He appeals to young people, i.e. facebook users, because he can speak to them and their issues, not to mention that he's young and energetic himself. But I wonder if a large facebook following will translate to high youth turnout during the primary and caucus season. I somehow doubt that they'll overtake the 65+ vote.

Thanks for this post Adam. I think what this also demonstrates is that the 'netroots' extends far beyond the progressive blogosphere. There are huge online communities all over the web and for candidates to be successful they need to take them seriously.

what is facebook? Is that like MySpace? If so, what's the utility of having a "friends" network for Obama? Better music downloads?

funny....

while trying to find this group...i came across a new group the was just started:

"Against Barack Obama (One Million Strong)"

It has 7 members.

Just for the record, a million members would make this the largest group on facebook. But not by much: the self-explanatory "Largest Facebook Group Ever" is at 926,000. (They shot for a million, back when network-wide groups were introduced, and apparently stagnated just short of their goal.) See http://harvard.facebook.com/group.php?gi d=2204401258

I think it's unlikely that the Barack group will hit its insanely high target, and I'd add that these kinds of deliberately massive groups tend to have tons of hangers-on -- that is, people who join groups just because other people have or because their acquaintances invited them to. It does not necessarily speak to the value of the cause. (See the now-defunct "If this group reaches 100,000 my girlfriend and I will have a threesome", which was well over its target before it was discovered to be a scam for an online music-sales company and shut down by Facebook.)

There is certainly something to be said for the growth patterns of this group, but on the whole I'd advise against reading too much into the chaotic fluctuations of Facebook. It's a fickle political lover.

Dean Meetup numbers plateaued around 180,000-200,000 in 2004.

Here's the graph of 2003.

Of course those were more active and organized. But the numbers should be somewhat helpful.

94431

I just invited about 50 people, probebly more.  I go a little overboard with facebook sometimes I suppose, but it does make a statement of his popularity, seeing as college kids are some of the most uninformed (seems odd, but true) about politics.

95312

this is a clear example of a tipping point.  i wonder what malcolm gladwell would have to say?

what i wouldn't do to get a nice excel spreadsheet listing the network and maybe year of graduation of everyone who signed on, and when... (scrubbed of all private data, of course).  mmm, data.

The YouTube video is pretty impressive too.  Dig it, his campaign even doesn't formally start for another two weeks.  So far, so good.

I think I finally figured out why Matt is so hostile towards Barack Obama:  He is secretly a supporter of HILLARY!!!!  lol.

97,856

They have a goal of 100,000 by Feb. 1st.  I think they'll beat that with a few days to spare.

98,155  .. what's funny is that Tom Tancredo has one under the One Million Strong thing to .. and he only has 28 ... Hahaha!!

as of right now 100,075

when you set a goal, and ask everyone to email it out and double everyday.

I don't think "exponential awareness" is a concept we can retain (nice metaphor tho). I also don't think the "online-ness" of these communities is what's noteworthy about them.

The key point is that young people - and I think this goes very far out into the wide world, it's not a piece of the distorted American culture - like to exchange images in the place of words. That is, when I want to express something really important - love, truth, belonging - an image is more authentically MY expression than mere words. Showing up, being there for someone, giving a shout out. These forms of joining, standing with, saying you got somebody's back, create the thing they mean as they build it. I'm not getting to know all these people. I'm standing with them, and the more of us that stand together this way, the very meaning of the action changes. A whole lot of people standing together is an image in itself, the very image of humanity.

I really like this example, too, because you can tell Stoller and a few of the commenters are juiced initially because of the quantitative aspect of it. What can you theorize about it and so on. Increase in quantity leads to qualitative change - woops look out boyz pretty soon you'll be reading Marx, can't have that now can we.

On one side, yes, we need a master list of all American voters. We need for everybody to vote; if everybody votes, 80% instead of 60, we'll win every time. They've always known that.

Every successful Presidential candidate takes over the Party. Obama will take over the Party too. We'll need to master all the techniques that Rove used, and more besides - but you already did that guys, you already beat Rove. You'll never get another chance to beat him, it looks like the Libby trial will finish him.

Don't fight the last war. The machinery cannot be bigger than the candidate. I wish it could. I would rather have elections where you vote for what to do, and then secondarily choose some person to go do it. But the time is not yet. We had to have this guy, he had to show up at this time, so the world can see how we recover and admit our mistakes. But soon enough the machinery needs to fall in line around this candidate. And until that's made clear by primary voting, the machinery and those who have so gallantly mastered it in our time - you netroots Left bloggers - must beware of favoring process-heavy candidates by a sort of structural sympathy. If you admit that the netroots are in some ways still bearing the scar of their tumultuous birth in response to KenStarrism, then you have to be extra careful not to turn in the direction of that scar, that pain, all the time. There might be a way to get healed without having to punish everybody.

We can't forgive the fundies, but maybe Barack can. And if he can, we will have to.

I just see him carrying Mississippi. I see a big parade of victory in Mississippi. Kos has a post up showing that the South is chock full of conservative Democrats. If we could set up some sort of Grand Forgiveness and Unity ceremony, instead of fighting in the trenches to turn red states blue, we simply accept their surrender.

I remember a bumper sticker from 1968 or 1972. A cartoon about a good old boy that put his JACKSON '72 sticker where his WALLACE '68 sticker used to be.

Don't worry guys, all manner of geekery will still be needed. The Ultimate Revolution in administration will be the Electronic Courthouse. Cheaper. Unfortunately it's a step closer to the Legally Mandatory Logon. I know you've all previewed that in your nightmares; but Caesar has declared that all the world shall be taxed.

You want to talk about online communities - how about the community of the world finally getting their call through to America: Hey! Cut out the shit!

The world felt the leadership of John Kennedy. They felt Bill Clinton's leadership.

You have to get used to the mythical dimension of Obama now so we can get his back and help him and everyone else manage it. I do fault Bill Clinton for one thing he did wrong - but I fault all of us because we should have had that talk, about how President Clinton was only human. Barack is only human too, not because I think there's a skeleton in his closet, but because we will have to create a completely new political space that lets Barack be Barack and not be cheapened in a facile manner or trashed by the MSM, OR sucked up by the Party or given a hellish life to lead. Let me repeat that. If I was Barack and I thought my life as President was going to be a living hell like it seems to be, frankly, - I would tell the brother to save himself. But we do need him. So we need to have this conversation, about how our leaders are people, and then we need to create even more efficient types of online communication that allow Barack to communicate with the whole world, and also allow part of the world to get back to him, so he doesn't get cut off from the people-roots.

And the only thing exponential about that is that if communication is real and genuine just ONCE that will be exponentially better than what it's been before.

New media - new politics - new forms - new way of talking.

A revolution against what?

So about 119,000 now...

Obama puts me to sleep.

888 Diggs on Digg.com so far for this story...
It's currently one of the top stories of the last 24 hours, one of the top 3 political ones...

http://www.digg.com/politics/100_000_Mem ber_Obama_Facebook_Group