minds of their own

Barack Obama's online strategy has been key to his campaign's remarkable ability to organise its supporters and raise record-breaking amounts of money.

The 'social networking' hub of his website is called my.barackobama.com. It gives supporters a way of contacting other supporters in their area to organise fundraising events or voter registration drives  And just like on MySpace or Facebook, you can join groups aligned around specific identities or issues (Women Lawyers For Obama, etc).

The biggest group right now?  One called "Senator Obama, Please Vote NO on telecom immunity. Get FISA Right." 22,000 members have signed up to it.

The FISA Amendments bill was passed by the Senate last week and - against the plea of this group - Obama voted for it, despite having said he would oppose the thrust of it earlier in the year. It's a bill that, in short, allows the government to continue the warrantless surveillance of communications, with the cooperation of the telecoms companies.

Obama's support of the bill is part of the pattern of his post-primary shuffle to the centre, and like those other moves it's upsetting some of his supporters. Anyway it's not the specific politics of FISA, or  Obama's political positioning I'm interested in here, so much as what this story tells us about the difficulty of managing a "people-based" campaign in the age of social networks.

Obama noticed this group, and had to make a statement addressing his own supporters on the issue, which said little beyond, there there, I hear you, but I'm going to do this anyway.

He will almost certainly get away with this for the time being. But it's an interesting moment - a little flexing of muscle by his online community.

The rhetoric of a people-based movement sounds good. But what happens when the people that supposedly make up your campaign disagree with you on certain issues, in sufficiently large numbers that you can't ignore them - and when your own website gives them a chance to discuss and organise against you on that issue? Do you attempt to assert more top-down control? Or ride it out?

These are the kinds of questions that Obama will have to grapple with in the coming months and years. But then, so will all politicians, eventually.