MoveOn.org Political Action is hiring, looking for someone to work "on the development of cutting edge online organizing tools." The job description lays out an ambitious but not unrealistic plan for the giant e-group, and hints at some significant upgrades in its integration of technology in its field organizing. Can the Right match it?

Let's hope President-elect Barack Obama had a restful Tuesday night, because it's about the only time in the next two and a half months that he won't have someone whispering in his ear with advice on what kind of presidency his should be; Perhaps even more important than the question of who will be the nation's first Chief Technology Officer is the matter of how much real juice he or she will have; As we look forward, let's not forget to look back at how we got to where we are; and more.

It's the story of a scrappy bootstrapped organization thinking it can take on the big boys through grit, long hours, and some of the neatest tools the Internet's ever dreamed up. Nope, it's not the story of Shawn Fanning and Napster or Jeff Bezos at Amazon.com. It's the rise and presidency of Barack Obama, says the New York Times David Carr; Of course, it's still possible to look at this election and see it as simply the triumph of a uniquely able politician, his crafty band of savant strategists, and a favorable political climate. Indeed, the New Yorker's Ryan Lizza writes a 7,000-word "How Obama Won" piece with hardly a mention of the Internet; The Washington Post's Shailagh Murray and Matthew Mosk suggest that the Obama White House will have an even "more ambitious" version of the campaign's 95-member new media department; and a good deal more.

In a victory that holds deep lessons for how nonprofit organizations and cause-driven ventures will organize volunteers and build support in the future, Barack Obama was elected President of the United States Tuesday in a near-landslide victory keyed by state-of-the-art social networking and online organizing.

The story of the Obama triumph is a political one to be sure; the campaign used all the traditional methods of organizing party politics, from endorsements and open-air rallies to television advertisements and neighborhood canvassing. It super-charged those traditional methods with the best online strategy ever employed in a national campaign, leveraging a digital toolset that kept supporters constantly in touch with the campaign superstructure. The Obama campaign carefully controlled the overall message and story - but it also made the key decision to free up content, unleash self-organized social networks, and encourage third-party innovations in software, web advocacy, and new media.

But it would be a mistake to view the Obama campaign solely as revolution within the political sphere.

Backers of California's Proposition 8, which enshrined a ban on same-sex marriages in the state constitution, scored a narrow victory on November 4th, winning 52.3% of the vote. The immediate impact in California is huge: the invalidation of 18,000 marriages. But that vote didn't put an end to the fierce debate, not even close. People have been protesting Prop 8's success in Los Angeles, San Diego, and, as the LA Times put it, "even Modesto." What was largely a state legal battle seems to be morphing into a national cultural moment, helped along by the web, including Facebook, MySpace, and YouTube.

The online arm of President-elect Barack Obama's transition is filling out with some familiar faces; Sure, even the bold-faced names in Obamaland from Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel to possible Attorney General Janet Napolitano seems to have a Facebook profile, as the New York Observer's Gillian Reagan reports. But, details the New York Times' Jackie Calmes, applicants for every one of the thousands of available executive-branch jobs must be open to having their online lives thoroughly vetted; So, what is the campaign-turned-transition to do with all those volunteers who powered their victory? Campaign field director Jon Carson told NPR's Mara Liasson that "We've run sort of a giant experiment here in volunteer management, and we want to take a look at the lessons learned from that." But some of those volunteers aren't waiting for instruction; and more.

The Los Angeles Times' Peter Wallsten and Tom Hamburger have a look inside the debate happening over what should happen to the robust online network built by the Obama campaign; NextGov's Allan Holmes looks at some of the contenders to be the nation's first Chief Technology Officer and concludes that "honchos from Silicon Valley are not that suitable for this position;" Slate's Christopher Beam asks if the sort of transparency promised by the Obama campaign is unequivocally good; and a good deal more.

(Crossposted on Personal Democracy Forum) It can take a lot to amaze those of us who study the web's impact on on the world, but the speed and reach of the organizing against California's Proposition 8, passed on the same day Barack Obama was elected president, has been simply astonishing. In a handful of days, a movement called "Join the Impact" has gone from a humble website dreamed up by a 26 year-old Seattleite to a global movement which, as the New York Times' Claire Cain Miller noted, generated protests this weekend in 300 cities in fifty states (and the District of Columbia), and eight countries.

The Obama campaign, such as it still is, is asking supporters to help figure out where the enormous volunteer network built by the campaign should go next. And the questions they have hinge upon whether a grassroots organization is still viable with its namesake firmly ensconced in the White House.

A new survey hosted on MyBarackObama.com is asking supporters to "help shape this movement" -- possibly a suggestive choice of words when the decision has yet to be made over whether or not to keep the network the campaign built outside the political establishment.

When my aunt and uncle-in-law emailed me on November 6th, asking for some advice on what they can do to help Barack Obama "address the great challenges that he and our country face moving forward," I was embarrassingly stumped. Err, there were plans in the works, I knew, to ramp up Americorps and even start some new -corps, like one for inner city teachers. Frankly, though, my relatives aren't looking to devote their lives to Obama. They just wanted to help the country along a bit in their spare time.

Luckily, I remembered something that might just be perfect. During the campaign, Barack Obama had promised to inaugurate just such a part-time volunteerism system, an idea the campaign catchily called "a Craigslist for service."