Steve Jobs named as key advisor on Obama’s re-election campaign

Steve Jobs masterminded the mobile-aspect of President Obama’s re-election campaign, advising top aides on how to best disseminate information through mobile platforms and services like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

Ex-White House Chief of Staff, Jim Messina, the man charged with getting Barack Obama re-elected, arranged a series of meetings with some of the world’s most influential figures, according to Business Week.

Steve Jobs, Stephen Spielberg, Eric Schmidt, Harper Reed and Anna Wintour all participated in personal seminars for Messina with the aim of making the Obama re-election machine unstoppable in the run up to the 2012 event.

The role that smartphones and tablets now play in the consumption of information has significantly increased since Obama first took office. Before the 2008 election smartphone web traffic was minuscule. Now it’s almost as important as PC-based browsing, particularly to people with something to sell like Messina.

‘Last time you were programming only the Web and e-mail,’ Jobs reportedly told Messina.

‘This time, you have to program content to a much wider variety of channels — Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, YouTube, Google — because people are segmented in a very different way than they were four years ago.’

Whether or not Jobs’ advice will help Obama secure his re-election come November remains to be seen but it is indicative of just how influential mobile has become in the last four years. Just imagine what it will be like in 2016.

Within the context of the on-going Leveson enquiry it could be argued that corporate giants like Steve Jobs and Eric Schmidt are just as influential as Rupert Murdoch and should not be allowed to intervene in any way, shape or form with the mechanisms of democracy.

It just seems wrong, the idea that big movers can dictate a democratic outcome by having their hooks in certain new media platforms.