MyBo

By GottaLaff

TechnObama:

...Obama's tech talent is finding novel uses for available tools.[...]

How about social networks as a means of encouraging civic engagement, online video as a means of informing the citizenry and a Google search-minded approach to the sharing of government documents? Obama's best-known tech bona fide is the social network his campaign designed. My.barackobama.com (or MyBo, as its users call it) took social networking -- until then, little more than an amusing way to stay in touch with far-flung friends or chat with colleagues -- and developed it into a powerful tool for fundraising, community building and voter turnout.

Paddy and I have been members of MyBo for awhile now. We regularly link their commenters to our posts, and we're proud to say, they love TPC. (What's not to love?)

Pamela Coukos, a Bay Area organizer for the Obama campaign, called the campaign's outreach “old school and new tools.” “The ideas about how to organize people and build meaningful personal connections are very traditional,” she wrote in an e-mail, but the difference was that, with the networked community, “you could reach a huge audience very fast, with a whole lot of information.”

MyBo activity has declined since the election, but, said Coukos, many users are still on standby. “I get lots of people asking me what's next, 'How can I stay organized? How can I be engaged?'.”

Did you see that last sentence? That's key. That's one way we keep the O-mentum going, and it's also a way to clearly communicate our priorities.

Gene Koo, who studies digital methods of education at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society, suggested that the new administration might convert the Obama network into a hub for civic action -- though that kind of revamp would not be a slam dunk. “It's not the same thing to make changes in the environment or healthcare as it is to elect a person, where the goal is very singular, where there's a moment of victory or defeat.”

But Koo thinks it's doable. For one thing, “you need some kind of leader who can rally the troops, if that's Al Gore on the environment or Hillary Clinton on healthcare -- then you push down to the local level what you need them to do.”

The Obama team broke another media mold by posting 1,800 videos to YouTube during the campaign, including a dozen with more than a million views each -- the most popular being his speech on race, which has become one of YouTube's most-viewed videos. Last week, the administration-to-be announced that online video would replace radio as its default method for the weekly national address, and the first one, despite being mostly unremarkable, has scored nearly a million views since Friday. [...]

In one of his YouTube videos, Obama tells viewers about a third major element of his digital approach: transparency. “We will put government data online in universally accessible formats."

A transparent, tech-savvy, communicative administration? What a novel concept.