I’m not terribly well versed in political marketing, but my sense is that My.BarackObama.com is the first social networking site developed by a Presidential candidate of import.

It’s not hard to understand why connecting freinds of Obama together through chat rooms and message boards would be a powerful thing.  But it will be interesting to see if the web site allows free form of ideas, or moderates posts it finds unconstructive.  For example, if two Obama supporters debate opposite sides of an Obama platform, will we all see the debate, or will it be stricken?  If sections of the Message Boards are over run by Hillary supporters, what is the protocol?

Every candidate who runs a site faces these political attacks on blog comments, and it’s never been a big deal to just keep them from beng published.  But a social network is designed around the free form of ideas and thoughts, which is counter intuitive to edits and review.  I’m interested to see the editorial decisions that get made.