A couple of weeks ago, I registered as a volunteer for the Obama campaign. I identified myself as a political science professor. After I filled out the online form, I surfed around his website for a while. I was pretty impressed. A political website that was saavy enough to use Digg? Cool. Turns out that the Obama campaign has hired one of the Facebook founders to coordinate their online efforts. But as cool as the website is, nobody has called me yet to make phone calls or stuff envelopes. That's a problem.
Obama's website also features one of the most annoying aspects of the Internet age. The lack of a phone number and real bodies at a desk to answer questions. When you click on the Contact Me button, you get sent to a FAQ page. I wanted to track down some internship opportunities for students and am now too annoyed to deal.
"But as cool as the website is, nobody has called me yet to make phone calls or stuff envelopes. That's a problem."
Could be that they have no needs now -- and aren't really doing anything.
There should be a way to reach a real person though; there always should, unless you're specifically identifying that you won't be reachable (like in a blog).
Posted by: bj | July 07, 2008 at 02:07 PM