Chris Hayes is one man. He is one man with an idea and a passion and a mission. In 2008 he truly did participate in what everyone thought was "Mission Impossible. The following are some excerpts from the article titled, "
HOW CHRIS HUGHES HELPED LAUNCH FACEBOOK AND THE BARACK OBAMA CAMPAIGN
Here is a brief overview, but you do yourself a huge disservice if you do not read the entire article.
In regard to both Facebook and the historic win of Barack Obama, the following article states,
"Both were dedicated to the proposition that communities, and the way we share and interact within them, are vitally important."
The article continues, "He helped develop the most robust set of Web-based social-networking tools ever used in a political campaign, enabling energized citizens to turn themselves into activists, long before a single human field staffer arrived to show them how."
And here is the real truth about the effectiveness of the grass roots:
"Everywhere we went, we could plug in a zip code, and a list of really excited volunteers would pop up," explains Bird. Says Plouffe: "Indiana? North Carolina? We wouldn't have won those states without the grassroots."
Of the Potomac primary it is stated that,
"...he was astonished to find a whole field operation at work. "They had the entire thing set up -- an office with seven computers, phone lines, a state structure, county chairs, and meetings every other Saturday. They had even picked their own state director." Obama won with 57.4% of the vote."
"There was a sophisticated strategy at work: If registrants were students, for instance, they were asked for both the state where they went to school and the state they came from. "We'd determine which state was most important for us to win," says Hughes, "and assuming that the law says that a full-time student can register there, we would suggest it." The site registered a million people, with only a handful of staffers working on it part time. Registering the same number by knocking on doors took some 2,000 paid staffers and volunteers.
Hughes philosophy? "His philosophy, he says, is unchanged from his first involvement with Facebook: "It doesn't matter if it's a company or a campaign; you build around commonality. If it's real people and real communities, then it's valuable. Otherwise it's just playing around online."
"...we were told to ask what was important to people and listen to them." They fed back what they learned via MyBO and used that knowledge to create local service projects that continue to this day."
Speaking of Hughes: "Even he is sometimes surprised by what the technology revealed. When he plugged his hometown's zip code into MyBO's event function toward the end of the campaign, he wasn't expecting much -- "they went pretty solidly for McCain there," he says with a smile. But search a 50-mile radius around 28601 and a different picture of Hickory emerges: Flag after flag pops up, indicating groups that organized for Obama. "I would never have guessed that they were there," he says. That may be the biggest lesson of the campaign: Trusting a community can produce dramatic and unexpected results."
READ THE WHOLE ARTICLE, do your own research and make an informed decision:
http://m.fastcompany.com/1207594/how-chris-hughes-helped-launch-facebook-and-barack-obama-campaign
