There was a time (2007, to be exact) when "eyes rolled when Scott Goodstein rolled out the [Obama] campaign's text-messaging program."

Eyes weren't rolling when the campaign gathered more than a million contacts by announcing its vice presidential pick by text-message.

Today, we consider mobile politicking a critical element of any campaigner's digital toolkit.

You don't have to reach the size or scope of the Obama campaign to launch an effective mobile effort -- but you do need to know how to leverage existing and upcoming tools, including text messaging, downloads, interactive voice response communication, mobile websites, iPhone apps, and more, for your cause.

Join the PdF Network on Thursday, December 17 to hear from Scott Goodstein, CEO, Revolution Messaging (and former External Online Director for Obama for America) about what lessons the Obama campaign has to offer for the future of mobile politicking.

Please note that this call will not be archived as a podcast, so make sure to join us on Thursday!

Thursday, Dec 17th at the PdF Network
Learning from the Obama Campaign About the Future of Mobile Politicking
1-2 p.m. EST

Join the call!

Check out our upcoming PdF Network calls...

The New York Times convened several tech experts this weekend to debate online privacy and the "overuse of social networking tools." Professor Clay Shirky stole the show, recounting a college tequila run that ended with his hair on fire. That youthful indiscretion was a harmless secret for Shirky, back in the days went you had to be physically present to witness a private event:

Society has always carved out space for young people to misbehave. We used to do this by making a distinction between behavior we couldn’t see, because it was hidden, and behavior we could see, because it was public. That bargain is now broken, because social life increasingly includes a gray area that is publicly available, but not for public consumption.

So nowadays, a tequila flaming head incident cries out for instant memorialization via cell phone, Facebook and YouTube. That may ding some millennial reputations, Shirky contends, but eventually it will recalibrate societal norms to tolerate a greater range of benign misconduct – as long as adults “cut young people some slack.” So if President Clinton dabbled in pot and President Obama once tried some blow, the argument goes, then surely we can chill out on today’s kids:

Just as Bill Clinton destroyed the idea that marijuana use was a disqualifier to serious work, the increasing volume of personal life online will come to mean that, even though there’s a picture from when your head was on fire that one time, you can still get a job.

The arc of social networking does bend towards reality; a society that sees more of itself should eventually discard some delusions about its own behavior and propriety. The examples of Clinton and Obama, however, actually cut in the opposite direction.

The White House released a new video on Friday, tackling another question from last week's virtual town hall with President Obama. White House aides had indicated they would continue to engage citizen questions, as I reported for PDF this week, and the new video features an official for disability policy, Kareem Dale, responding to a video submission about health care for people with disabilities.

Just about everyone has weighed in on the President's first virtual town hall, and my report from a day at the White House is here. Looking forward, here are three thoughts on the next Open for Questions, and picking up on related PDF posts:

1. Don't weed out the weed
Mathew Burton defends the pot questions, explaining how their open, spirited participation does not constitute "gaming" the system - that is the system. "Lack of participation from a broad base of the populace" was the problem, he argues, and next time the White House should avoid the temptation of using tactics "to--ahem--weed out questions." (Somewhere, Joseph Tartakovsky smiled.) If anything, Obama hit the wrong tone by not giving the pot question a serious answer on par with other citizen queries. That tack upset even ardent Obama supporters. It also left Robert Gibbs hitting clean up, as several thoughtful drug policy questions bubbled up in the press briefing that same afternoon.

Organizing for America is suddenly getting lots of attention. It almost feels like the traditional press discovered Obama's post-campaign organizing effort this month, even though there have been national gatherings and communications ever since the transition. It is worth noting, however, that many reporters are responding to a recent press offensive by OFA staff.

Obama makes YouTube history with the most watched presidential campaign video ever -- and beats cable news along the way.

Hillary Clinton is under fire for planted questions again, but this time her critics are wrong.

It's a web politics battle: Disintermediation v. Interactivity...

The Obama Campaign does not stress its historic Internet success. It does not even discuss the web as an obvious metaphor for Obama's candidacy: An open frontier where race and gender recede, new ideas vanquish the old, and citizens converse and connect in ways that the prior generations would never understand, let alone support. Perhaps that is simply because no presidential candidate wants to sound like the next Howard Dean. Or maybe, the campaign knows that you don't build a movement by talking about it. You do it, person by person, until one day, everyone can see it.

Can Obama's "Yes We Can" speech become a hit song?
John Legend, Herbie Hancock, Common, Kareem Abdul Jabbar and Scarlett Johansson think so.

A new website is talking back to Obama's YouTube video hits.