Barack to the future

Barack Obama´s election bid harnessed technology as never before. E&T evaluates the world´s first ´open source´ campaign. If you want to understand the scale of Barack Obama´s historic election victory, just look at the numbers. I´m not just talking about the 52.5 per cent of the popular vote and the 364 electoral votes he won on 4 November, but the 2,818,410 supporters he has on Facebook, the 870,093 MySpace users who call him friend and the 126,225 people following his every Twitter. The campaign´s website, MyBarackObama.com, has more than 1.5 million accounts and was used to promote over 150,000 events. It acted as focal point for the three million private donations that helped Obama raise $650m more than twice what Bush and Gore managed, combined, in 2000. Barack Obama isn´t just President Elect of the United States of America, he´s an Internet icon who has been downloaded, linked, quoted, advertised and funded online more than any other person in the world, ever. This didn´t happen by accident. Technology was at the heart of every stage of the campaign, and it was technology as much as his policies, his charisma and his opponents that helped him win.