( CNN ) -- With little notice , Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney 's campaign has been quietly laying the groundwork for an online social network that could be a crucial weapon in his battle to take the White House . Called MyMitt , the platform is tucked away on MittRomney.com , accessible only if you choose to register on the Action page and unadvertised in any proactive way . There 's no button pointing to it from the homepage , and the MyMitt Action Center looks like it 's only partially finished . Nevertheless , close to 100,000 Romney supporters have created an account on MyMitt , a substantial number at this stage in the race . Here 's why this could be a big deal . In 2008 , Barack Obama 's campaign built its own social network at My.BarackObama.com . Known as myBO for short , the platform made it easy for Obama supporters to create their own profiles on the campaign website , to write their own blog posts , start or join interest groups , organize their own house parties and , most important , initiate and track their own fundraisers . Two million people eventually joined , and 35,000 generated more than $ 70 million in campaign contributions from their own personal networks . Enabling your supporters to visible share their enthusiasm with each other is a powerful way to grow a political network . Even more useful : The myBO platform also allowed the campaign to figure out which supporters were the most passionate activists and to concentrate attention on these `` super-volunteers '' for a variety of vital tasks . While Obama 's re-election campaign brags about getting its millionth individual donor , basks in its 23 million-strong Facebook following and spends millions on building a sophisticated online campaign operation , it might be tempting to write off the Republican presidential candidates as hopelessly behind in the chase for support on the Web . But this does n't worry Mindy Finn , who ran Romney 's online operation in 2008 and this year worked on the now-defunct Tim Pawlenty campaign . She said , `` Do n't count out the Republican campaigns in this area yet . Several of the Republican campaigns show promise of going toe-to-toe or besting the Obama operation by the time they would come out of the primary as the nominee . '' Right now , MyMitt is n't nearly as robust as MyBO , but the seeds are there . Built on the Drupal content management system by the campaign 's own tech team , MyMitt lets supporters make donations , create their own fundraising pages to rally their friends around , purchase official campaign gear or volunteer by making calls from home on behalf of the campaign . On October 15 , the campaign held a National Call Day for volunteers to `` share Mitt 's pro-growth message and build support . '' About 37,000 calls were generated by a couple of thousand volunteers . That may not seem like much compared with the 3 million calls the Obama campaign says its volunteers made between the beginning of July and the end of September . But Zac Moffatt , the campaign 's digital director , says the call-day effort showed that the Romney operation is able to activate volunteers from all 50 states . Moffatt , whose firm Targeted Victory rose to prominence running online operations for Republican candidates like Marco Rubio in 2010 , is reticent to provide many details about the Romney campaign 's plans for MyMitt . `` We want to make it a platform for people to engage with , '' he said . When I suggest that this kind of user-centric toolkit is n't standard operating procedure -- the Rick Perry campaign offers only a personal fundraising page , for example , and Michelle Bachmann makes volunteers fill out an online form and wait to be contacted -- Moffatt demurs . `` Every campaign is going to create a single log-in for their supporters , '' he said . Maybe he 's suggesting that MyMitt is n't worth paying attention to . Or perhaps he does n't want his competition to realize they 're in danger of being lapped . The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Micah Sifry .
Mitt Romney 's new social media platform may be crucial to his presidential campaign . MyMitt lets supporters make donations , purchase campaign gear , make volunteer contributions . Close to 100 Romney supporters have created an account on MyMitt . Republicans are taking a page from Barack Obama 's 2008 Web site , myBO .