San Francisco — On July 2, 4,391 people joined the group "Senator Obama - Please Vote NO on Telecom Immunity - Get FISA Right," expanding the group by fifty percent. The following day the group added another four thousand or so members. And to date, the group has become the largest on U.S. Senator Barack Obama's very own social networking site, MyBarackObama.com [1]. But by the holiday weekend the growth in membership dropped dramatically. Just under two thousand joined during the 4, 5 and 6 of July combined. Granted it was a holiday weekend, but the trend was evident on Monday, July 7, as well when only 1,627 people signed onto the group. What accounts for this steep decline in interest? Did all of the sudden the well of outspoken activists run dry? Did the Netroots stop caring about FISA and retroactive immunity? While I'd imagine that the latter seems unlikely, the former could be true if weren't for the fact that there is a more plausible explanation based on a significant event that took place right around the time the drop occurred.

At 4:38 Eastern on July 3, Obama responded [2]. Joe Rospars, the campaign's director of new media, posted an entry to his MyBarackObama.com blog containing a response written by Barack Obama addressing the mounting groundswell of dissent. But that's not all. Three members of the campaign's policy staff spent over an hour trying to address comments submitted to the post. In essence, Obama and his presidential campaign made it clear that they are listening even if they are unwilling to capitulate. And it appears that many felt as if being heard was not insignificant. Not only did the number of new members per day drop dramatically after the action taken by the campaign, but there has also been a steady decline in traffic on the group's listserv. 464 messages were sent to the group on July 3 and by the 7th, 218 were sent.

Just to be clear, I don't think the decline in activity surrounding this group should be taken to mean that Obama has suddenly erased the deep concerns that many of his supporters have over his acceptance of the FISA bill. I don't think he has. But what I do think, is that he has dispelled some of the anger by showing that he has not forgotten about a significant number of active supporters and that he is willing to listen and respond. The manner in which the Obama campaign handled the frustrations of its online supporters is very munch in line with something the New Politics Institute [3] (NPI) and NDN [4] have long recommended to organizations and political leaders, engage.

In NPI's New Tools [5] memo "Engage the Blogs [6]" written by Jerome Armstrong of MyDD.com [7], the advice given is to not be afraid of the Netroots but to reach out, interact, and fully engage. That's what Obama did here and his use of the strategy appears to have been a success.