Brown himself was part of this interconnectedness, Luidhardt says. "My pet peeve is that many candidates use Twitter as a press release distribution system. Scott's tendency was to reply to posts….This played into the broad them of 'the guy from Wrentham driving a truck,' the guy next door, the fact that Brown was willing to interact." Even before the U.S. Senate campaign, if Brown got a birthday announcement from one of his Facebook friends, he'd send a greeting in reply.

(Brown campaign manager Eric Fehrnstrom was as saying that on election day, Brown was "calling through a list of hundreds of friends and neighbors to ask them to get out and vote.")

That interaction, even though necessarily limited given Brown's grueling, indefatigable campaign schedule, critically involved Brown volunteers and supporters, on the Brown Bridage site, for example, interacting with each other, Luidhardt says. "We weren't just sending them an e-mail and they were reading it. They talked among themselves, tweeted among themselves. They took a role.

"The best form of advertising is word of mouth," LaRosa says. "This [social media] is word of mouth on steroids."