photo credit: Ethan Blochby Angela Guess
Obama is utilizing Big Data to a much greater extent than his opposition, and his use of social data might just make the difference in his campaign. A recent article reports, “Obama may be struggling in the polls and even losing support among his core boosters, but when it comes to the modern mechanics of identifying, connecting with and mobilizing voters, as well as the challenge of integrating voter information with the complex internal workings of a national campaign, his team is way ahead of the Republican pack. Alone among the major candidates running for president, the Obama campaign not only has a Facebook page with 23 million ‘likes’ (roughly 10 times the total of all the Republicans running), it has a Facebook app that is scooping up all kinds of juicy facts about his supporters.”
It continues, “Inside the Obama operation, his staff members are using a powerful social networking tool called NationalField, which enables everyone to share what they are working on. Modeled on Facebook, the tool connects all levels of staff to the information they are gathering as they work on tasks like signing up volunteers, knocking on doors, identifying likely voters and dealing with problems. Managers can set goals for field organizers — number of calls made, number of doors knocked — and see, in real time, how people are doing against all kinds of metrics. In additional to all the hard data, users can share qualitative information: what points or themes worked for them in a one-on-one conversation with voters, for example.”
