 55,323 Friends
• YouTube http://www.youtube.com/johnmccain Subscribers: 24,373 Channel Views: 1,716,044
• LinkedIn http://www.linkedin.com/in/johnmccaindotcom 500+ Connections

The McCain campain was late to the game, and also, its younger voters that tend to use social media tools, so that needs to be taken into consideration when looking at these numbers.

Whats interesting about how smartphones plays into this is how iPhones, blackberrys and other smart phones allow the users to stay connected and more inportanly, report in. The iPhone in paticular with the Obama app and other applications that came later; allows a campain volenteer to not only canvas, but become a reporter armed with pictures, movie recordings if you have a jailbreak, SMS, and emails. During the election I saw many people taking pictures of their polling sites. A tool was created to allow reporting of odd goings on (talked about it here) .  Once can imagine that if people needed help at a phone bank, a twitter could go out to get more people in a flash.  Finding that your are canvacing that area as someone else?  Email back to HQ with a screenshot of your map and double check to see if you are in the same area.

I think we have seen how future campaign will be run.  Integration will ALL media, TV, Radio, Blogs, Social Media and even SMS feeds as where Obama offered to provide news of his VP pick via SMS before it’s announced.  Although the SMS messages did not go out to everone at the right time, the orginal goal of expanding the contact lists was successful. We will see future campain websites embracing social media in the model of what we saw with Obama.

screen shot of the Obama web site

A friend of mine ask ‘why would McCain choose Palin?’  In my opinion, I think McCain was trying to find someone on the ticket to take on the ‘rock star’ effect that Obama has as well as someone who could excite the conservative base which John has not been able to do to date, both accomplished.  So with that in mind, have a look at this cartoon.  Sums it up perfectly in my mind, including the fact Obama earned his position (as did Lenny Kravits through good album after good album) through running a good campaign where Palin was chosen. The pig character is a main character in the comic.

Check out his comic.  Its pretty good.

www.sinfest.net

From the web comic 'Sinfest'

The iPhone is doing something that most smart phones seem to have been unable to do, open a channel of communication and interaction that previously would only have been seen on a desktop. Although a vast majority of people who are going to use this app are going be under 30, guess what the age of a vast majority of Obama volunteers are?  By providing such a well thought out CRM tool for anyone who wants it through one of the hottest technologies out there, the Obama campaign has create a dual win by increasing the effectiveness of anyone who wants to get involved and creating a small buzz around the fact that they are the first to really take advantage of this platform.  I’m watching CNN right now, as per my habit, and I will guess that I will hear something about this application before the week is out.

Now, to the app.  Have a look at these screenshots below.  As you can see, this was a pretty well designed application.  What was curious to me, is the fact it went though my address book and found people near my state that are in battle ground states.  Very clever. I also like how media is split between national and local. And ofcourse, a donation button. This app is also very popular right now. I had to try three times to get a complete download. I would like to see the download numbers over time on this one.

Here is a link to download the app.

So the next quesiton is; will the McCain campain build an iPhone app?  What would it look like?