Facebook Co-Founder Propelled Obama's Digital Campaign

Chris Hughes, 24, one of the three co-founders of Facebook, left the start-up in early 2007 in sunny Palo Alto for Chicago to join the nacent Obama campaign. Hughes went on to mastermind the digital strategy for the long-shot candidate and the MyBarackObama.com social networking site. 

Sarah Lai Stirland has a story in Wired this morning about how the the digital strategy, with Hughes' help, helped assure the Obama victory.  Here's a story by Rich Ord at WebProNews writing about how the Internet powered Obama's success. Some digital media tactics of the Obama campaign were disclosed in the much-discussed Newsweek behind the scenes article published today.

Brian Stelter from The New York Times wrote a feature in July about Hughes' Obama efforts.

Andy interviewed Hughes two years ago at the AlwaysOn conference in Stanford, before Hughes had left Facebook for politics. He talks about the development of Facebook and his role. I republished the interview above.

We wonder how long the Obama and McCain campaign sites will remain live, along with the hundreds of campaign videos. I suppose the campaigns have other things to do today!

--Kelsey Blodget, Associate Producer