How Hillary Clinton Got Her Social Media Groove On

What a difference eight years make. When Hillary Clinton ran for president in 2008, she was assailed as a relic of the past, out of touch with average Americans’ struggles as a new, of-the-people dynamo named Barack Obama toppled the Clinton machine on his road to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. He did so on the back of hope, change -- and social media. Hillary had a hard time maneuvering around and leveraging the then-new world of social media as Obama’s team expertly created an online movement while building a huge supporter database through open-source technology. Meanwhile, Clinton had a poorly designed MySpace page, at one point infamously naming herself as her top friend. “Her 2008 message was all about strength and experience and showing that she could be commander in chief and tended to use more traditional communications outlets than the Obama campaign did,” said Ben LaBolt, former Obama Press Secretary during the 2012 campaign. “The [2016] Clinton campaign has shown that they understand that her digital presence needs to be more social, more casual, more engaging.”

Hillary 2.0 is emerging as a savvy social media manipulator. Since announcing her second bid for the White House in April, she’s built a vast, cutting-edge social media infrastructure with accounts on Twitter, Snapchat, Spotify, Instagram and video streaming app Periscope. She’s even mastered Genius, a brand-new digital platform that allows Internet users to annotate and comment on songs and texts. Her exploding digital and social media portfolio has already earned her the nickname “The First Teen POTUS.”