Last week Democratic presidential hopeful Barak Obama launched his own social network, MyBarakObama.

There’s been a lot of discussion as to who made this and how well it works. I’m not really concerned with either. What I’m wondering is: Why was this made?

MyBarakObama offers features already available on free sites like MeetUp, MySpace and Facebook such as friends, events, messaging, groups and so forth. But now supporters have another site to learn, another profile to build and another password to remember. Plus, not only did the Obama campaign pay to have it made, they have to maintain and moderate it too. Genius!

The way to connect with voters online is to provide them with the information and tools to connect with each other. If those tools are already available for free on sites customers are familiar with why try to reinvent the wheel?

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John Boyle runs SocialNext, a blog that tracks and analyzes marketing via social networks and viral video.

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