Of late, there's been an emerging conventional wisdom about the 2012 campaign and social media, which goes like this: What the 2008 Obama campaign did was extraordinary, but things are moving fast, and now the Republicans have caught up. After all, just look at how many Facebook friends Sarah Palin has! Micah Sifry of TechPresident says this is wrong -- in terms of the campaign, what really matters is the kind of data the campaigns can gather, and how they can use it to multiply their organizing and fundraising efforts:
Consider the "Are you in" Facebook application that was part of the President's campaign launch last week. On its face, it's a spiffy tool that enables Obama supporters to not only declare their support for the President's re-election, but immediately displays a list of which of their friends are also on board, and helpfully invites them to reach out to other friends. But under the surface, something even more powerful is going on. The first time you use the app, it asks for your permission to adds your basic information (things like name, picture, gender, networks, your list of friends, and "any other information" you've left open for sharing on Facebook. It also seeks permission for your birthday, your current city, and the ability to send you email and post to your wall. (Some of these features can be shut off, but most are required by the app.)...Why is this kind of behind-the-scenes integration so valuable? "So now, Obama can, for example, query his list to send a message to every self identified Democratic female 35 and older on Facebook with over 500 friends and get them to take action based on republican attacks to destroy Planned Parenthood," one veteran Democratic online strategist told me. "Or cut their list based on self-identified male Republicans in New York City and send a message to them from a sender who may resonate, like Mike Bloomberg," he added. So far, about 125,000 people have given the Obama campaign permission to access their Facebook data; the Pawlenty campaign has about one-tenth that number.
Sifry quotes a number of Republican tech strategists saying that their side doesn't really get the importance of acquiring this kind of data through social media. So what we may see, once again, is a Democratic campaign using social media in very sophisticated ways, and Republican campaigns that think it's great if they have a lot of Facebook friends and followers on Twitter, and that's all you really need.
The question -- and this is more urgent for the Obama campaign than for the Republicans -- is to what extent they can get people motivated and excited. Because even if you reach out and touch people in finely targeted ways, they're still going to have to make the decision to take some action, whether it's donating money, engaging in some kind of online or in-person organizing, or trying to persuade their friends (and their "friends") to do likewise. In this election, base Republicans will have more of a motivation to do those kinds of things, because they have a clear and unambiguous goal: getting rid of that socialist foreigner in the White House. The Democratic goal -- Let's continue, over the next four years, to win some legislative victories and try not to get too disappointed about the setbacks! -- is not so vivid and exciting. But if you have the right tools, you may be able to turn even that into the margin of victory you need.
