With the first primary elections for the 2012 presidential race less than a year away, full-service Facebook agency Social Code is already researching how Facebook advertising can affect actionable results in key demographic markets. At least, when used correctly.
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Although Facebook has yet to release an official statement about a partnership with  search engine Baidu in order to finally enter the Chinese market, many regard the move as a done deal. That includes U.S. Senator Dick Durbin.
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The Republican 2012 presidential contenders are quickly gaining ground, leveraging Facebook and other social media sites to their advantage.
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Despite numerous efforts to keep prisoners from accessing Facebook, they continue to do so. Fortunately, South Carolina has proposed legislation that would make inmates caught accessing the social network via cell phone or computer pay a $500 fine and spend an extra month in jail.
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Apparently, George W. Bush still has plenty of fans and they really like his plans to do a question-and-answer livestream on Facebook today at 2 pm PST.
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The Israeli army is monitoring the Facebook profiles of female citizens in order to identify those who have falsely espoused religious beliefs in order to avoid conscription.
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For the first time in the history of humanity, 150,000,000 people are CONNECTED in one place! Facebook is more than just hype – every online business and politician needs to know how to use this social platform. In this post I will describe our experience with running a Political Campaign on Facebook. From our experience, Facebook pages tend to experience a Snowball effect once a critical mass of supporters has been obtained.
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The McCain campaign decided to enter the world of Facebook yesterday with the launch of the Straight Talk Express application. So what does the application do? Not much to be honest. All it does is embed the video which I’ve included below. That’s it! It also enables users to invite their friends and provides links to John McCain sites as well but nothing else.

I’m not quite sure why the McCain team decided to launch this application rather than embed the video on a fan page but that’s their decision, not mine! The McCain team is way behind the Obama team on Facebook given that the Barack Obama fan page has now crossed 1 million supporters. The John McCain straight talk express application has added less than 1,000 users so far but then again it just launched yesterday.

The video created by the McCain team is a really well done MTV Cribs style overview of one of the Straight Talk Express buses. I’m not sure how this tells me anything about McCain as a candidate but I definitely learned a little something about his bus driver. Check out the video below and feel free to install the Straight Talk Express application.

A couple of conservative supporters thought they were doing their party a good deed when they went and created the CPAC (Conservative Political Action Committee) 2009 group on Facebook. Well apparently it didn’t work out too well when the creator of the group received the following threatening letter:

Hi Beau,

The chairman of the American Conservative Union Foundation has decided to pursue legal action with Facebook to get your CPAC 2009 group removed. Just wanted to let you know because I don’t know if they automatically disable groups during when legal complaints are brought.

Lisa

Rather than choose sides as to whether or not the group is a good idea, what I will say is that it was a dumb idea for the ACU (American Conservative Union) to sue their own supporters. It’s no wonder that left-leaning groups have so much more support on the site …. they aren’t supporting their own people! I recently covered brands that were filing complaints with users that had created their own brand pages.

Sam Huelatt, who had created a Ralph Lauren page, received a letter directly from Ralph Lauren notifying him that they would send him a $200 gift certificate for setting up the page. This is the smart way to play it, not suing your supporters.

Over the past few weeks I have been seeing an increasing number of articles covering political controversy popping up on Facebook. Just the other day I touched on the topic of Facebook being involved in mideast drama as it pertained to Israel and Palestine. Yesterday I saw another article about how debate over the future of Pakistan is taking place on Facebook. During his keynote interview at South by Southwest a couple weeks ago, Mark Zuckerberg touched on the issue of political debate on Facebook and how it is becoming a forum for political discussion.

The theory is that Facebook is simply trying to produce a platform that enables participants to communicate more effectively and more easily without taking a position on any issues. I agree that Facebook should stay away from making political stances and as I’ve been discussing more regularly with friends and family, the social web is transforming interpersonal communications worldwide. This transformation is ultimately the democratization and free flow of information.

I believe that providing a forum for this discussion is the best thing that could happen to the world. Ultimately, in countries where people are taught stereotypes and biases about cultures and races, individuals can log on to Facebook and learn more about these individuals for themselves. While it won’t always provide an immediate solution, providing a forum for discussion most definitely avoids people taking to arms and lets the battles get played out in words.

I was going to write about the news about Pakistan debate on Facebook but I think that the real story here is that people are connecting worldwide on an unprecedented scale. While this started years ago with the proliferation of the internet, we are only beginning to witness the power that it has. With powerful translation tools on the horizon I can only imagine how these new tools for communication will break down barriers like never before.

I for one am enthusiastic about the potential for the future as a result of these new technologies. I think it is inevitable that humans will find truth through exposure to other cultures and Facebook is one of the tools that are leading the way in helping us gain more exposure. It’s indeed an exciting time to be alive!