Jose Antonio Vargas from the Washington Post has a good article today about massive network of supporters that is developing on Facebook around Barack Obama's Presidential candidacy.  Of course, I'm biased here, as The Bivings Group is quoted in the piece.

Here is what we/I had to say:

"The key point here is that the support for Obama on these social-networking sites is not being driven by the campaign itself. It is something spontaneous as opposed to something the campaign itself is orchestrating. This shows a real enthusiasm for Obama's candidacy among young people that you aren't seeing for any other candidates at this point."

I think Joe Trippi, formerly of the Howard Dean campaign, also makes a great point:

"It took our campaign six months to get 139,000 people on an e-mail list," Trippi said. "It took one Facebook group, what, barely a month to get 200,000? That's astronomical."

Yup.  List building is a slow and painful process.  That Facebook network is worth a small forture to the Obama campaign.

The full article is worth reading.