Sunday, October 21, 2007

Web Campaign 2.008

The publiser of "niche social networking communities," Community Connect Inc., has been busy promoting its new clients and alliances. CCI claims 19 million members on its sites. As a PR professional I certainly appreciate the effort the company is making and I am impressed with the reputation some of its properties have achieved.

CCI says Senator Barack Obama approached the firm about its work and subsequently arranged for profiles to be placed on each of its major websites (BlackPlanet.com, MiGente.com, AsianAve.com, GLEE.com, and Faithbase.com). Now here's the impressive result:

"Since the profiles went live on October 5, 2007, the success of the campaign has become evident with Senator Obama's profiles garnering over 200,000 friends. In one week, his profile on BlackPlanet.com garnered more friends than his MySpace and Facebook profiles."

I'll be really interested in seeing what those sites can achieve during a general election effort. I believe Facebook and some of these other social networking sites can provide a massive two-way connection between people and the campaigns. Am I naive enough to believe that Obama will have a connection to hundreds of thousands of people? Of course not, but imagine if his campaign staff connected with these people and moved them to action (donation, volunteer, recruit, etc.). New tools on Facebook are popping up everyday, and lots of them have political and campaign '08 tie-ins. I hope the people and the campaigns find ways to make use of them.