BusinessWeek says the 2008 contest for the White House should go down in history as "the first social media election," because sites like YouTube, Facebook and MySpace played an "unprecedented
role" in determining the outcome, especially compared to 2004, when most social networks "were just getting off the blocks." YouTube, for example, wasn't even founded until the following year, while
MySpace and Facebook only had a fraction of the traffic they have now in 2004.
Many voters used these social networks to celebrate the voting process. For example, Facebook users took
pictures of themselves voting using their camera phones and uploaded them to their profiles. They sent each other Obama and McCain buttons, and wrote extensively about their favorite candidates on
their own profile pages and on each others' walls. As Facebook's chief privacy officer, Chris Kelly, says, "That peer-to-peer contact is a core part of actually driving voter turnout and behavior." As
of 10:30 p.m. EST Tuesday, the number of confirmed Facebook voters reached 4.9 million.
But the social media revolution wasn't just about social networking sites, it was also about the
sheer access consumers had to social media tools. Unlike in previous Presidential elections, enthusiasts could post their comments just about anywhere, from third party blogs to Presidential
candidates' pages, they could also tweet about the latest developments on micro-blogging sensation Twitter, or find common interests with like-minded individuals on micro-social networks like
myBarackObama.com.
Read the whole story at BusinessWeek »