Focus Features

In addition to the thrill of victory when the networks called the election for Barack Obama on Tuesday, supporters soon received another, more personal surprise. In their in-boxes moments later was an individually addressed email from Obama that began, “I'm about to head to Grant Park to talk to everyone gathered there, but I wanted to write to you first. We just made history.”

The 2008 presidential election has been called a number of things – a referendum on the Bush years, a reaction to our cratering economy, America overcoming its racist past – but for a group of thinkers and internet professionals it is also a validation of what’s known as Web 2.0. Web 2.0 refers to the growth of the internet as a platform through which users and businesses interact with each other via tools and platforms such as blogs, social networking sites like Facebook and user-generated video sites like YouTube.

This year, filmmakers were among the first to recognize the fusion between these media tools and the Obama campaign, and as the campaign progressed user-generated campaign films went from the amateurish to the slickly professional. In the former category was the deliberately low-fi come-on of Obama Girl, a music-video mash note to the candidate that has been viewed over 11 million times on YouTube. This summer, when Paris Hilton was derogatorily name-checked in a McCain ad, her response was to team up with Adam McKay and Will Ferrell’s Funny or Die site and film a hilarious clip in which she trumped both candidates on a plainspoken energy policy. As the campaign crested, filmmakers of all kinds got into the act. Drumline director Charles Stone revived the slacker heroes who launched his career in eight years ago in a new spot entitled Wassup 2008 to illustrate how the country has changed during the Bush years while Ron Howard, Andy Griffith and Henry Winkler spoke to boomers by discussing the election through the guises of their classic sitcom characters.

The crowds that gathered in Grant Park were
dwarfed by Obama's online network

But the Obama campaign’s embrace of Web 2.0 involved a lot more than the uploading of humorous videos. The campaign’s sophisticated use of the internet to fundraise, organize and motivate its supporters exemplified the political and social power contained within new media platforms. At this year’s Web 2.0 conference, which, fittingly, launched on November 5, the day after the election, Arianna Huffington summed it up by saying, “Were it not for the internet, Barack Obama would not be president.”

Kurt Cagle at O’Reilly Media provides an historical overview, arguing that Obama was successful because he fulfilled and expanded upon the internet promise of the Howard Dean campaign in 2004. Cagle writes, “Dean's toolset of choice was the use of distributed social networking sites… along with the emergence of the MeetUp as a way to organize volunteers and bring together voters with common interests. Four years later, these first, early experiments had grown to become a full spectrum messaging blitz, from Twitter and SMS messages to news feeds, from a veritable barrage of bloggers and YouTube videos to tens of millions of flickr photos, which served not only to educate voters and raise awareness but also to coordinate a get out the vote effort that yielded the largest popular mandate of the last thirty years.”

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In addition to the thrill of victory when the networks called the election for Barack Obama on Tuesday, supporters soon received another, more personal surprise. In their in-boxes moments later was an individually addressed email from Obama that began, “I'm about to head to Grant Park to talk to everyone gathered there, but I wanted to write to you first. We just made history.”

The 2008 presidential election has been called a number of things – a referendum on the Bush years, a reaction to our cratering economy, America overcoming its racist past – but for a group of thinkers and internet professionals it is also a validation of what’s known as Web 2.0. Web 2.0 refers to the growth of the internet as a platform through which users and businesses interact with each other via tools and platforms such as blogs, social networking sites like Facebook and user-generated video sites like YouTube.

This year, filmmakers were among the first to recognize the fusion between these media tools and the Obama campaign, and as the campaign progressed user-generated campaign films went from the amateurish to the slickly professional. In the former category was the deliberately low-fi come-on of Obama Girl, a music-video mash note to the candidate that has been viewed over 11 million times on YouTube. This summer, when Paris Hilton was derogatorily name-checked in a McCain ad, her response was to team up with Adam McKay and Will Ferrell’s Funny or Die site and film a hilarious clip in which she trumped both candidates on a plainspoken energy policy. As the campaign crested, filmmakers of all kinds got into the act. Drumline director Charles Stone revived the slacker heroes who launched his career in eight years ago in a new spot entitled Wassup 2008 to illustrate how the country has changed during the Bush years while Ron Howard, Andy Griffith and Henry Winkler spoke to boomers by discussing the election through the guises of their classic sitcom characters.

