Timeline used by president OBAMA

A fundamental understanding of communication has always been at the center of a politician's arsenal, but a firm grasp on the future of communication can be the secret weapon that wins the war. For Franklin D. Roosevelt, it was radio. For John F. Kennedy, it was television. And for Barack Obama,THATS social media

Obama's use of Timeline Facebook's Timeline feature is getting a plug from President Barack Obama. Obama converted his Facebook home page to Timeline on Thursday after Facebook extended the feature as an option for branded home pages. The social network has been converting its consumers' home pages to Timeline since January. Obama posted a bar chart on his new home page of net jobs created from 2007 to the present. Along the side of the bar chart, as is standard with the Timeline format, is a column of dates that you can click on to see events in the president's life during those years. Clicking on "born," for example, displays a coffee cup with a facsimile of Obama’s birth certificate on it, an obvious poke at the contingent of Americans who have questioned whether Obama was born in the U.S. Courts have consistently rejected legal challenges to Obama's right to be president. Romney's site Santorum's page Other events on the president's Timeline include his moving to live with his grandparents in Hawaii in 1971, his first job behind the counter at a Baskin-Robbins in 1978, and his marriage to Michelle Obama in 1992. Leading Republican contenders Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum haven't embraced Timeline yet. Romney's home page has a custom look to it with a set of tabs -- Featured, Latest, Mitt on the Road and Stand with Mitt -- over an online video titled "In America: Anything Is Possible." Santorum's home page is all about fundraising or campaigning, with links for creating your own fundraising page for the candidate, volunteering for the campaign, making phone calls from home for the campaign and downloading campaign literature to pass out to friends, neighbors and strangers. While Romney and Santorum are critical of just about everything Obama has done while in office, they will have to follow his lead to Timeline at the end of the month when Facebook forces them and the rest of its business users to adopt the mandatory redesign of their home pages....

Win or lose, there is no doubt that Barack Obama has changed the face of politics in America. And just as Obama is using Web 2.0 in his presidential campaign, so can Web 2.0 give the American people a voice in politics.

Obama's own social network was used to stage a protest of his stance on a federal wiretapping bill, proving that social networking can cut both ways.

Now it's up to the people to utilize that voice!

obama wife

A full-fledged social network, My.BarackObama allows users to create their own profile complete with a customized description, friends list and personal blog. They can also join groups, participate in fund raising, and arrange events all from an interface that is both easy-to-use and familiar to any Facebook or MySpace user.

If we were to look for the ace up Obama's sleeve, we would find Chris Hughes. As one of the founders of Facebook, Chris Hughes knows a thing or two about social networking. Obama's wooing of the social networking whiz may not have made headlines at the time, but it's been a major factor in Obama's success.