Ben Smith of Politico reports:

In capitals across the globe in recent months, the face of Barack Obama’s groundbreaking 2008 online campaign has been one Ravi Singh, a self-styled “campaign guru” with a colorful turban, a reassuring smile and a killer sales pitch.

He has been called the man “responsible for the Internet campaign of Barack Obama,” in Poland, the “election guru” of Obama and Clinton” in India, “el guru tecnologico de Obama” in Colombia, and “homme qui a géré la campagne d’Obama sur Internet” in France.

There’s just one major thing wrong with this international portrait of Web wizardry —Singh never worked for Obama. [link]

<

p>I don’t know, I think he is kind of brilliant. He is using an error made by some lazy journalist and letting others feed off the initial error sans fact-checking. His legend has been growing and he remains silent. That is quite a public relations strategy.

…his appearances in a half-dozen countries have been accompanied by remarkably similar publicity campaigns announcing the arrival of “Obama’s guru,” even if Singh himself is not quoted directly in local media accounts claiming the role.

“What do U.S. President Barack Obama and Euro politician Antonio López Isturiz have in common? Their common denominator is Ravi Singh,” wrote the European social media blog Sociable. “The self-acclaimed Campaign Guru was credited with the overwhelming success of Obama’s online electoral campaign. But now he is turning his sight to Europe.”

Maybe I can claim that I was once Obama’s ghost-Blogger or Twitterer?