Social Media From Obama and Clinton: The Real Thing or Just Marketing Ploys?

Why do the candidates have to be directly involved in the interaction for it to be real?

If influential campaign workers are blogging, they are using their own names and they are genuinely interacting with their readers, I would have thought it was the real thing.

Because the point of social media is contact. And using the Internet to establish contact is a demonstration of openness and of understanding of the importance of interaction.

I'm not saying the candidates have to be the only ones blogging, but they have to have a presence or their sites will just become more slick political detritis.

You would call it "the Obama campaign official's blog," and the "Hilary campaign officials" site if it was going to be all content created by them.

Doh.

John Conyers periodically sends out an email. Its unlikely he does all the work in putting it together, but I'm just enough hopeful that he writes at least part of the message.

It has to have his voice. Just like whatsnext needs your voice BL. If the candidates aren't weighing in regularly - it becomes another clang in the chaos of campaigning.

I have now had paid positions working with technology for two different campaigns, John DeStefano, who ran for Governor in Connecticut and Ned Lamont who ran for U.S. Senate.

I was very involved with Gov. Dean’s campaign in 2004, and am in talks with the Edwards campaign about working with them this time around.

There is a big difference in campaigns between what bloggers think is important and what candidates think is important. It is important that candidates get into the fray and speak in their own voices.

Unfortunately, too many of the emails from political figures are ghost written for them. They are marketing pieces that don’t really help you get a better understanding of the person.

Candidates rarely make time to talk with people online, the way they will face to face. We do need to see more of this.

Sen. Edwards has done a pretty good job of this with his liveblogging on various sites. His wife, Elizabeth, does even better.

More important than getting to hear the actual voice of a candidate in their blogging, is the give and take. We need candidates that can listen to voters, learn from them, and incorporate new ideas into their thinking.

The social networking part is also very important. A good leader will inspire supporters to get more involved, to feel that they are members of something important.

Obama’s social networking tools look very promising in this sense. The One Corp social networking tool of the Edwards campaign is perhaps less sophisticated at this point, but it does seem to do a good job of getting supporters more active.

Enough random thoughts for now.

What's interesting to me is not how much the candidates use these Web 2.0 sites and technologies to deliver their messages - they *already* have (too?) many platforms for doing that - but rather that they're creating a place for all of us to ask questions and comment and interact and debate and challenge and criticize.

That's the power of community - the days of one sided bite-sized sound bites are quickly disappearing. And that's good!