Below is this week’s B2.0 update:

This week is a different kind of update. As host of Technology For Business Sake (TFBS) I have the great pleasure of having excellent guests on with me to discuss how technology can help small businesses compete, thrive and survive in a “web-enhanced” world.

Recently I had the opportunity to speak with Jascha Franklin-Hodge, co-founder and chief technology of Blue State Digital. BSD is the technology partner the Obama campaign turned to build and manage their web presence. This includes the creation of the BSD-powered sites BarackObama.com, and the social networking component My.BarackObama.com.

These sites have been responsible for:

• Capturing 1.4M email addresses
• Creating over 1M user accounts
• Promoting over 75,000 campaign events
• Supporting donation efforts that helped raise over $250M

Jascha shares how BSD got started with the campaign and built the BarackObama.com site in less than a week, the strategy behind the campaign’s web presence and the way it has fostered a wildly active community. He also discusses what small businesses can take away from the campaign with respect to using technology to engage people.

If you can find captivating ways to express your ideas to the world, the world will help you spread that vision in ways you may never have dreamed of. If you share your vision with the world, the world may help bring perspective to it, and make it better.

This week we look at how the Obama campaign embraced the above philosophy and create an environment where people, inspired by their message, invested their own time and money to create compelling content that literally has reached millions of people. Content that extends the ideas and vision put forth by the campaign, but powered by the creativity of individuals inspired by the original idea.

We look at the following for examples of user-generated content inspired by the ideals of the Obama campaign and how they have worked as unofficial surrogates:

Dipdive.com (also check out it’s sister site HopeActChange.com)

Yes We Can Grassroots CD

Election.Twitter.com

As you will hear, these are a few interesting examples of how great ideas, expressed in captivating ways, can inspire people to help us spread our message. Now these examples are on a much broader scale and scope than any small business could really expect to function on. But we really don’t need this scale in order to find success with these strategies. Great comments left on blogs are examples of effective impactful user-generated content. Tweets from customers can be as well. The thing to remember is to concentrate on sharing your ideas and vision in ways that move people to act – on your behalf!

Below is this week’s B2.0 update:

[media:http://www.box.net/shared/static/pu3593y56b.mp3]

As this site is closing in on its two month birthday, and this being the seventh weekly update, we thought we’d take a few minutes to touch on how we’ve been using the social media lessons being taught by Senator Obama’s campaign. It’s important to us for you to know that we’re learning along with you, and that we are putting these strategies to use with this site.

We touch on how this series got started with an online article, a conversation, a powerpoint presentation and a webinar. It then turned into a website and weekly podcast. We’ve tweeted about it, and created content in different forms – text, audio and video. And we’ve shared it with people in our social networks – both online and offline.

To keep you informed, and ourselves honest, we talk through some stats that let you know how successful we’ve been to date in reaching people by using the Barack 2.0 lessons covered on this site. While you listen to this week’s update, you may want to keep your eyes on the diagram below, as we use this to talk about some specific stats:

As always we welcome your thoughts and observations. Any feedback you can provide to the B2.0 community is greatly appreciated!

When most people think of social media they think of sites like Facebook, YouTube, MySpace and a few others. These sites have millions of active members, so it makes total sense to have a presence on one or more of them. The Obama campaign has active presences on each of these sites. On Facebook, for example, he has over one million fans. And he’s the most followed person on Twitter.

As Important as it is to get involved with the big-name social sites, there are many other lesser-known sites that can be just as important in helping you connect with the kind of people you’re looking to build business relationships with.

Below are a few sites the Obama used in addition to the big guys that may be able to help you as well.

Ustream.tv

Ustream is a free service that allows anyone with a webcam and Internet connection to broadcast live over the Web. And while you’re broadcasting, those viewing your broadcast can communicate with you via instant message — making it a truly collaborative experience. Your live streams are also archived for on-demand viewing. Obama’s campaign has close to 150 archived videos on their Ustream channel, which has been viewed more than 250,000 times — adding up to almost 90,000 hours. Now this is a far cry from the millions of views for his videos on YouTube, but it’s a quick, easy way to connect with people in real-time that is growing rapidly in popularity.

FriendFeed

With a growing number of people “tweeting” on Twitter, bookmarking sites using Delicious, commenting on blogs via Disqus, and performing other random social acts, it makes it hard to keep up with all the activities and conversations we’re having. FriendFeed makes it much easier for people to see what we’re doing online by allowing us to easily create a feed from the activities we perform on many of the social sites we belong to. So instead of having to go to several different sites on the Web to see what a colleague is up to, you can see it all in one location via his or her FriendFeed page. And they can follow you’re Web “adventures” as well. The Obama campaign has been using FriendFeed to make it easier to follow his tweets, FlickR pictures, YouTube videos, and blog posts.

Meetup

Meetup is used by organizations, groups, and clubs to organize their in-person meetings. It’s a great way to get the word out about your events to people who may have common interests and would like to participate in group activities. People get event information, view member profiles, and RSVP to attend meetings. Meetup definitely makes it easier to share information, communicate with the membership, and manage group activities. Obama has used Meetup to encourage those interested in his campaign to get together, share ideas, and work with his team.