It appears that Barack Obama's strategic web initiatives, including the launch of the private-label social network My.BarackObama.com are paying off. As reported in the Chicago Tribune, more than 4,000 individuals have set up blogs, and an additional 3,000 individuals have set up private fundraising pages on Obama's social network. The article, written last week, also points to the 2,400 groups formed on the site. This morning, however, I counted 3,229 groups on Obama's SNS, a 35% increase in just a few days.

Of course, these statistics must be tempered by reality. Simply creating a blog does not equate to meaningful use of the blog (for example, my blog has nothing but a "test post"). All that aside, Obama's web strategy seems to be paying off. In an Alexa survey of presidential candidate web presence, Obama has emerged as the front runner, leading both Hillary Clinton and John Edwards.

Of course, these samples are characteristically temporal. Both Obama and Clinton's traffic trends show significant spikes that accompany the announcement of candidacy, which look alot like the Techcrunch effect oft observed in Web 2.0-land (and, in fact, Obama's site was Techcrunch'd, repeatedly). With the Techcrunch effect, website traffic trends will soar momentarily, but will often dip back to realistic levels over time. Will Obama's SNS engagement efforts allow him to hold the net lead over candidates like Clinton and Edwards? Only time will tell, but I've got a hunch.

In a response to my post last week about candidate social networks, Mike Connery makes the excellent point that candidate SNS, as not-as-good-as-Myspace/Facebook/Bebo as they are, serve a valuable purpose in establishing place for supporters of a candidate. They turn the candidate's presence from being read-only to being read-write, and they give supporters a sense of networked involvement. At the same time, it is a low-obligation involvement, which is important. A lot of us are still "kicking the tires" of many candidates. We want to bring the candidate into our lives, but we may not be ready to be a candidate blogger or public organizer yet. The candidate SNS splits the difference - you get access to the candidate, you explore and visualize the support network, and you can be a lurker if you wish.

Only time will tell if Obama's SNS efforts will cement his net leadership, but with the SNS component, my bet is that he'll retain a larger portion of his traffic than other, less-interactive (or higher-obligation-for-interactivity) candidates.