The New Yorker

RUNNING ON INSTINCT

by MARK SINGER

Excerpt: "Last January, three months before an interactive Dean Web page came into being, supporters on both coasts were discovering each other online through Yahoo.com. The same month, Meetup.com, a new Internet service that made it possible for like-minded folk—hood-ornament collectors, ferret owners—to find each other and congregate in local communities, began listing gatherings for people interested in various political candidates. Thanks, in part, to an unsolicited assist from an ardent blogger in Oregon, more than five hundred people registered for Dean meetups by early February—far more than for any other candidate. By this time, Trippi had negotiated a bargain-rate contract with Meetup, which allowed the campaign to sponsor its own events and to begin to compile what, at last count, had become a list of more than a half million e-mail addresses."

Link: http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040112fa_fact