Obama releases iPhone recruiting, campaign tool
Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign launched an iPhone application on Thursday that turns the vaunted device into a political recruiting tool. — The most notable feature “organizes and prioritizes your contacts by key battleground states …
Context & Ripple Effects
Obama's campaign had already used a text-message announcement for its vice-presidential pick, establishing mobile phones as a direct campaign channel. The iPhone application extends that approach from campaign-to-supporter messaging to supporter-led outreach, using contact lists and battleground-state priorities to direct recruiting effort.
First-order effects
- Obama's campaign gains a structured way to direct iPhone-owning supporters toward contacts in priority states rather than relying only on one-way mobile messages.
- Supporters using the app receive a campaign-defined ranking of personal contacts, turning their address books into a recruiting workflow.
Second-order effects
- The campaign can coordinate text messaging and the iPhone app as distinct mobile channels: texts reach supporters directly, while the app channels supporters' own outreach toward selected contacts.
- Campaign outreach becomes partly dependent on supporters who own iPhones and choose to install the application, creating a device-specific layer alongside its broader text-message effort.
Third-order effects
- The move points toward political campaigns treating mobile software not simply as a publishing channel but as organizing infrastructure that distributes targeting and recruiting tasks to supporters.
The trend: Political campaigning is shifting from broadcast mobile messaging toward apps that organize supporters' personal networks for targeted field outreach.