I enjoyed going to this event because it gave me some perspective on how social networking is going to be impacting the political process. First off, I noticed that many of the people there were meeting face to face for the first time, but already knew each other through my.barackobama.com. For at least a few, this was the first time they had actually met someone in person that they’d first had contact with online. A few mentioned that they had never joined a social networking site such as MySpace or Facebook.

Tim’s identified one of the primary use cases for niche social networks, start friendships online in preparation for offline meetings.

I signed up for the network also. I haven’t looked closely at Obama’s policies yet, but on the surface he represents a change to a course where intelligence and diplomacy matters.