The Audacity of YouTube

In The Audacity to Win, his memoir of the 2008 campaign, Obama manager David Plouffe has an important insight about new media. Describing Obama's Philadelphia speech on racial issues, Plouffe says:

As was the case throughout the campaign, most people did not watch the speech on TV. It was delivered on a Tuesday morning, when just about everyone was at work. Instead, people watched it online, most of them on YouTube, either as it was happening or at their leisure later that day or in the days to come. Eventually, tens of millions of voters saw the speech through various outlets.

This marked a fundamental change in political coverage and message consumption, and one that will only continue as technology rolls forward: big moments, political or otherwise, will no longer be remembered by people as times when everyone gathered around TVs to watch a speech, press conference or other event. Increasingly, most of us will recall firing up the computer, searching for a video and watching it at home or at the office — or even on our cell phones.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1932963-2,00.html#ixzz0XL32ePPl