The crowds that gathered in Grant Park were
dwarfed by Obama's online network

But the Obama campaign’s embrace of Web 2.0 involved a lot more than the uploading of humorous videos. The campaign’s sophisticated use of the internet to fundraise, organize and motivate its supporters exemplified the political and social power contained within new media platforms. At this year’s Web 2.0 conference, which, fittingly, launched on November 5, the day after the election, Arianna Huffington summed it up by saying, “Were it not for the internet, Barack Obama would not be president.”

Kurt Cagle at O’Reilly Media provides an historical overview, arguing that Obama was successful because he fulfilled and expanded upon the internet promise of the Howard Dean campaign in 2004. Cagle writes, “Dean's toolset of choice was the use of distributed social networking sites… along with the emergence of the MeetUp as a way to organize volunteers and bring together voters with common interests. Four years later, these first, early experiments had grown to become a full spectrum messaging blitz, from Twitter and SMS messages to news feeds, from a veritable barrage of bloggers and YouTube videos to tens of millions of flickr photos, which served not only to educate voters and raise awareness but also to coordinate a get out the vote effort that yielded the largest popular mandate of the last thirty years.”

Change.gov, Obama's transition website

The digital divide between the Obama and McCain campaigns has not gone unnoticed by conservatives. In a CNN opinion piece, Republican commentator Leslie Sanchez warned that Obama’s web savvy “uncovered a major flaw that cuts to the core of the Republicans' approach to party organization and discipline.” After citing statistics showing that Obama signed up four times as many supporters on Facebook as McCain and marveling over the campaign’s text-messaging ability and 2,000 user-generated videos, Sanchez writes, “The Obama campaign's use of the Internet will change campaign politics just as much as the fax machine and the autodialer did. If the GOP is going to compete in this growing tech world, they'll have to do more than just reverse-engineer the bells and whistles on Obama's Web sites.”

But if the proponents of Web 2.0 have their way, by the time the next election rolls around the transformative power of the ‘net will be boosting far more than voter rolls. The theme of last week’s Web 2.0 conference was articulated by organizer Tim O’Reilly as “web meets world.” In an article on the conference by Jessica Guynn in the Los Angeles Times, O’Reilly opined that it’s time that web businesses acknowledge the power they have to effect positive change. Writes Guynn, “Flush with money and opportunity following the post-dot-com resurgence, [O’Reilly] says, some entrepreneurs have cocooned in a ‘reality bubble,’ insulated from poverty, disease, global warming and other problems that are gripping the planet. He argues that they should follow the model of some of the world's most successful technology companies, including Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp., which sprang from their founders' efforts to ‘work on stuff that matters.’"

O’Reilly’s call-to-arms appears to have been heeded at the conference where, energized by Obama’s victory, attendees ranging from Huffington, cyclist Lance Armstrong, Google head Larry Brilliant and San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom strategized on just where they can direct the power of the internet next. In a recap of the conference on CNET News, Zoe Slocum writes that topics explored included the effect of the internet on not just politics but also energy and space exploration. Al Gore was appropriately idealistic as he gave the closing keynote speech. As quoted in the Los Angeles Times by Gullyn, Gore said, “"The new possibilities on the Web have revolutionized almost every aspect of running for president. And the electrifying redemption of America's revolutionary declaration that all human beings are created equal would not have been possible without the additional empowerment of individuals to use knowledge as a source of power.” Gore’s big proposal at the Web 2.0 conference, reports Oliver Marks at ZDNet, was a “’Unified National Smart Grid’: a new, state-of-the-art integrated electrical infrastructure for the USA. The proposed smart grid would take advantage of advances in energy efficiency and renewable power generation to create 100% clean electricity that could power clean, ‘plug in’ electric ‘cars’ or transportation devices.”

Gore concluded his speech by echoing themes of the Obama campaign -- and the president-elect’s press conference this week -- by linking them to future change. “"A puppy has to have a purpose," Gore said. "Web 2.0 has to have a purpose. We have to have a purpose."

Writing in the New York Times, David Carr suggests that that purpose may be tested very soon. He notes that the Obama campaign’s use of these tools creates an expectation among voters that Web 2.0 philosophies will continue post election. “…When he arrives at 1600 Pennsylvania, Mr. Obama will have not just a political base, but a database, millions of names of supporters who can be engaged almost instantly,” Carr writes. “And there’s every reason to believe that he will use the network not just to campaign, but to govern. His e-mail message to supporters on Tuesday night included the line, ‘We have a lot of work to do to get our country back on track, and I’ll be in touch soon about what comes next.’ The incoming administration is already open for business on the Web at Change.gov, a digital gateway for the transition.”