The Obama campaign has recently released an "Obama ‘08" application for the iPhone. Not a web page optimized for mobile viewing, a real application to run on the iPhone platform:

Why doesn’t the McCain campaign have one? One could attribute it to a lack of tech savvy, but there’s also the fact that it just makes a lot more sense for Democrats to do something like this than it does for Republicans. ReadWriteWeb recently reported on the numbers regarding this.

• Overall, 62% of Democrats are data users who use one or more data service on their mobile phone (compared with 55% of Republicans).
• Democrats are more likely than Republicans to use text messaging (53% compared with 46%).
• Democrats are more likely to use picture messaging and MMS (27% compared with 21%).
• Democrats are more likely to use mobile internet (17 % compared with 13%)

This doesn’t so much reflect some fundamental truth about political affiliation and technology–it’s not that Democrats by nature are more likely to use mobile technology. Rather, there are some significant lurking variables at play here, notably the fact that younger people are more likely to lean left and more likely to be using these tools. But all that means is that the prevalence of sophisticated mobile technology will increase as time goes on. People who grow up with this technology–or even just people who adopted it before they were set in their ways or have lived with mobile phones for a good chunk of their lives–aren’t going to be giving them up. More will only be joining the ranks in the years to come.

We’ve posted before about the Obama campaign’s interesting use of technology. It’s not just that they’re leveraging social networks or soliciting donations online. They’re using consumer analysis tools to target voters with greater precision. Notably, personal information is being used to assign volunteers who going door-to-door in a way that matches people with undecided voters that they’re most compatible with–and thuse most likely to influence. Further, the information that these volunteers collect is piped back into the campaigns database. Adding highly integrated mobile communication to that equation makes this tactic all the more powerful.

And take a look at the first bullet on the list next to the picture: this application looks at your contact information and promts you with which of your contacts live in battleground states so you can make sure they’re voting for Obama. That’s an amazing way to take advantage of an important resource that supporters have–their social graph (their network of connections to other people). But, instead of just relegating that type of concern to the web ("message your facebook friends to vote for Barack!", or something equally…uninventive and impoersonal) they’re combining these social connections with the value of real (or at least spoken) social interaction and the persuation potential of a personal communication.

And comparing your efforts with others (people love competition), finding local events (people love Google maps), and instant campaign information access (no one with an iPhone would ever be at a loss to explain the candidate’s views–and people love being right) are really just phenomenal things to be able to offer all on the device in someone’s pocket.

This type of organizational application of mobile technology won’t be unique to politics, but it’s significant that it’s where it starts. We’ve said something similar about twitter and their election-specific update feed. Social media can be discussed–defined, even–in terms of the "democratization" of content and communication. Empowerment is a very basic theme in both the social media revolution and in politics, especially in the case of the Obama campaign. Remember the line "change in America doesn’t happen from the top down, it happens from the bottom up"?

Eliciting participation from people "on the ground" when the effort is for sweeping political change is a rather unique proposition. There are all sorts of branded Phone applications, but few of them offer the type of participatory role that this one does. But the potential is there. We recently mentioned how trans-media "alternate reality games" create a type of value for those who participate. Most of those still take place online, but experimental minds in that area are beginning to push such things into, well, reality. The fact that mobile users can now be interactively connected while on the go opens up a whole lot of space for interesting new ideas.

There’s also the iPhone’s location aware capabilities to consider. At their most elementary, they can help you find your location on a map. More inventive applications have been developed to do local social networking, connecting you to people physically nearby even if you didn’t know them before. A problem with something like that is that it depends on those people also having iPhones, which not everyone does (yet?).

That too will change. I’m not seriously suggesting that everyone will eventually have an iPhone, but it’s not unreasonable to think about a future where the vast majority of people have phones that can run applications (Symbian and Android are two non-iPhone options). Eventually applications will be able to easily communicate across platforms and then this sparesly populated terrain will really start to blossom. If history is an indicator, it’ll probably do so in some pretty unexpected ways. How long ago would it have seemed strange to suggest that the majority of people would have cellular phones, or that text messaging would become what it has?

Consider what the next presidential election might look like, in terms of social and mobile technology use. What about the one after that? It’s clear that intelligent use of technology has helped the Obama campaign–again, not just in terms of what they’re doing online but with respect to their organizational capabilities. Of course this success will be emulated and of course there will be an incentive to push the envelope further by doing what one’s opponents haven’t yet thought of. Competition breeds innovation and now that it’s possible to innovate with technology in terms of how it is leveraged–rather than in terms of how the technology itself works–political competition can drive technological innovation as well.

Will there be get out the vote efforts that track people by their mobile devices, directing carpool drivers in real time from a central map of people who need help getting to polling places? Will people enable the campaign to track their movements and use their phone’s local social networking capabilities to identify people nearby, cross-reference that information with public profile information online, and then tell you who at the coffeeshop or bar that you’re at seems like they might need convincing?

And outside of electoral politics, could the promoters of a movie produce an application like this? It could offer first peaks at new previews, local showtimes and ways to buy tickets. I could help a fan communicate with friends to coordinate going to see it together, offer some sort of branded game, and reward people who play or who corral many friends to see the film by paying for their ticket…there are a lot of possibilities outside of politics as well–and movies are just one example of many.

Social media is increasingly important and rapidly changing. Mobile technology is increasingly important and rapidly changing. The places where the two overlap have the potential to produce the most unexpected developments of all.