‘We just made history. And I don’t want you to forget how we did it,” said the e-mail that flashed up in the inboxes of millions of BlackBerrys and computers across America late on Tuesday. That was how Barack Obama signed off his campaign, e-mailing supporters before he took to the stage in Grant Park, Chicago. Every message was individually addressed and signed simply “Barack”.

Few of the estimated 70m people who received the message were surprised at the personal greeting from the man moving to the White House. For Obama’s campaign was a self-proclaimed “movement” with the internet at its core. The web spearheaded a new way of fundraising, identifying volunteers and – most of all – accumulating contact details for millions of converts to the Obama surge. The movement continues. Within hours of his victory speech, a new government website – change.gov – went live. People could write about their experiences of the campaign, hopes for the new government – and apply for jobs.

And just as the web was used to bypass more traditional media in the election, it is expected to remain essential in communicating with voters once Obama takes office.

“We have a lot of work to do to get our country back on track, and I’ll be in touch soon about what comes next,” Obama promised in his e-mail.

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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'

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His powerful use of the internet took his rivals by surprise and now fills future opponents with envy and foreboding. “They have millions of e-mail addresses, phone numbers and whole communities of supporters – both geographic and online – and it will be very interesting to see how they use them in government,” said Aaron Smith from the Pew Internet and American Life Project.

One of Obama’s first moves was to hire Chris Hughes, a co-founder of Facebook, the social networking website. He set up my.barackobama. com – a vast networking site that attracted young voters. Viral networking spread the message further by e-mail and text messaging.

The effort and expense repaid itself many times over: hundreds of thousands of people were persuaded to give relatively small amounts of money online. In September Obama raised $150m – 75% of it online.

“I only gave a few dollars but somehow you felt that you owned a bit of Barack, which made it mean that little bit more,” said one contributor from New York.

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