Barack Obama the first social media president

Image by comicbase via Flickr

Welcome to a new world. Like most of the world, I watched the results from the U.S. election last night (yes I voted and yes I voted for Obama). I was anxious, hopeful, maybe a little fearful. We’ve been let down before by the American electoral system. Now this morning we wake to a new era. How did we get here? Social media.

In 2004 blogs were a factor but not mainstream by any stretch. We could only dream of going from pictures and short videos posted from cell phones to live streaming from cell phones. Twitter didn’t exist.

Today it is expected that a candidate will have a blog, be on Twitter, organize through Facebook, release material on YouTube.

Social media has become so engrained in how we organize ourselves, not just information, that now we expect it.

All the networks were talking about Twitter, and using Twitter, this election. Rick Sanchez’s whole show on CNN was often guided by what people were saying on Twitter.

Did McCain miss this? Was that a factor in his defeat last night? That is a debate that could go on for hours, but it’s fair to say that Obama, by leveraging social media, certainly gave him some kind of boost.

Now let’s see if it continues into his administration.

Updated: I’m not the only one who has seen this connection between Obama, social media, and his victory. Both Buzznetworker and LIVEdigitally have similar posts.