Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Politics and Facebook

Facebook has become the premiere social networking website and has played a significant role in this years presidential election. I have noticed, as I am sure many of us users have, that our friends have constantly updated their status, page, groups, photos, videos and events to include politically charged information. Facebook has really set out to encourage Millennial voters to become engaged with politics and really take a stance on this years campaign. 

Today, the site has created a special "Today is Election Day" page. Upon signing into the site the page is automatically advertised and shows how many users have stated they voted today currently it is at 368,802. The page also also allows you to take a stance by choosing a gift supporting Obama or McCain, helps users identify their polling place using Google Maps and notifies individuals that it is still possible to register to vote today in several different states (Idaho, Iowa, Maine, Minnesota, Montana, New Hampshire, Wisconsin and Wyoming). Also, users can update their status stating that they have voted or "donate" their status to encourage users to vote for a specific candidate. 

According to the NDN blog, millenials are going to play an integral role in this years election and if they do in fact get out and vote will provide a great advantage for Obama. "I was on Facebook (for work purposes of course), and noticed that more than half a million people have signed now up to have their status automatically updated to display a GOTV message. Users can choose whether the message says to get out the vote for Obama, McCain, or just to get out the vote, and then pass the word on to up to 40 friends at a time." According to NDN's findings 69% of the people who signed up for the GOTV message choose to support Obama while 16% supports McCain, and 9% of just get out the vote messages. 

It will be interesting to see the impact my generation actually has when today is over. I am particularly curious about the findings facebook users update versus how many people actually vote.  

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