Obama Volunteer Organizing Website to Remain Up

An intriguing announcement from Obama staffer Chris Hughes about the site referred to as "myBO":

Over the past 21 months, millions of individuals have used My.BarackObama to organize their local communities on behalf of Barack Obama.  The scale and size of this community and its work is unprecedented.  Individuals in all 50 states have created more than 35,000 local organizing groups, hosted over 200,000 events, and made millions upon millions of calls to neighbors about this campaign.  There can be no question that these local, grassroots organizations played a critical role in Tuesday's victory.

What has made My.BarackObama unique hasn't been the technology itself, but the people who used the online tools to coordinate offline action.  My.BarackObama has always been focused on using online tools to make real-world connections between people who are hungry to change our politics in this country.

And the site isn't going anywhere.  The online tools in My.BarackObama will live on.  Barack Obama supporters will continue to use the tools to collaborate and interact.  Our victory on Tuesday night has opened the door to change, but it's up to all of us to seize this opportunity to bring it about.

In the coming days and weeks, there will be a great deal more information about where this community will head.  For the moment, let's celebrate this victory and know that the community we've built together is just the beginning.

This is potentially a huge deal. Obama built a volunteer army of millions and has just announced that he's not disbanding it. This could give the new President a built-in lobbying tool he can use immediately. If the site continues to be successful, those millions of volunteers will be in place and organizing themselves when the midterms roll around. And again in the 2012 election. With improvements to the site, organizing could get hyper-local. Forget a 50-state strategy; give me a 3,141-county strategy.

(I am assuming all of this is allowed under campaign finance law, which I am not an expert in. MyBO is an asset owned by the Obama '08 campaign. My understanding is that leftover campaign assets can be used for any lawful purpose, so long as they are not converted to personal use. I suppose that means Obama could lend myBO to his administration for organizing volunteers around specific issues. He also could lend it to the DNC for party-building purposes. Then he could take it back to use it to run for re-election.)

Update 11/10/08: It's officially an Obama administration lobbying and mid-term election tool.