Obama has more Facebook friends than all of his Democratic rivals combined. Obama did well with young voters in Iowa. These two data points seem to be connected.

Andrew Rasiej says blogging was "the primary force in the Dean campaign" in terms of online tools. One might argue that Meetup held that distinction. In any case, the maturation and convergence of those technologies -- and the question of how the web translates into votes -- remains an open one. Has the Obama campaign cracked the code?

Kay Hagan's Facebook campaign group has 636 members. Jim Neal's group has 393 members. How active are the campaigns in strategizing around these groups, and the web in general? If I was trying to chase down an incumbent senator, I'd be thinking very hard about that question, and looking hard at Obama's campaign for answers.

Comments

[Roch101]

Does the code really include a web page for which one needs to register to view (with a company that's made some major gaffs regarding privacy, no less)?

[Ed Cone]

If you mean Facebook, I guess the answer is "yes," for this election cycle at least. It's far from the only tool in use, but it's a force, and campaigns would be foolish to ignore it -- the idea being to win the election, not to win some web idealism purity contest.

[Roch101]

Bad mood? Get back to me (or not) when you've got something other than anecdotes and a reductive distortion of the question being asked.

[Ed Cone]

Maybe I misunderstood your comment? I gave what I thought was a straightforward answer -- I thought you were asking if I think that successfully harnessing the web means using Facebook, or if Obama is successfully using Facebook to translate online energy into votes. My guess, based on Obama's campaign to date and Iowa's result, is "yes," or at least, "it seems to be working for Obama." I don't have anything beyond anecdote at this point, and even that is pretty sketchy, just guessing from afar based on the available info. That's why I phrased my post as a question.