Why is it that in an age when we can create community anywhere, we often don’t know the people who live next door?

This is an extraordinary story about a man who decided to make a big change in his neighborhood by truly getting to know his neighbors: he asked to spend the night at their houses.

I really don’t think I could do what he has done, but I wish I had the boldness that it takes, because what he has accomplished is a really good thing.

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For a recommendation to be useful in a practical way to both the individual recommended and the potential buyer/employer, it needs to answer one main question first: why? Why would you hire him/her instead of someone else? Why would you engage his/her services? It’s because… tell them exactly why.

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Roger Cohen’s NYT column, “The Obama Connection,” starts off with a play on Bill Clinton’s famous line from his first presidential campaign (“It’s the economy, stupid”): “It’s the networks, stupid.” Ironically, it’s Bill’s wife and heir-apparent, Hillary, who is implicitly the “stupid” one this time.

More than any other factor, it has been Barack Obama’s grasp of the central place of Internet-driven social networking that has propelled his campaign for the Democratic nomination into a seemingly unassailable lead over Hillary Clinton. Her campaign has been so 20th-century. His has been of the century we’re in.

I’d already been following Obama’s use of the Internet for fund-raising and organizing and energizing volunteers (see, Adios, Sound Bites & Fat Cats – Obama is Changing Politics and Barack Obama Is Rocking the Youth Vote and Obama Supporters Are Hip and Artistic and Home Agents Calling for Barack Obama). Cohen’s column nicely connects the dots and lets the picture emerge more clearly.

As Joshua Green chronicles in an important piece in The Atlantic, Obama has used social networking and his user-friendly Web site to develop the money machine, and the youthful engagement, that has swept him forward.

So, I found Green’s article, “The Amazing Money Machine,” and read that, too. It’s longer and more in-depth, so if you just want the highlights, Cohen’s column will do the trick, but if you want the full, fascinating story behind Obama’s fund-raising success, don’t miss Green’s account:

Obama is a gifted politician by anyone’s measure, but what distinguishes him from earlier insurgents is his ability to fully harness the excitement that his candidacy has created, in votes and in dollars. Three forces had to come together for this to happen: the effect of campaign-finance laws in broadening the number and types of people who fund the political process; the emergence of Northern California as one of the biggest sources of Democratic money; and the recognition by a few Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and venture capitalists that the technology and business practices they had developed in their day jobs could have a transformative effect on national politics.

Obama’s campaign is yet another Silicon Valley start-up. We’ve seen these stories play out before, but never on the political stage.

“They’ve gone from zero to 700 employees in a year and raised $200 million,” Steve Spinner says of the campaign. “That’s a super-high-growth, fast-charging operation.” It’s also one whose growth curve is coming into sharper focus. The Obama campaign has not yet assumed a place in Silicon Valley lore alongside Apple, Google, and Facebook. But a few more months could change that. The hottest start-up in the Valley right now won’t make anybody rich, but it might put the next president in the White House.

If you’re as fascinated by the rapidly changing potential of technology as I am, and as hooked on politics as I admit to being, this is an inspiring story.

I finally got tired of seeing my LinkedIn progress bar stuck at 90%. The explanation offered said that if I recommended someone in my network, then it would go up to 95%. I kind of assumed that if I wrote two recommendations, it would get to 100%, and then I would feel a sense of accomplishment — a social networking task crossed off my “to do” list.

So, with my motivation all about me, I set out to recommend someone by looking through my connections on LinkedIn. I didn’t even get past the A’s before I saw someone worthy of recommendation. “This one will be easy,” I thought, and in just a couple of minutes I was done, having summed up succinctly what a great job this person had done for me in the past.

“OK, I’ll go for 100%,” I thought, still focused on me. I found another connection who was a cinch to recommend, and again only needed a few minutes to write some glowing praise. This was easier than I thought it would be.

I checked my LinkedIn progress bar and found it had not moved. That was disappointing, but I thought maybe there was a time lag. And now that I saw how easy it was to recommend people, and how nice it felt to sing the praises of people who really deserved it, I kept scanning down my list. I’m not sure how long I was at it, but I know I wrote at least half-a-dozen recommendations at one sitting.

It was kind of fun, in fact. I’ve already gotten some grateful and appreciative emails in return. The funny thing is, I started writing them for what was in it for me, and I kept going because I enjoyed giving others praise.

LinkedIn still hasn’t moved my progress bar, so I suppose I will have to contact them to find out why, but it really doesn’t matter. They got me to try something that would benefit people in my network, and now that I’ve tried it I’m going to keep looking for more people to recommend. And I recommend you do the same.

(For a related post, see Simple Words of Praise.)

Nearly half of US Internet users surveyed for the USC Annenberg School Center for the Digital Future’s “2008 Digital Future Project” report said they belonged to a hobby-oriented online community. A full 41% of respondents belonged to an online social community, and one-third belonged to an online professional community.

I liked this point, too, given my own experience with Multiple Profile Disorder:

“Consumers will eventually need to create only one profile and use it in many places on the Web,” she [Debra Aho Williamson, senior analyst at eMarketer] said. “Small applications, or ‘widgets,’ that today work with only one destination site will be designed on an open platform and thereby extend their reach.”

Hurry up, already!
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No longer is it just a TV advertisement, a radio ad or a full-page ad in the local city newspaper that is influencing the youth vote. Heck, it’s not even MTV that is affecting the youth vote anymore. It is the world of social media that is having the greatest effect on energizing that youth vote.

It’s a good case study of how to market effectively using social networking sites — and how not to, in the case of Clinton’s campaign.

I’ve been watching both of these candidates closely, especially what they are doing in the online arena, and I have to say that Barack Obama’s team is much more “on their game” when it comes to this medium. Our voter registration offices here in PA have been buzzing about the record number of younger registrants. By watching both candidates closely and examining what they are doing in the online space, you can begin to understand why one is totally captivating the youth vote, and the other is not.

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There are many reasons why LinkedIn can be ideal for maintaining and possibly developing the loose ties or weak links you have in your network.

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Serial entrepreneur Evan Sohn believes that selling is a broken trade. He’s here to fix it, and he’s attempting to do it with an intuitive venture that is an experiment in sales all its own.

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The historic rivalries of the Ivy League have reached the Internet in the form of an online computer game that is a riff on classic territorial-conquest board games, such as Risk.

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