33 Million People in the Room: How to Create, Influence, and Run a Successful Business with Social Networking

Chapter 8 Virality And Communities: Opportunities In Distribution

The 2008 US Presidential election was looming and candidate barack obama was in the process of pulling together his campaign budget. While his fellow candidates were relying on major donations and concentrating their advertising budgets in traditional media outlets, Obama was online mobilizing the passion and dedication of Internet users to create a fiercely devoted community of enthusiastic, if financially lacking, contributors. In short order, the seemingly paltry donations provided by his vast online community soon began adding up, and ultimately they proved significant enough to make Obama the first presidential candidate in history to bypass public financing in the general ...