Facebook can weather strong competition because of the network effect: the value of a product grows in proportion to the number of people using it.

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An official registration for an initial public offering has yet to emerge and yet everyone is talking about a Facebook IPO as if it’s a sure thing.

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The shuffling of the leaderboard in the Republican presidential primary race continues to affect the candidates’ popularity on Facebook.

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With over 350 million active users accessing Facebook from mobile devices monthly, the recently launched mobile platform has instantly become the largest in the market.

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Tomorrow, voters across the U.S. determine the fate of 27 different local ballot questions, and only five of them have Facebook pages.

These five initiatives – in Ohio, Maine, New Jersey, Georgia and Mississippi — have both pro- and anti- campaigners on Facebook organizing pages, events or viral messaging.

Voters across the country have faced a total of 34 ballot initiatives in 2011, as seven of them have had other election dates scheduled, yet only the aforementioned five questions have had Facebook campaigns.

It seems odd that any political campaign in the U.S. wouldn’t show up on Facebook, since the site is becoming a mobilizing and advocacy tool for campaigns at the local, state and certainly, the federal level.

One reason for the absence: Many ballot efforts are hyper-local. The issue itself may be hard for the lay public to understand, therefore, hard to communicate to a broader audience.

And some of the issues not showing up on Facebook target voters who, believe it or not, don’t use social media. Examples: rural areas or impoverished neighborhoods.

Creating a Facebook page on a hot-button issue, such as the right of labor unions to bargain, known as Issue 2 in Ohio, or the Mississippi vote over “personhood,” makes sense because the issue is compelling and controversial.

There are strong feelings on both sides of the issue, tailor made for using Facebook to share links, encourage friends to get involved, and get out the vote.

Any movement can benefit from using Facebook. Here are a few suggestions of Facebook tools to employ in your next campaign.

Video

Some high-profile ballot efforts are using video ads to mobilize supports, such as Ohioans’ use of firefighters to advocate against Issue 2.

Campaigns can identify a group who will be affected by their measure, and humanize them through video.

And with the new technologies available today, it doesn’t necessarily have to be a slickly produced ad.

An ad could be as simple as using a computer’s webcam to capture an advocate talking coherently about an issue, that can be posted to Facebook.

Paid Ads

Depending on the size and budget of a campaign, Facebook’s paid ads — especially sponsored stories, which perform the best –are a great way to advocate for a cause or candidate in your friend’s news feeds.

Events

Some of the ballot initiatives have created simple Facebook events to remind voters to go to the polls tomorrow, asks them to RSVP.

Other friends can see whether you plan to vote, and may decide to follow your example.

Share

Facebook’s sharing capabilities are so valuable for campaigns. Sharing a link of a recent news story is a cost-effective way to educate friends about an issue. Or suggest a page for your friends to like.

Simply enabling someone affected by the measure, or with deep knowledge on the issue, to post a comment on a Facebook page is an effective tool to educate and inform your friends about an issue.

Subscribe

The new subscribe feature on Facebook is a transparency tool that enables the average voter to get updates from elected officials and journalists without becoming friends.

Voters can follow a journalist writing about a local school board measure, or a local or statewide elected official to learn how they plan on voting on a particular bill.

Apps

Don’t forget about applications introduced during previous elections — it’s never too late to install one on a Facebook page, like Don’t Forget to Votewhich spread like wildfire last year.

This chart from Ballotpedia details the major ballot initiatives of 2011. Here’s a look at just some of the other measures up for a vote tomorrow.

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Google Plus started out growing faster than any social network has so far, but may not be able to compete against Facebook longer term.

The appeal is not sticking because many of the people that quickly flocked to Google Plus have made their way back to the comfort and familiarity of Facebook.

In fact, the inability to keep users engaged has some observers wondering just how long Google Plus will be able to survive.

A Closer Look At The Battle

Google Plus entered the social game at a time when competition was arguably at its fiercest. Facebook was just reported to have an estimated 750 million active users, while both Twitter and LinkedIn were making notable gains of their own.

In order to garner attention, Google would have to give users a different experience, and different is what it strived to be from the very beginning.

Even in its original beta form, Google Plus was equipped with a new friends system in Circles, a discovery engine in Sparks, and a group video chat tool in Hangouts, which recently made its way to the mobile platform.

Apparently all that wasn’t enough, as Facebook went to work with some countering of its own.

In addition to combating Circles with Smart Lists, and answering Hangouts with a Skype-powered video chat feature, Facebook rolled out some huge updates that once again made it the talk of the town.

The majority of the changes involved making the popular social platform more user-friendly, starting with the news feed.

The news feed has been designed in a manner that presents users with posts that are deemed to be most important to them, opposed to the most recent updates.

According to Facebook Engineering Manager Mark Tonkelowitz, the news feed experience is now like users having their own personal newspaper.

Despite not being embraced by the community as a whole, or at least not at first, the recent changes at Facebook have reclaimed the attention of both the general members and brands who spend their time on the site.

And while Google Plus still has some attributes that enable it to stand out, the lack of activity and return visits is a sign that users are having trouble justifying its worth in comparison to what they already have in Facebook.

Last Chance?

Google Plus is not the search giant’s first attempt at social networking.

If you recall, the company launched Google Buzz in 2010, which fizzled out due to a major privacy flaw that accompanied the initial release and the same issue the company faces today — being useful in what can be considered an overly crowded space.

Google Plus definitely has more potential than Buzz, but should it bomb, it could very well be the last shot at ever touching Facebook in the social realm.

Guest writer Aidan Hijleh is a freelance copywriter and serves as the non-profit partnership liaison for Benchmark Email.

Lead image courtesy of Shutterstock.

Quick quiz: What was “Project Titan?” Doesn’t ring a bell? Well, about a year ago, the blogosphere was all abuzz in anticipation for it. Still don’t remember? That was the code name for Facebook’s “Next Generation Messaging” system — the supposed Gmail, or even email killer.

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Amid the discussion of data center specifications and other high-tech arcana, Facebook announced the formation of the Open Compute Foundation to lead the development of energy efficient hardware infrastructure.

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Members of the Occupy Movement believe that Facebook is deliberately censoring their posts, in what seems like an online parallel to the arrests of protesters in cities across the country.

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