Across the internet, on social networking sites, blogs and YouTube, supporters of Barack Obama celebrated his win yesterday. It was an appropriate place to mark the most tech-sav-vy presidential campaign in history.

From the very beginning Mr Obama went beyond the conventional media of newspapers, television and radio to target a younger generation of voters who prefer Facebook, MySpace and text messaging. He was rewarded with, among other things, avatars dancing in the virtual world of Second Life to mark his victory.

Mr Obama introduced himself to the nation at the start of his 2007 nomination campaign with a five-minute biographical video posted online. David Axelrod, his chief strategist, said at the time: “He wanted to speak directly to his supporters.”

Mr Obama and his Republican rival John McCain used the web to bolster their campaigns. Mr McCain – said to be a reluctant convert to e-mail – never really plugged into the net generation however.

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BACKGROUND

• Bush - 'We should all be proud of Obama'

• The challenge that greets Obama

• Full video and text: Obama's victory speech

• Voters honour Martin Luther King's dream

Multimedia

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• Bonjour 'Barack'

Related Links

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The move by the Obama campaign to capitalise on the internet took shape during the primaries, when it created its own social networking site, myBarackObama.com. Mr Obama used this site to organise 150,000 campaign-related events. By the end of the campaign myBarackObama.com had about 1.5 million accounts.

This highly orchestrated effort helped the Democrat candidate to raise a record-breaking $600 million (£370 million) in contributions from more than three million people, many of whom donated via the internet.

“No one’s going to say Obama won the election because of the internet but he wouldn’t have been able to win without it,” said Julie Germany, the director of the Institute for Politics Democracy and the Internet at the George Washington University. “It was like the central nervous system of the campaign.”

The Obama campaign also used text messaging: thousands of mobile phone numbers were collected and Mr Obama used mass texting to build momentum, remind recipients to vote and announce his running-mate. The texting and e-mail campaign culminated with a message to supporters sent out as Mr Obama was about to make his victory speech in Chicago. Those who were logged on at that moment received this message: “I’m about to head to Grant Park to talk to everyone gathered there, but I wanted to write to you first. We just made history. And I don’t want you to forget how we did it.”

The videos posted on YouTube created some of the most lasting images of the campaign, however. At the top of the charts was Obama Girl – I’ve got a crush on Obama featuring a nubile fan singing. It attracted ten million viewers, who were unlikely to all to be fans of the energy and health-care policies of the senator.

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