Obama and teh interwebs

The Nation has a great article about how Obama is mobilising people using online tools. Some highlights for me are:

• He uses facebook effectively for targetting and organising. Both his campaign team and ordinary punters are setting up events and groups.
• The campaign built their own social networking portal to connect and empower activists called MyBO, where organisers are required to post all events on the site and blog about their efforts.
• More than 350,000 people have already created MyBO accounts, posting more than 10,000 grassroots events offline, including 1,000 gatherings where supporters simply wear Obama buttons and do community service in their neighborhoods.
  
• While young participants are active, the majority of users, according to the site's administrator, appear to be middle-aged women.
• They use text messages to mobilise people on the night of big events.

It's an interesting balance between centralising and de-centralising a campaign.