And he won

The New York Times publica hoy un curioso artículo acerca del poder de las nuevas redes sociales y su uso en la política, en concreto en la última campaña electoral en Estados Unidos, con un título inequívoco de: "How Obama Tapped Into Social Networks’ Power".

Es muy ilustrativa y curiosa la historia que cuenta uno de los entrevistados en el artículo sobre qué formas de comunicación emplearon a lo largo de la historia varios de los candidatos a la presidencia del país para ganar las elecciones:

“Thomas Jefferson used newspapers to win the presidency, F.D.R. used radio to change the way he governed, J.F.K. was the first president to understand television, and Howard Dean saw the value of the Web for raising money,” said Ranjit Mathoda, a lawyer and money manager who blogs at Mathoda.com. “But Senator Barack Obama understood that you could use the Web to lower the cost of building a political brand, create a sense of connection and engagement, and dispense with the command and control method of governing to allow people to self-organize to do the work.”

(... ...)

“When you think about it, a campaign is a start-up business,” Mr. Mathoda said. “Other than his speech in 2004 at the convention and his two books, Mr. Obama had very little in terms of brand to begin with, and he was up against Senator Clinton, who had all the traditional sources of power, and then Senator McCain. But he had the right people and the right idea to take them on. When you think about it, it was like he was going up against Google and Yahoo. And he won.”