Archive for the ‘Politics’ Category
Politics Comes to Facebook
Thursday, July 5th, 2007
Facebook quietly rolled out a new application earlier this week. The politics application gives users the ability to support their favorite politicians and view each politician’s profile. Additionally you can view which politicians your friends support. A bunch of other political applications have launched since the Facebook platform opened up but this is the first one to be developed by the Facebook team. Aside from the Newsvine Election ‘08 application which has over 130,000 users, most of the applications have failed to gain popularity. The Facebook politics application on the other hand has had over 270,000 users add the application. One interesting aspect of this application is that Facebook did not automatically register users to the application. With previous features such as the “Notes” application, users were automatically added. It looks like this application has spread completely via viral means because I haven’t seen the application promoted elsewhere on Facebook. If you’ve seen other promotions, please let me know. I would assume that Facebook naturally has a leg up when releasing applications, just as Kevin Rose has an advantage when he diggs articles (Kevin Rose has 100% of his Diggs hit the front page). As of now the application is pretty basic but they will be rolling out additional features in the near future. Some of the features include “voter registration tools, political issue forums, and our Election Pulse showing how each race in ‘08 is shaping up.” If you want to get political on Facebook and live in the U.S., go grab the U.S. politics appliciation.
Where Are the Policitians?
Sunday, June 24th, 2007Browsing through the applications directory last night I came across a new “John Edwards for President” application created by Fred Stutzman. While I don’t think Fred is affiliated with the John Edwards campaign, I find it interesting that this is only the second presedential candidate to have an application. It has been almost a month since the new Faebook platform launched and none of the other candidates have launched an official Facebook application yet. Granted, there is still a lot of time left in the campaign and not all of the campaign’s resources can be dedicated to developing a Facebook application. If these campaigns are trying to portray the image of being technically savvy, then they should be early adopters to new channels of communication. Many of the candidates are now on Twitter and MySpace and also have Facebook groups, but they have yet to launch applications that provide the viral effect that would be highly valuable. Any idea why these candidates have been so slow to launch?
Bush Countdown Clock
Tuesday, June 12th, 2007
Counting down the days until we have a change of administration in this country? Tired of the same old policies? Count down the days until there is a change of office in this country. Add the Bush Countdown Clock to your profile so you know right when the change of office occurs. On inauguration day 2009 the countdown clock will be sure to let you know that the bad days are behind us. Regardless of where you stand in the political spectrum, we can all admit that there is a need for change in this country. This is the first application that I built on the Facebook platform and it was a relatively easy experience. So have fun and add the Bush Countdown Clock to your profile.
Facebook Election 2008
Monday, June 11th, 2007
Eliot York has come up with a pretty cool way of bringing the 2008 election to Facebook. Vote on the book enables users to make a vote while simultaneously making a contribution to their campaign of choice. All earnings from the application (via advertising I would assume) will be distributed throughout the campaigns according to the vote. If you want to check out the current standings you can head over to www.voteonthebook.com. If this application gets popular enough it could be used as a pretty good sampling among the Facebook demographics. At the end of the Facebook election it would be great to see the actual numbers of the vote. I’m guessing that they will eventually display this but don’t want to for the time being as it would potentially drive users to skew the vote. If you want to participate in the Facebook election go grab “Vote on the Book.”
Obama Creates First Campaign Application
Tuesday, May 29th, 2007Barack Obama’s campaign has launched a Facebook application that:
puts the most recent campaign video and news on your profile and in front of your friends. It also enables you to easily communicate with your friends in early primary states where support for Barack is especially important.
I wonder what type of applications will rapidly follow suit.
[Via]
(4.64 out of 5)
(4.16 out of 5)