Obama uses web start-up for policy library

posted on 1st August 2008 by Jon

The campaign for US Presidential candidate Barak Obama has officially announced that it is using online document repository Scribd to house all documentation and public policy pledges. This would enable supporters and the media the ability to access official docs released by the campaign team and is yet another example of how Presidential campaigns have been innovating the web. It’s not that these new web apps are being created as a result of the way that campaigns are running, rather, the use of web tools like Scribd and an array of social networking sites have received fantastic exposure through the candidates usage. Obama’s Twitter account for example has over 52,000 followers!

Techcrunch reports on Scribd, calling it a “YouTube for documents” that allows users to upload an array of filetypes that are converted to a Flash format viewable on most computers. The document viewer, called iPaper, can also be embedded in web pages. Since its launch in 2007, Scribd has seen explosive growth, and now claims to see nearly 20 million monthly unique visitors.

Read the full article here.

Obama’s account on Scribd is viewable here: http://www.scribd.com/barackobama