If you haven't heard of him yet - Ron Paul is a "Republican United States Congressman" who is currently going through the "primary" stages of the race for the presidency of the United States of America.
Lets ignore his political views for this posting and instead concentrate on his online campaign.
The US presidential campaign is always an interesting affair - but this year it looks even more interesting. Especially when you look at the type of campaign Ron Paul is running.
He has so far had the largest one day online fundraiser in political history - raising some $4.9m in 24 hours from over 37,000 donators. Detailed graphs are available at: http://www.ronpaulgraphs.com/
He has over 88k "friends" on his MySpace page: http://www.myspace.com/ronpaul2008
He has had over 875k people view one of his YouTube videos on his tax reform ideas: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWfIhFhelm8 and his other video's regularly top over 100k viewers
You have to admire his campaign team for the energy and momentum they have created here - until you realise that the majority of the effort in this campaign is being driven at the grass roots level by his supporters. He's obviously hit a nerve with the American electorate with some of his messages and they are helping him get his message out. The more momentum it gets the more people talk about him etc.. (the classic Network Effect) - I mean even I am writing a blog post about him and I'm not even able to vote in the USA :-)
Why is this campaign important?
Well for one it shows the way politics will be moving in the future - voters today have more power than they ever had. The Internet has made that possible.
But it also shows what can be achieved in just about any area of life - be it personal or business orientated. If your message is good enough and hits the right community - then it will gather momentum and a life of its own.
It will be interesting to watch this and other campaigns in this race unfold over the coming months - as I'm certain this is going to have a profound impact going forward.
Regards
Dean
