President Obama starts another election campaign with social media…

25Oct11

…and this time the chosen outlet (or at least one of them) isTumblr – a blogging platform (or ‘tumblelog’) that allows users to post images, text, video, quotes and links.

But why Tumblr?  Well the great thing about Tumblr is its submission feature, which allows anyone on the web contribute to your blog – the true realisation of a social media conversation!  Or as Obama’s Tumblr puts it:

“We’d like this Tumblr to be a huge collaborative storytelling effort—a place for people across the country to share what’s going on in our respective corners of it and how we’re getting involved in this campaign to keep making it better.”

Of course there is the chance that this could lead to negative use:

“There will be trolls among you: this we know. We ask only that you remember that we’re people—fairly nice ones—and that your mother would want you to be polite.”

But to me I think that this is a brave and meaningful utilisation of social media by the US president.  No doubt other social media outlets will also play a big part, Barack Obama’s Facebook page has more than 23m fans, while his Twitter account has more than 10m followers, but the ultimate question is, will this use of two way communication prove to be as successful as his campaign back in 2008?

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