The New York Times carries a fascinating look at the social media campaign that began with a conversation between the President-elect and Marc Andreessen and ended as the unstoppable force that carried Barack Obama to the steps of the White House. Speaking to NYT reporter David Carr, Andreessen says: “I think it is very significant that [Obama] was the first post-boomer candidate for president. Other politicians I have met with are always impressed by the Web and surprised by what it could do, but their interest sort of ended in how much money you could raise. He was the first politician I dealt with who understood that the technology was a given and that it could be used in new ways.”

The article also quotes Ranjit Mathoda, analyst and blogger whose essay The Coming Digital Presidency took an early look at what this technology injection might mean for an Obama administration. He’s quoted: “When you think about it, a campaign is a start-up business. Other than his speech in 2004 at the convention and his two books, Mr. Obama had very little in terms of brand to begin with, and he was up against Senator Clinton, who had all the traditional sources of power, and then Senator McCain. But he had the right people and the right idea to take them on. When you think about it, it was like he was going up against Google and Yahoo. And he won.”

Richard Koman blogging at ZDNet Government thinks Obama’s powerful use of social networking may alter official communications coming out of the Oval Office: “Obama has taken a cool attitude towards the press, keeping them on ice for two whole days after his election before a press conference on the work of his transition economic team. That may be because he believes he has the means to communicate directly to the electorate.”

YouTube and MGM hook up
Also from the NYT comes details of the story (broken by Greg Sandoval at CNet last week) that Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios will start posting full length movies on YouTube.

MG Siegler at VentureBeat says the move is a far cry from a Hulu-killer: “Hulu, the NBC and Fox-backed online video service, does not allow for user generated content (which YouTube excels in), and thus there is no uploading of unauthorized material. And perhaps because there are no crazy videos of cats trying to drink from fire-hoses, Hulu’s content is more appealing to big name advertisers — the kind you might find on TV. The MGM/YouTube deal will also see older television content come to the service. Again, that’s nice, but Hulu has fresh television content — that’s nicer.“

Stan Schroeder at Mashable says it’s a race against time: “YouTube can’t afford to wait until Hulu gets too big; it needs to leverage the fact that it’s the biggest video sharing site around without completely giving in to the (often ludicrous) demands of big Hollywood studios. Winning or at least settling that Viacom lawsuit would definitely help, but whether YouTube will manage to achieve this delicate balance before it’s too late remains to be seen.”

Rafat Ali at paidContent challenges Hulu’s claim of ad money flowing in: “I am a heavy consumer of TV shows on Hulu, and I see more Ad Council PSA ads than anything else on it, and this has especially been true in the last few weeks, so I am not sure how much online ad dollars are flowing into Hulu, despite their claims.”

ReadWriteWeb distils top 20% of best social media posts for your RSS pleasure
One of the fun things about the social media space is well, how social it is. People blur the lines between work and fun. They take what’s available as raw material and turn it into a valuable resource which they share with the community. And then other people remix that in a different way and share it back with the community. It’s all good. Want to play too? Marshall Kirkpatrick will show you the ropes.

–Basheera Khan