Describing the online world as the new venue for political campaigns, Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes explained how he left the social-networking website to work for Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., in a discussion with Dartmouth students in Rockefeller Center Wednesday evening.

The 23-year-old Harvard graduate began the site with his friends Mike Zuckerberg and Dustin Moscovitz while they were sophomores in college. They found themselves discussing how difficult it was to keep in touch with friends while in school, even with telephone calls and dinner dates, Hughes said.

"The more I learn about Barack, the more I am sure that he is a once-in-a-generation candidate," Hughes said.

Hughes called Obama's judgment "impeccable" and praised him for "having the strength and courage to say what he believes," specifically in the case of the war in Iraq.

As a demonstration of the work he has done for the campaign, Hughes took the audience on a tour of Facebook's Obama-centric pages, urging audience members to join the One Million Strong for Barack Obama group. Hughes also showcased the "Obama application," which displays all the latest news and videos on Obama and allows users to vote for whether or not they want the article to show on their profile. Hughes said that the Obama campaign recognizes the importance of peer-to-peer engagement, which he said is more effective than direct marketing.

Facebook Co-founder Pulls For Obama Nov 15, 2007
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/11/16/politics/uwire/main3511073.shtml

Last November, Mark Penn, then the chief strategist for Hillary Rodham Clinton, derisively said Barack Obama’s supporters “look like Facebook.”

Chris Hughes takes that as a compliment.

Mr. Hughes, 24, was one of four founders of Facebook. In early 2007, he left the company to work in Chicago on Senator Obama’s new-media campaign. Leaving behind his company at such a critical time would appear to require some cognitive dissonance: political campaigns, after all, are built on handshakes and persuasion, not computer servers, and Mr. Hughes has watched, sometimes ruefully, as Facebook has marketed new products that he helped develop.

The Facebooker Who Friended Obama
By BRIAN STELTER Published: July 7, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/07/technology/07hughes.html?ex=1231041600&en=0f0753405c28e3ed&ei=5087&WT.mc_id=TE-D-I-NYT-MOD-MOD-M051-ROS-0708-HDR&WT.mc_ev=click&mkt=TE-D-I-NYT-MOD-MOD-M051-ROS-0708-HDR