Ever the contrarian, over on Many-to-Many Clay Shirky asks Is Social Software Bad for the Dean Campaign?
A few choice quotes:
We know well from past attempts to use social software to organize groups for political change that it is hard, very hard, because participation in online communities often provides a sense of satisfaction that actually dampens a willingness to interact with the real world. When you’re communing with like-minded souls, you feel like you’re accomplishing something by arguing out the smallest details of your perfect future world, while the imperfect and actual world takes no notice, as is its custom.
and
When the Clinton campaign used an MIT-furnished e-mail list in the 1992 campaign, they didn