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Barack Obama, Tech-Driven Presidency?

  • Wired, Tuesday, January 20, 2009 1 PM
Technophiles expect Barack Obama to govern "with unparalleled transparency and citizen interaction," says Wired, following a presidential campaign in which the president-elect embraced "every form of social media." For example, at the social networking destination My.BarackObama.com, supporters could create profiles, interact with one another, and went on to plan some 200,000 dinners and fundraisers. Users could also log in and get a complete list of swing-state voters to telephone, which generated some 3 million calls in the final four days of the race.

Republican candidate John McCain didn't have any similar efforts. According to Wired, Obama had four times the number of Facebook supporters, 24 times the Twitter devotees, and three times the visitors to his site in the final campaign week. The public watched a total of 15 million hours of Obama campaign videos on YouTube, and the Obama team collected 13 million email addresses, more than a million cell phone numbers, and a half-billion dollars in online donations.

Evidence aside, there's another to reason to expect a tech-driven Obama presidency--he promised it. Obama said he would promote government transparency by posting data to the Internet, streaming live video of meetings, and allowing the public to comment on most legislation up to five days before signing it into law. Moreover, Obama said he would bring blogs, wikis and other social networking tools into the White House--all presided over by a new national chief technology officer.

Read the whole story at Wired »

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