Last week, I endorsed Barack Obama as America’s first “Social Media” President.

Last night, we had a scintillating conversation as to whether it was social media that produced Obama’s victory.  Our whip-smart students quickly concluded that it was impossible to prove whether one produced the other (especially because of all the other factors at play: the economy, Palin, Bush, Obama’s charisma and excellent community organizing).  One perceptive student remarked that the only accurate way to gauge the effectiveness of social media would be to create two identical candidates and track them (it’s a Research & Methodologies class after all!).

However, in looking at mybarackobama.com and analyzing a slew of articles (such as this one, and see The Digital President), we did decide that it did represent an superb execution of a social media strategy — and in that way can serve as communications model well beyond the political arena.  We then asked ourselves whether he would still use this approach once in the White House.

We have our answer today: Change.gov.  This appears to be Obama’s platform for “Open government.”

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