The ballots have been counted and Barack Obama has emerged victorious. Both nominees ran great campaigns and both leveraged social media to its fullest potential.
I finally feel as though we’ve dawned upon a new century. We are making astonishing leaps and advancements when it comes to technology. I mean, did anyone else know that CNN had an entire arsenal of holograms at their disposal? I sure didn’t. Social media has made leaps and bounds in the last five years and was leveraged to its fullest extent during this election.
Video voting is gaining popularity among young adults. Video The Vote sends out thousands of volunteers with cameras to videotape voting. Video sharing mega-site YouTube has been promoting video voting. They have teamed up with PBS and created Video Your Vote, a YouTube channel where voters can share their voting and election experience with the rest of the World.
Both candidates used Twitter in very different ways. Obama built a virtual army of supports and now has over 100,000 follwers while McCain has just fewer than 5,000. Obama uses Twitter to update supports on campaigns he is attending as well as exciting updates and endorsements from the election road while McCain uses Twitter to attack Obama and notify followers of new advertisements. I think the Obama campaign had the right idea with Twitter, they used it in a very positive way and it paid off. I hope to see both candidates continue using it into the future.
Of course, both social networking giants MySpace and Facebook were used during the election. Both candidates had official pages on both sites. Both of the candidates MySpace were used during the election to encourage young voters to get out there and vote.
