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Of course, creating participatory, two-way political communities on the Web is nothing new to politcs. In fact, as the 2008 presidential campaign ramps up, expect to see more of this as partisan and non-partisan political groups attempt to get people to participate and self-organize in local and national election processes.  Yet influential folks in the world of social software, like Clay Shirky, seem to think that things like Deanspace, one of the success stories of the last election cycle, ultimately didn’t have any real effect.  With online communities and the tools to support them getting better, this time might be different however.  It will be interesting to see how well Wales does with Campaigns Wikia, particularly since he does have the track record for creating successful audiences around his wiki creations.

In fact, in my recent explorations of why certain Web 2.0 sites grow so quickly, I talk about how they exploit the incredible power of network effects by harnessing ther users’ collective intelligence.  My concern primarily with Campaigns Wikia is that wikis generally do not have a sufficient positive feedback loop to create the kind of viral growth that will make much difference on the national stage.  It’ll be intriguing to see what Campaigns Wikia does to trigger the necessary audience ramp up and sustained participation.

What will also be fascinating to track is whether Web 2.0’s infamous inversion of control, known increasingly for its ability to upend traditional hierarchical power structures by handing control to users, will have much actual effect in the gritty, hard nosed world of vote getting and election politics.  Online discussion, community, and self-organizing political groups are wonderful things, but may not matter much to the traditional, enclosed command-and-control campaign processes, particularly at the presidential election level.  This is what Deanspace apparently ran into (”support isn’t votes”) and this isn’t likely a solved problem yet.

That’s not to say I’m not a big believer in the effectiveness of grassroots use of Web 2.0 techniques to ultimately change reality for the better.  My favorite anecdote about self-organizing efforts to achieve real world change using Web 2.0 is still the incredible story of Katrinalist and the PeopleFinder project.  I also covered another Web 2.0-in-politics story, Democracy 2.0, in my popular Best Web 2.0 Software of 2005, and there are many more similar examples.  There truly is vast upside potential here and, like Enterprise Web 2.0, those that figure out how to exploit it have the potential to reap huge rewards. But I certainly think the ball is up in the air for exactly who will make it happen next in the political arena.

I wish Wales the best of luck with Campaign Wikia and I do suspect he’ll have a good measure of success.  But my bet is that we’ve not yet seen the online source of political disruption and success in the next election cycle.  Web 2.0 can be a very disruptive force and will potentially be a significant one in the 2008 political story.