OBAMA RAISED US$500 MILLION ONLINE
One of the remarkable elements of the recent US Presidential election was Barack Obama’s online campaign executed by Chris Hughes (24 and co-founder of Facebook). The achievements in effective social media engagement have been written about extensively but the true magnitude, importance and influence of this channel have been unknown until now.
The Washington Post today reported that Obama officially raised over half a billion dollars online:
In an exclusive interview with The Post, members of the vaunted Triple O, Obama’s online operation, broke down the numbers: 3 million donors made a total of 6.5 million donations online adding up to more than $500 million. Of those 6.5 million donations, 6 million were in increments of $100 or less. The average online donation was $80, and the average Obama donor gave more than once.
This represents over 80% of all funds raised and demonstrates a distinct competitive advantage over his rival John McCain in engaging (and raising support from) the US electorate. McCain accepted the restricted (but guaranteed) public campaign finance.
Along with other successes such as Apple iTunes, this clearly leads the way for the evolution of ecommerce in the form of micropayments as a means of extracting revenue from the ever increasing long-tail of content or donations from political supporters.
