Obama Campaign: One Million Mobile Activists

It'd be a total cliche to say that the 2008 campaign changed everything. Certainly there was change, and it happened on a wide level. It will take us a couple years, perhaps longer, to digest the meaning of this election and the two year campaign that preceded it. But there are a few things trickling in already that signify its importance. One of these is the text messaging army the Obama campaign built. NDN describes just how big this technological revolution was/is.

A million people signed up for Obama's text-messaging program. On the night Obama accepted the Democratic nomination at Invesco Field in Denver, more than 30,000 phones among the crowd of 75,000 were used to text in to join the program. On Election Day, every voter who'd signed up for alerts in battleground states got at least three text messages. Supporters on average received five to 20 text messages per month, depending on where they lived -- the program was divided by states, regions, zip codes and colleges -- and what kind of messages they had opted to receive.

NDN goes on to remind us of their prophetic white paper, "Mobile Media in 21st Century Politics," from 2006.

Imagine this very realistic scenario: In the heat of the 2008 election, 1 million activists – all of them connected in a collaborative web both on their PC's and their mobiles – conspire in a collective act of mobile democracy.

...let's say a candidate has emerged that "gets" the power of the Internet and its mobile cousin. All their traditional media and Internet action combines with a call to mobile action. No speech ends without a call for those listening to join the campaign on their mobile phones – then and there. And this candidate has inspired a small portion of his base - 1 million people - to each devote ten minutes of their time to mobile action for the Presidential campaign.

I think that then-Senator Obama must have been doing some reading.

The words "collaborative" and "collective" in that white paper excerpt above really stand out to me. Obama saw the importance of running a campaign in a way that underscored his unity rhetoric. Obama saw Web 2.0 and mobile technology and immediately recognized it as the opportunity to redefine our politics. While we've grown up in an uber-fragmented society thanks to our Boomer parents, the overwhelming number of Millennials carrying cell phones is a tremendous opportunity for rebuilding community. Obama talked about working together just like any other politician; but for once, someone was able to show people how to do it, not just with words, but by the campaign's actions.

Yes, the number one million is certainly impressive and important. But what's more critical is that we're seeing the opportunity for Millennial values to be channeled into the political dialogue thanks to this technological development. 2008 contained several cataclysmic events. One of those is certainly the emergence of text messaging as a campaign tool.