Cross-posted from Leftmost Bit.

The Obama campaign has launched distinct MySpace profiles for each of the early primary states: Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada. Right now, the focus seems to be on maintaining state-specific blogs and providing state-specific media content. The tactic of using MySpace to target primary states echoes what they did with their Facebook application, which asks those who "install" the application to reach out to their friends in those same early primary states.

Interestingly, they also claimed profiles for all 50 states, which is a lesson surely learned from the newsmaking MySpace debacle from April, concerning supporter Joe Anthony and his fan profile which lived at myspace.com/barackobama. I thought the harsh criticism leveled at the Obama campaign from the political blogosphere (particularly TechPresident) was shrill and completely ignorant of how campaigns and field programs need to be run.

But the Obama campaign gets it, and they don't lose sight of the fact that they're a political campaign with a very clear goal. They're using the power of massive social networks to garner on-the-ground volunteer support (which in turn delivers votes) in the places where it actually matters (the early primary states). Many in the campaign are alumni of Dean for America, and so they know how important it is to effectively use online tools to produce offline action, and maybe more importantly, how to execute such programs. I don't know how effective this will be, but it's leaps and bounds ahead of any of the other campaigns.

Hat tip to Mashable.