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"All three major cable news networks have now called the election for Barack Obama. As a way to celebrate the new president's ascension (yes, even I'm capable of doing that), I figured it might be worth it to look back over the last couple of years at Mashable as we've been covering the soon-to-be President-Elect and his frequent intersections with our areas of coverage.\nThe junior senator from Illinois is by far one of the most often talked about politicians from any country in the web world. Just about every mainstream pundit on the Old Tee Vee tonight made mention of the fact that this is the first \"two screen\" election (in reference to the computer screen and the TV screen), and Republican operative Patrick Ruffini pointed to a quote from John McCain's chief campaign strategist Steve Schmidt regarding Barack Obama's online efforts:\n\u201CIt was a profound leap forward technologically,\u201D Mr. Schmidt added. \u201CRepublicans will have to figure out how to compete with this in order to become competitive again at a national level and in House and Senate races.\u201D\nThat first foray online was chronicled by Pete back in February of 2007 with the launch of MyBarackObama.com:\nIt\u2019s probably fair to say that the Democrats will benefit most from political campaigning on the web:\u00A0the younger demographic on social networks tends to learn to the left, or so we\u2019re told...\u00A0it\u2019s 100 times better than anything offering by Hillary Clinton or John Edwards. Barack is also more suited to the age of celebrity, wall-to-wall TV news and YouTube addiction: he\u2019s more charismatic than the other candidates, and comes across better in video clips.\nWhen YouTube's YouChoose political channel started filling out with content in March '07, Barack Obama was the first to show signs that he'd be a runaway hit online, again noticed by Pete:\nDoes Barack Obama have a shot at the White House? If you follow YouTube and other social sites, you\u2019d have good reason to believe he does...what\u2019s staggering here is how Barack Obama seems to be out pacing the other candidates by a mile: he\u2019s racked up 71,817 views on the Obama channel, compared to 23,746 for Edwards and 22,596 for Clinton - the others have achieved a fraction of that.\nThroughout the summer of 2007, Obama continued to make waves online by launching unique campaign profiles for each state he campaigned in on MySpace, winning the support of Republican presidential nominee Rudy Guiliani's daughter on Facebook, and participating in an open dialog via LinkedIn's Q&amp;A sessions (where he solicited the advice of technology business leaders).\n\nNot all the press here at Mashable was positive. A month or so after I joined on (the timing is purely coincidental, I'm sure), Obama was involved in a record setting eBay charity auction:\n\nCatherine England, an eBay spokeswoman, said the winning bid on Rush Limbaugh\u2019s auction set a record for the most expensive item ever sold for charity on the site. The item in question was a letter from Democratic senators, including Senate Majority Leader\u00A0Harry Reid, blasting Limbaugh for using the phrase \u201Cphony soldiers\u201D on the air. The\u00A0letter sold Friday\u00A0for $2.1 million.\n\u201CIt is unconscionable that Mr. Limbaugh would criticize them for exercising the fundamentally American right to free speech,\u201D the letter read, also signed by Presidential candidates Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Chris Dodd. Limbaugh denied the allegations levied by the letter, saying the quotes were taken out of context.\n\nThe incident, much like the unsavory conflict by which Obama wrested control of his MySpace profile, created barely a bump in the road for the Obama viral marketing machine. In the wake of his Super Tuesday wins, one of Obama's acceptance speeches inspired former Black Eyed Peas artist will.i.am to remix it into the fastest spreading viral video in history. I spoke with Will on the Mashable Conversations podcast a day or two after the video spread:\n\n\nAt some point around the time of the primaries, Obama's name showing up in the news became less of a novelty and more of an SEO play. The number of articles, lists and editorials here at Mashable as well as anywhere else you look in the blogosphere during that time simply ballooned.\nOne of the more popular topics that first started bubbling up as a meme was the idea that Barack Obama pledged to select a national CTO. This was a topic I touched on here at Mashable as recently as yesterday, but it first started gaining steam in August when Dave Winer was suggested by Duncan Riley and Robert Scoble as the perfect candidate for an American National CTO.\nA day later, the Obama campaign announced a name not for CTO, but for Vice-President. The manner in which they had intended to announce was groundbreaking in its novelty - via SMS. In what ended up being a bait-and-switch move, the candidacy of Joe Biden for veep was leaked to the press, and the millions who signed up for the SMS alert had given over their names to be marketed to without gaining that \"insidery scoop\" in return.\nAs the election drew to a close, it became clear that while online content may not be a sure-fire indicator of a meatspace winner (anyone remember Ron Paul at this point?), Barack Obama was looking like he would be the winner. Several of us here at Mashable followed the election night coverage online both in imagery and raw numbers, all culminating with Barack Obama a few hours ago giving his acceptance speech broadcast live via his UStream channel."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2008/11/04/president-elect-obama-looking-back-as-we-move-forward/>