HBCUHiphop.com & HBCUEntrepreneurs.com investment group begins Web 2.0 campaign for Barack Obama

PRLog (Press Release) - Apr 03, 2007 -
http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/home-entertainment/barack-obama-hops-on-the-web-20-bandwagon-237047.php

Barack Obama Hops on the Web 2.0 Bandwagon.
Remember in 2004 when Howard Dean discovered blogs and it "revolutionized" presidential campaigning? That was quaint. This time around, blogs are old hat and everyone is looking to use the internet to connect to you, the concerned and unapathetic voter. Prepare to get jaded and cynical. Barack Obama looks to be diving into this whole "Web 2.0" thing head first, what with his own Facebook profile, Flickr account, and YouTube account. In addition to all this stuff, he also has my.barackobama.com, a social networking type site for his supporters to create profiles, network, and make blogs all about how great Barack Obama is. It's clear that the internet is going to play an even larger role in the election this year, for better or worse. Do you think all this buzzword bandwagon hopping is going to help, or is this still politics as usual? –Adam Frucci

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/16/AR2007021602084.html

Young Voters Find Voice on Facebook
Site's Candidate Groups Are Grass-Roots Politics for the Web Generation
By Jose Antonio Vargas
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, February 17, 2007; Page A01
Late on the day that Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) announced he was forming a presidential exploratory committee, Farouk Olu Aregbe logged on to Facebook.com, the popular online community where college students post profiles, share photos and blog. On a whim he created a group called "One Million Strong for Barack."
"I remember thinking, there's got to be more supporters out there," said Farouk, 26, who advises student government at the University at Missouri at Columbia.
On Facebook pages built in support of Sen. Barack Obama's bid for president in 2008, members muse continuously about the latest news on Obama, plan rallies to show their support and come up with ways to contribute to his nascent campaign.
Farouk's group had 100 members in the first hour. In less than five days, 10,000. By the third week, nearly 200,000. Yesterday, a month after he created the group, it had 278,100 members.
There are more than 500 Obama groups on Facebook. One of the first, "Students for Barack Obama," was created on July 7 by Meredith Segal, a junior at Bowdoin College who first heard of Obama when he gave the keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention in 2004. Instead of starting "a petition or something" to encourage the freshman senator to run for president, she turned to her Facebook page, created a group and invited people (first her friends, later strangers) to join.
Now it's a political action committee with nearly 62,000 members and chapters at 80 colleges, the most structured grass-roots student movement -- there's a director of field operations, an Internet director, a finance director and a blog team director -- in the presidential campaign so far. "Young people are on the Web," said Segal, 21. "That's how we're organizing."
At 11 a.m. yesterday, "One Million Strong for Barack" had 278,100 members. Two and a half hours later, 278,537. Three hours later, 279,070.