Obama Has An iPhone App
The Obama campaign continues to make 2008 a banner year for using technology in an election. Today it announced the Obama iPhone app.
In addition to news items, events, and other standard social features, one stands out. Users can get a list of their phone’s contacts, organized by battleground states where candidates are duking it out for votes. The campaign calls it “a great volunteering tool that lets you make a difference any time you want by talking to people you already know.”
The call stats show how many calls I have made, the top caller’s call count, as well as the total for the whole U.S. The app came out this morning and already there have been 385 calls to friends, the highest total being 200. No word on who this mystery Obama supporter is, though identification is likely withheld to prevent gaming. The stats are self reported on the iPod Touch (where the user needs another phone to make calls).
Some may criticize the Obama camp for hopping on a bandwagon. Others might see it as a sign of elitism, as many do Apple users in general. I could be doubly bias as both an Obama and Apple supporter. If McCain made something this cool for Windows Mobile, I’d write about it.
This app is embracing new communication technology, just as all the campaigns have this election. Just about every candidate got MySpace pages, made Twitter accounts, and created profiles on many other social networks.
In the 2004 U.S. presidential elections, the web was used as a serious communication tool for the first time. It got Howard Dean further than anyone imagined (but couldn’t save him from his own “H’yah”). But if that was Internet Election 1.0, well, we’ve moved on to the next major version number here.
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