Obama to announce run for presidency

Obama to announce run for presidency
By Caroline Daniel in Washington
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
Published: February 9 2007 20:44 | Last updated: February 9 2007 20:44


Barack Obama, the fresh face of the Democratic party, will formally announce his candidacy for the 2008 presidential nomination in Springfield, Illinois on Saturday.

Mr Obama’s recruits there will pale in comparison with his virtual support group of devotees who have signed up to his cause on Facebook, the social networking site that has spread like wildfire among college-going youth since 2003.

In the three weeks since Mr Obama created his exploratory presidential committee on January 16, a spontaneous online community group on Facebook “Barack Obama (One Million Strong for Barack)” has enlisted 244,225 members.

That makes it not only the fastest-growing Facebook group but also perhaps the most instantaneous creation of a political community of supporters for any presidential candidate.

Farouk Olu Aregbe, 26, a graduate of Missouri Western State University who created the group, said: “Quite frankly I have been surprised at how fast it has been. It has now become a hub.” He aims to reach 1m by April 21.

The success of this spontaneous, viral, effort – which comes alongside another Facebook group, “Barack Obama for President in 2008”, with 60,000 members – has sparked comparisons with Howard Dean’s 2004 pioneering, internet-driven campaign of 2004.

At the heart of it was Meetup.com, an internet tool for community events. Yet it took Mr Dean 11 months for his group on Meetup to attract 140,000 members rather than three weeks to recruit 250,000.

Jerome Armstrong, an architect of Mr Dean’s campaign, sees networking sites such as Facebook, the seventh most trafficked site in the US, as an untapped resource. “It wasn’t around in the last presidential cycle...I’ve seen websites to get in touch with youth, but this is about spontaneous organising amongst themselves instead of relying on a campaign to reach out to them,” he said.

Yet he still sees similarities between the Dean and Obama campaigns. In January 2003, Mr Dean e-mailed a group of 140 people from Meetup. “By sending them an e-mail, he validated it and encouraged the effort to happen. Obama just did a similar thing,” he said, referring to how Mr Obama addressed 3,500 students at George Mason University at an event last week organised via the Obama for President group on Facebook.

Mr Obama told the student crowd that grassroots activism could help him reshape the political environment. But challenges remain in translating online enthusiasm into wider action. Online networking groups are prone to fads. There are also doubts about how helpful they might prove to a campaign since members’ contact details are often not volunteered by participants.

Mr Armstrong said: “The barrier to entry is pretty low. You get online and within two clicks you have joined. It takes five seconds. The question is how to mobilise them beyond the two clicks thing.” Even so, he said: “It can translate into something. Youth voted in the last two elections in higher percentages.”

Other Democratic candidates have borrowed ideas from Mr Dean. John Edwards has sought to be the voice of the netroots, the progressive activists who organise through blogs. He announced his plans for 2008 with a video on YouTube.

Hillary Clinton is using slick webcasts to announce her campaign and the internet for fundraising. Peter Daou, her internet director, says 100,000 people signed up at the site in the first 48 hours. “We want to target certain nodes where information moves around, bloggers who are opinion leaders on certain issues. You will see more webcasts and see us working more with social networking sites.”

Republican candidates have been slower to embrace the net. Rudy Giuliani’s official website does not always work, offers a few press releases and no video.

While the online world matters, it still cannot compensate for personality. Mr Aregbe says he might drive four hours to watch Mr Obama make his announcement speech today.