By Mitch Wagner
When Barack Obama takes office, he’ll face challenges like no president since Franklin Roosevelt. He’ll also have a tool available to no other past president: Web 2.0.
We watched him use social media—Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube—to transform presidential campaigning. More than two months after his last Twitter posting Nov. 5, he was still the most popular person on the network, with nearly 170,000 followers. The crown jewel of his Internet campaign—the my.BarackObama.com site—elicited donations from 3.2 million people, hosted position papers and videos, and let supporters download lists of voters to call.
Now his challenge is to use Web 2.0 and the Internet to change government. Obama’s transition team already is using the Change.gov Web site to blog, hold public forums, and accept job applications—300,000 people have applied for 3,000 available positions. The tool “Open for Questions,” launched last month, lets people submit queries and then vote, Digg-like, on the ones they most want answered.
But this is just the start. The next test is whether Obama will be able to use the Internet to mobilize followers in support of his agenda. He’s also expected to use Web 2.0 forums and discussion tools to gauge public opinion.
In addition to using technology, Obama has a tech agenda to pursue: He’s promised to appoint a CTO to oversee federal IT, and he’ll need to make good on his pledge to enhance cybersecurity and support net neutrality.
Obama has demonstrated what a tech-savvy candidate can accomplish. Now it’s time for him to show us what a tech-savvy president can do.
l Paul Maritz l George Socha l Manjit Singh l Jeff Teper l Sam Ruby l Nir Zuk l Kirill Sheynkman l Marc Benioff l Avi Kivity l HD Moore l
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