1st edition

When Barack Obama accepted the Democratic Nomination on August 29, his chances against McCain seemed grim. The Republican machine was growing stronger and the Democrats seemed to be divided over their party’s candidate. The Senator was facing an even steeper challenge back in 2007 when he declared that he would run for President. His supporters were steady but optimism about his success was a rare commodity. Not many people fancied the chances of a black man from Illinois securing the nomination, let alone making it to the White House.

Now, just a few days before the decisive votes are to be cast, I’m sitting back and trying to reflect upon the present state of the campaign and wondering how it came to be. Obama is leading in almost every poll and McCain seems to be slowly fading out of the picture as ripples of division grow within his party.

“We know the battle ahead will be long,” declared a victorious Obama in New Hampshire after winning key primaries for the Democratic nomination. “But always remember that nothing can stand in the way of millions of voices calling for change.” And its no secret that many of those voices were to be found on a new frontier of global politics: the Internet. When the Democratic debates were broadcast on YouTube for the first time in July, the Internet signaled that it would play a significant role in the upcoming elections.

America might be evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats, but the demographics of the online world are vastly different. The Obama campaign has so far trumped its rival on all the major Internet battlegrounds. The Internet has not only helped Barack Obama raise record-breaking funds; it has also helped him mobilize support and fight Republican “smears”.

The YouTube electorate

On YouTube, Obama’s channel has released more than 1,710 videos which are now beamed immediately to over 108,682 subscribers. The campaign has received nearly 18 million channel views and their videos have been watched and promoted by many more. In comparison, McCain’s channel has posted only 315 videos with less than 30,000 subscribers and 2 million channel views. In the time it took McCain’s subscribers to grow from 27332 to 27335, Obama’s number had jumped from 108,662 to 108,682.

Videos posted by users also show a significant pro-Obama trend. While McCain’s and Palin’s ‘gaffes’ are closely scrutinized by the YouTube Electorate, Obama’s speeches and advertisements are often glorified. A YouTube search for “Obama speech” pulls up videos which are mostly pro-Obama. But type in “McCain speech” and you’ll notice that more than half the resulting videos do not reflect favorably upon John McCain.

Digg, Facebook, Twitter and Myspace

Obama has also had a clean sweep on Digg.com, a social network that lets users submit and ‘Digg’ their favorite stories in order to determine their importance and popularity. With 25,594 fans (compared to McCain’s 3,545), the Obama campaign has had a significant influence over the stories that made headlines on Digg. The campaign was also more pro-active, making 99 submissions in contrast to the 14 by their Republican counterparts.

On Twitter, Obama has been continuously updating 108,268 ‘followers’ about his campaign. He has made a total of 248 updates. John McCain has only managed to gain 4,289 followers and make 25 updates. On Facebook, Barack has 2.3 million supporters compared with McCains 600,000. Finally, Obama has also outplayed McCain on MySpace, gaining four times as many supporters as him (794,720 to 205,070).

International opinion matters

Most of these networks operate on principles of democracy under which the videos, news or blogs rated highest make it to the frontpages. Obama’s army of Digg fans and YouTube subscribers ensure that his posts are well promoted and thus more readily available to undecided audiences.

Barack Obama is highly favored over his opponent by people in Europe and many other parts of the world. Many of them have taken part in the online campaign by supporting Barack on these social networks. Although this has given him a rather unfair advantage, his success can be mainly attributed to the incredible effort made by his campaign to engage young voters on the Internet.

Note: The data provided in this article is accurate as of 0330 GMT on October 29, 2007.

Statistics

• Colin King
  Kerner engineer at Canonical Ltd (Ubuntu)
  Aircraft normally triple redundancy, so Microsoft would probably cobble together Vista, Windows 98SE and XP.

• Jessica Gray
  Software engineer at Google.
  None of those systems is designed for that sort of operation and I know Mac and MS specifically list several things their software should be used for. IE and Safari don’t need to have the fail safes a flight control systems needs and would be prohibitively expense if they did.

• Benjamin Myers
  Software Design Engineer at Microsoft.
  Yes, even back when I hated Microsoft, my stuff worked at first and died later after I abused it.Mac, no. I’ve never worked on any Mac anything that didn’t need a lot of hand holding when asked to really grind. It’d give you a pretty death and then email your friends and relatives a catchy funeral march that Apple would own the rights to.  

