Barack Obama on Twitter

Social Media is changing the way that we communicate.  Much like email and the popularity of the Internet, Social Media sites are becoming the preferred way tocommunicate with friends and family, and are increasingly used for promoting brands, companies and other commercial interests.  They are not a fad and will not be going away anytime soon.

If you want evidence of the growing importance of Social Media sites, you need not look any further than the President Elect Barack Obama.  Everyone has heard that Obama did a great job of using new media and the Internet to promote his campaign ideas and reach new audiences.  A large part of his presidential election can be attributed to his ability to embrace and utilize social media to communicate with his followers in real time.  No delays, no media spin, just the info that Obama wanted you to see, delivered before, during and after the event – direct one-way communication with his followers.

Here is a list of the social media profiles for president elect Obama:

• Twitter – http://twitter.com/BarackObama
• Facebook – http://www.facebook.com/barackobama
• MySpace – http://www.myspace.com/barackobama
• LinkedIn – http://www.linkedin.com/in/barackobama
• YouTube – http://www.youtube.com/barackobama
• Flickr – http://www.flickr.com/photos/barackobamadotcom
• Friendfeed – http://friendfeed.com/barackobama

So what did this do for the Senator’s campaign?  Here are some of the statistics taken from a post by David Bullock’s site www.barack20.com.

“Per the story run by the Washington Post, this is a brief summary of the Obama Campaign online operations stats:

– 3 million online donors

- 6.5 million online donations adding up to more than $500 million.

– Of the 6.5 million donations, 6 million were in amounts of $100 or less.

– Upwards of 13 million addresses were captured

– More than 1 billion e-mails sent during the campaign

– Approximately 1 million mobile phone numbers collected

– 2 million profiles created on the My.BarackObama.com social network

– 5 million supporters on other social networking and multimedia sharing sites.

These are the fantastic results of the campaign, no doubt this will be a topic of conversation for years to come.”

So the question is:  Are you using Social Media to expand your network, connect with former colleagues and classmates, and look for new business opportunities?

If you have not yet jumped in, now is the time to get started.  Go on, create a profile and start connecting!