Hele Obamas kampagne er organiseret om sociale medier og vælger til vælger kontakt - dette skal selvfølgelig også kopieres over på mobilen - det er ikke mediet, nettet eller mobilen, men de sociale redskaber for kommunikation, som er afgørende.

Obama's New Mobile Platform is More Than TXT MY VP

Clean design, nice viral features (share the hope) that allows the campaign to collect additional phone numbers through text-a friend features. Clearly, there is a push in the campaign to collect as many numbers as possible -- presumably for get-out-the vote efforts and conversion to email and donations.

Texts You Can Believe In

These findings create an obvious difficulty for campaigns: It's expensive and time-consuming to run the kind of personal mobilization efforts that science shows work best. Green and Gerber estimate that a door-canvassing operation costs $16 per hour, with six voters contacted each hour; if you convince one of every 14 voters you canvass, you're paying $29 for each new voter. A volunteer phone bank operation will run you even more—$38 per acquired voter. This is the wondrous thing about text-messaging: Studies show that text-based get-out-the-vote appeals win one voter for every 25 people contacted. That's nearly as effective as door-canvassing, but it's much, much cheaper. Text messages cost about 6 cents per contact—only $1.50 per new voter.

The texts reminded me to watch the convention and the debates and to donate money to the Red Cross when Hurricane Gustav hit. In September, Obama asked me to text him my ZIP code. I did, and now I get location-specific messages—alerts to phone banks and debate-watching parties in my area, reminders of registration deadlines in my state, and appeals for me to volunteer in neighboring states. The messages are rendered in a friendly, professional tone (they refer to the candidate as Barack) and have been free of both fundraising appeals and any kind of negative campaigning.

Because text messages allow for such precise targeting, it seems likely that over the next week the Obama campaign will direct its appeals to voters in battleground states, especially first-time voters that the campaign has registered during the past year. In 2006, political science grad students Aaron Strauss and Allison Dale studied how newly registered voters responded to text-message reminders sent out just before the election. The text messages increased turnout by 3.1 percentage points. Strauss says there's a simple reason why: "The most prevalent excuse for registered voters who don't cast a ballot is, 'I'm too busy' or 'I forgot.' Texting someone is a convenient, targeted, and noticeable reminder for them to schedule their Election Day activities with a block of time set aside for going to the polling place." In a post-election survey, Strauss and Dale asked voters whether they found the text messages helpful; 59 percent said yes.

Innovative Mobile Internet Site for Barack Obama's Presidential Campaign

• Opt-in to SMS alerts for appearance schedules, speeches, downloadable content (video, wallpapers, ring tones) and more
• A viral "Tell-a-Friend" component on every page of the site which allows a user to easily forward the site to another person's phone
• Meet Barack section with media rich bio information
• News and press releases dynamically fed by the Obama Web site
• Video downloads of portions of important Obama speeches
• Downloadable Obama ringtones and wallpapers
• "Share the Hope" viral component where the user can forward an animated image to a friend with a personal message of "hope" attached

• Mobile voting page that polls the users opinions on the issues

...og Obamas støtter laver selv et iPhone program - Obama Releases iPhone App, but Why?

UPDATE: I've received a flurry of tweets that this application was actually an all-volunteer effort that was later adopted by the Obama campaign.
It makes me happy that 1.) volunteers created this slick application on their own, and 2.) that the Obama campaign embraced the application as their own.
So - congratulations to the volunteer developers, and kudos to the campaign for embracing volunteer efforts. I'm looking forward to seeing this kind of collaboration continue.

Obama and Text Messaging

The most important benefit of text messaging is its immediacy.  Most people have their cell phones with them at all times, meaning text messages are received by people pretty much right after they are sent, no matter where the person is.  Most people still check their email on their computers, so people won’t get messages if they are out and about.  This means that text messaging is a great way to reach people when you have a timely message that needs to get out right away.  It is great for get out the vote efforts, political organizing, announcing last minute appearances, responding to crisis, etc.