Change in Command for the Commander in Chief

Many Internet experts predicted that the Internet would play a major role in the future of politics. In our last election, we began to see the beginnings of this change in politics with the introduction of a few major political blogs and bloggers showing up in the news and on the political canvas of America. While we all knew that there was more to come in the way of political involvement through the medium of the internet, I don’t believe we could have truly predicted the significance of the internet and more importantly, social media and social networking in the Presidential election of 2008.

Back in 2007 and early 2008, political pundits gave Barack Obama little if any chance of being elected to the highest office in the land. Up until a few months before the primaries began, it seemed as if he was in third place behind other well known candidates. No one could have guessed that with the help of some insightful and innovative internet experts, new media outlets such as YouTube, political podcasts and bloggers, Barack Obama would put together and execute the most successful, well funded, well connected presidential campaign ever seen in America. After Obama was announced as President Elect Barack Obama, no one will doubt the power of social media, social networking and the effectiveness of the Internet again. Campaign managers and PR firms are now taking a much needed second look at social networks and how to use such methods as crowdsourcing and sites like twitter to raise money, increase awareness and improve the sense of community around a cause or person.

What does this inauguration mean for social media? Well, it has several meanings in relation to social media. For one, it shows that even the most effective, well planned, highly organized campaigns can do more to use the tools of social media to their advantage and to improve an already great campaign. It shows that using those same social media tools can provide a significant advantage to the candidate and improve awareness of the individual, community or cause. It also shows just how popular social media tools are in relation to effective communication with the public and how important these tools are in allowing people across the country and across the world in developing relationships and connections to the cause or individual that they never would have believed possible before.

The drawback to this new found political success of social media platforms is that now, we will start to see the Monday quarterbacks and copy cats that feel like they can take a little bit of social media knowledge and transform it into a successful and immediately popular Twitter or YouTube clone. They will record a few videos, blog a few entries, tweet a few news tweets and wait for the audience to magically appear. What they will also fail to realize is that their efforts will not be successful and the biggest reason why will be their lack of true knowledge of what the social media landscape really wants, uses effectively and needs out of a new platform or application.

But our hope is that we will begin to see more politicians start to use these social media tools for greater transparency in government and the political process as a whole from now on. It is my hope that for us, more transparency will also lead to more accountability on the part of the government and politicians alike. We must demand this transparency from now on.

On a national level, some are questioning whether President Elect Barack Obama will continue his efforts or be allowed to continue the level of transparency that he demanded during the process that successfully got him elected in the first place. But as we have been able to see thus far with his innovative use of YouTube as his platform for presenting his weekly address to Americans, Obama is at least trying to continue his mantra of change on all levels.

The America of 2008/2009 is not the same America of four years ago and because of its incorporation of social media platforms into the fabric of the most American of processes - elections, we now have the opportunity to express our opinion about any topic online with the potential of thousands of other online users or main stream media listening to you tell your story, for a possible impact on the decisions being made in government.

Overall the Inauguration and social media will bring America together. We’ll see live interviews, photos, blog posts and more during the Inauguration. America will begin another chapter in history and it won’t be just told from the White House but it will be created as a country working together online and offline, having conversations on how to make America better for us now and in years to come.