One of the more genius ways to get press I've seen lately, not to mention a good idea in general, is Barack Obama's campaign recently announced my.BarackObama.com, a social network built around of course, Barack Obama (who just announced his presidential candidacy this weekend).  The site is a social network that allows you to send and receive messages, sign up for and initiate local events, create a list of friends, join groups, create a blog, and create your own little mini-fundraising campaign.

This is such a smart move on the part of Obama's campaign for a number of reasons:  a social network is a perfect way to coordinate people and bring them together for a specific purpose (e.g. a political campaign), being the first politician with his own social network is going to buy Barack a lot of free press (and a lot of tech cred), and setting something like this up is such a trivial task these days that it's almost a no-brainer.

The alternative to setting up their own social network would have been to use an existing network like a MySpace or FaceBook and simply set up a group or two within it.  By setting up their own network, however, they're able to brand it, tightly control the content, and I would assume build out features as the campaign rolls on.  Because of the centralized nature of social networks at present and the heavy hand of network owners like Rupert Murdoch, I think this is by far the better choice.

Somebody at Obama's campaign deserves some props for convincing them to launch their own social network instead of using an existing network.  The bar for building these network is dropping by the day, especially for networks like this one which don't really have any specialized features.  They're primarly using stock social networks features which you'll find in every social network on the planet.  The primary differentiator is that this site is built around the Obama campaign--but that, I think, is the perfect reason to build this network.  A presidential campaign is just about the perfect catalyst to launch a vibrant and USEFUL social network.

After peeking under the hood, I'm pretty sure that this site is using Drupal as the engine.  TechCrunch was making a big deal about the site and who built it, which leads me to believe that they've been snowjobbed into thinking that building a site like this is a huge undertaking (all those social networks out there begging for Arrington's attention have probably clouded his vision somewhat).  It's really not that big a deal to build a basic social network these days--and as a few people on the TechCrunch post have commented, social networks are becoming very commoditized.  That's why nobody cares anymore when somebody launches a social network around dogs, cats, or whoopee cushions.  HOWEVER, my.BarackObama.com is the perfect application of social network technology--bringing people together for a common cause and providing them with a tool to organize and facilitate their work.

As with anything, the motivation behind an effort is far more important than the effort itself.  If people are building a social network for the sake of building a social network (as has happened frequently over the last several years) it's not going to amount to much because they are indeed becoming commoditized.  But with strong ideas behind them, and good reasons to exist, social networks can be powerful tools to accomplish big things.