Obama Releases iPhone App, but Why? [UPDATED]
BY Michael Whitney | Thursday, October 2 2008
Today the Obama campaign announced it released the Obama '08 iPhone app, a free application for your iPhone or iPod Touch. The app is pitched as a "a great volunteering tool that lets you make a difference any time you want by talking to people you already know."
The main feature of the tool is that it organizes your contacts by state in order of electoral priority. You can then call through your social network based on how important they are to Obama winning. While I believe the app will look at any address information associated with your friends, it organizes your contacts into states based on their ZIP area codes if no address information exists.
Also included in the app are news feeds, local events (hooked into your GPS), and a directory of where Obama stands on the issues. Of course, you can also donate with the application.
It's a slick application, but is it useful 33 days from the election? The campaign seems to think it's a GOTV tool that will generate "thousands of personal contacts" up to the election.
I think the idea of an application that organizes your most personal social network - the one trapped in your phone - is a solid concept. For people with a large address book who want to call through their friends, it could be useful.
But why not connect the iPhone app with the campaign's other voter contact tools? You could tap into the GPS and find people within 50 miles of your location who you could call.
Overall, this iPhone application is a well-executed technology project that will have minimal impact in how voters are organized for November 4.
And as a contributor to and supporter of Obama, I'm disappointed campaign resources were put into this niche technology project instead of into boots on the ground.
UPDATE: I've received a flurry of tweets that this application was actually an all-volunteer effort that was later adopted by the Obama campaign.
This definitely changes my perception, and makes me feel better that the campaign didn't decide to dump money into development right before the election.
It makes me happy that 1.) volunteers created this slick application on their own, and 2.) that the Obama campaign embraced the application as their own.
So - congratulations to the volunteer developers, and kudos to the campaign for embracing volunteer efforts. I'm looking forward to seeing this kind of collaboration continue.