Aug. 27 (Bloomberg) -- When 76,000 people pack Denver's Invesco Field tomorrow to hear Senator Barack Obama's acceptance speech, they'll be called on to get to work.

The campaign is asking them to text-message friends and urge them to sign on as supporters of the Democratic presidential candidate. It's part of a drive by Obama's team to leave the national convention with hundreds of thousands of new names to add to a database that already includes millions.

Conventions have long focused on the politicians in the halls and on staging spectacles to win over passive television audiences. Obama is trying to make this the most interactive one in history and to give it a global reach. It is a natural progression for a campaign that has far outdistanced Democratic and Republican rivals in using the Internet to recruit supporters and raise record sums of cash.

Obama is tapping into a ``culture that expects whatever happens here to be available simultaneously or nearly simultaneously online,'' said Andrew Rasiej, founder of Techpresident.com, a Web site that tracks the influence of the Internet on presidential politics. He cited such services as Youtube.com and social-networking sites such as Facebook, which have revolutionized the way people get news and information.

Swarm of Bloggers

The Obama campaign is opening the doors to Invesco Field at 1 p.m., tomorrow, hours before the Illinois senator, 47, will make his address. The plan: to conduct workshops on using text-messaging and the Internet to recruit other supporters, said campaign spokesman Bill Burton.

Meanwhile, the convention floor at Denver's Pepsi Center is hosting 120 bloggers, four times as many as in 2004; there will be gavel-to-gavel coverage on the Internet, and elected officials will respond to questions submitted from viewers over the Web.

Once an e-mail or text address is added to the list, the campaign follows up with requests for money, links to campaign videos and requests that people volunteer.

Obama adviser Robert Gibbs said the campaign views rallies as an ``organizing tool'' to draw still more supporters.

``Whenever we collect a group of people as part of this campaign, it's not just for them to hear what we have to say but to collect information about who they are, where they live, what's their e-mail, what's their phone number, do they have a text address?'' Gibbs said.

``We see 76,000 people not there to listen exclusively, but 76,000 active participants in the campaign.''

Texting on Biden

Last week, Obama promised to text anyone who registered at his Web site with the news of his vice presidential pick. The text announcing that Delaware Senator Joseph Biden would be Obama's running mate went out at 3 a.m., Saturday.

While that was hours after news outlets had already confirmed he was the pick, the campaign will add the addresses of every person who registered for the announcement to Obama's database and send them campaign-related messages. They declined to say how many people signed up for the text message.

``The big thing in the Obama world is to build the list,'' said Kam Kawata, whose job is to choreograph the convention for the Democrats.

Surveys of people who watch conventions show that they depend on cable and the Internet for their information, rather than broadcast networks, Kawata said.

That accounts for the increased access given to bloggers at the convention. Fifty of those who received credentials have been given more access than mainstream media outlets.

Changing Media

``They recognize the nature of media is changing,'' said Zennie Abraham, 46, a blogger from Oakland.

Philadelphia-based Comcast Corp., the nation's largest cable company, is providing customers with video-on-demand clips of the convention. People watching the convention over the Internet can even pick their own camera angles.

The idea is to ``bring more people into the convention experience than ever before,'' said Jenni Engebretsen, a spokeswoman for the Democratic National Convention Committee. A key is to allow people around the country to view events and highlights when they want, rather than having to rely on coverage provided by the TV networks.

Like the Democrats, the Republicans are providing full coverage of their convention over the Internet in English and Spanish. They've also given bloggers credentials and engaged in social networking.

McCain Lags

Still, Senator John McCain, the party's presumptive nominee, has fallen far behind Obama when it comes to networking on sites like Facebook and MySpace. Obama has 1.4 million supporters on Facebook compared with McCain's 220,000.

``The Obama campaign has a superb organization,'' said Charles Cook, an independent political analyst. ``The McCain operation isn't even a shadow of the Bush 2004 effort.''

While viewers may have forgotten speeches and camera angles two months from now, the campaign will have their names, e-mail addresses and cell-phone numbers. On Nov. 4, that information will help the Obama campaign encourage people to show up in the voting both.

``A strong get-out-the-vote effort is said to be good for a point or two,'' said Cook. ``In a close race, that can be decisive.''

To contact the reporter on this story: Christopher Stern in Washington at Cstern3@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: August 27, 2008 00:01 EDT