Four more years. A lot can happen in such a long time – at least in the world of media and technology. The US presidential elections have been fought on media grounds for decades, but during the last four years a lot has changed in the way a campaign can be run. Or must be run to be successful. In the last four years social media happened and Barack Obama could become America’s first President 2.0.

According to Peter Leyden, speaker at this year’s New Media Days and until recently the Director of the New Politics Institute, the social media revolution that has swept across the globe is turning voters from passive consumers of political messages into engaged community participants. Technologies, he says, are drawing them into the fabric of politics, and are energizing the electorate.

To media literates long engaged in MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and the like, it can come as no surprise. But politics is only barely beginning to adapt to this, Leyden writes on his blog at the New Politics Institute. Here he has spent the last three years developing new innovation tools to help progressives imagine and invent the new politics that will unfold in the decade ahead.

Taking a glance at other news and blogs it isn’t hard to see which presidential candidate for the 2008 election has his tools in place, and who’s struggling to hit the nails.

Danish journalist Martin Krasnik writes about Obama’s community site, my.barackobama.com, where supporters can create their own profiles, invite friends, blog, gain activity points and more – just like a regular social network. This makes for a strong bottom-up political strategy: The technology is excitingly familiar to just about anyone and once the community has gained critical mass, it will grow by word-of-mouth.

That’s a PR-campaign money can’t buy, even though money’s not an issue when you’re Obama. The power of crowds has proven to be financial as well, and the many small donations originating from his social media network has made him the best funded presidential candidate of all times. With that money he could probably buy a cable network just for advertising, but instead he has a strong presence at YouTube – the place to be if you want social mechanics to propel your flight towards presidency.

Want to know more?
TechPresident: Blog covering how the 2008 candidates are using the web.
John McCain on YouTube.
New York Times on which advertising strategies work.
Nieman Reports: Don’t Fear Twitter.
Barack Obama on Twitter.