  Ashamed to say I’ve never heard of Ubuntu. I would trust Unix and Sun (at least the ones I worked on in late 1980s/early 1990s), but not Linux.

• Gary Clarke
  Senior Manager at Amazon Kindle.
  Are you kidding me? Someone would connect their seat-belt and cause a device-driver conflict. Flush the toilet and the flaps will extend in mid-flight.

• Chris Gamble
  President of CRG Media. Former System Administrator at JPMorgan and Chase.
  Windows: As long as its XP, and not an OEM install.
  Mac: I’m sure it would be a nice ride, but you would spend all of the money you earn on in-flight upgrades.
  Linux: I know I would get there safely, but all the money would be spent on Chiropractor bills.

• Abhinav Mishra
  Programmer at Infosys (India’s largest software company).
  If I have a Unix based parachute, I won’t mind.

• Robert Lindsley
  Executive Producer at Atari
  No, yes and no.

• John Gilman
  Former Business & Technology Consultant at Microsoft.
  Of course, I would prefer Windows embedded over any OS for stability…I just to make sure the hardware drivers and other applications are written up to snuff.

• Kurt Brust
  Sr Linux Platform Engineer at Wachovia. Former Sr Linux Consultant at IBM.
  Maybe if it was running in a virtual session under Linux!

• Tadd Moor
  Director, IS&T Infrastructure at Rooney Holdings Inc.
  No, I wouldn’t. Partly because I’m burned out on air travel an – even free travel; and partly because you didn’t mention from who Microsoft “liberated” the technology.

• Geoff Beckman
  Owner of Beckman & Associates.
  No for two reasons:
  1. I can’t wait 18 months for it to launch.
  2. I bought my flight bag in 1998, and the luggage compartment doesn’t support it anymore.2. Ubuntu isn’t scheduled to add stairs to the plane in the next release (right now you have to climb hand over hand using a rope), and I’m tired of being called a “newbie” or MS-100Z3R when I request that someone look into adding seats and restrooms.  

  No to the others as well:
  1. Mac OS X will fly me to San Francisco, Monte Carlo, or Rio, but will not support a return trip, because Steve Jobs doesn’t think it’s a cool experience to fly to Ohi

• John Swanagon
  Senior Systems Architect Manager at Avaya. Former Principal Consultant at Lucent technologies.
• Absolutely. Let me qualify that by saying that I would as long as the plane, which includes the software, was cleared and certified by the FAA (or in the process of certification). There are varying opinions out there as to Windows’ stability, but I believe that it is a stable product. I would trust it to run the software on a plane.The other thing to remember too is the backup systems. If all else fails, the pilots could land the plane without the software. If the plane was so dependent on the software that a “manual” landing was impossible, then I would say absolutely not.

• Sanjay Vyas
  Sr. Vice President at Aptech & Owner of Synergetics India.
  Yes… if its version 3.0!

• Jason King
  Senior Developer at Optus SingTel Pty Ltd. & Technical Director at Handle IT
  Fee for boarding test flight: $10,000,000
  Parachute: $2000
  Standby recovery team: $10,000
  MS Windows plane never getting close to even pushing back from the gate: Priceless!

• Hosun Lee
  Former Technical Sales Specialist at IBM
  Sure I would.
  1) Microsoft makes quality software.
  2) The publicity associated with a plane crashing when Windows crashing would be catastrophic enough for Microsoft to want to make sure it works.
  3) Microsoft already powers my car, and I have a much greater chance of dying in a car accident than in a plane crash (knock on wood).

• John Ruxlow
  Works for Thomson Reuters.
  I would be willing to get on it, but I would want the money to go to my family if I didn’t make it. From what I am seeing on the news Microsoft couldn’t screw it up any worse than the FAA and plane maintenance groups already have it.

• Alan Crawford
  Former Senior Systems Engineer at Trident Systems Inc.
  Board it, yes. However, I’d be sure to get off and take cover before they started the engines, let alone attempted to get airborne.
  For the other two – no. I don’t fly on planes running general purpose operating systems. While wild horses wouldn’t get me airborne on even Windows for Airliners (formerly Windows for Warships, previously Windows for Washing Machines, originally Bob), there are already plenty of planes airborne with subsystems that make use of specialized versions of the Linux kernel. Probably a fair number of systems using Window CE based systems too.

• Ray Miller
  Former Project Team Leader at GE Aircraft Engines.
  Windows: NO (especially Vista). Mac: Yes. Ubuntu: Yes