Yeah, there was a whole wave of breathless reporting about the wonders of the Obama campaign's use of big data, microtargeting, social media, etc after the 2008 and 2012 elections and how the Republicans' failure to do this proved they were behind the times. It takes about five seconds with Google to discover this. Compare, for example, this article with http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/victory_lab/... or http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/10/harper-reed-obam...