When Facebook launched their Facebook Vote ’08 page a few weeks ago there was no telling how successful it would be. Only a few weeks later and the tool has registered over 50,000 individuals to vote. Whether or not all those individuals actually make it to the polls on election day next week, this is a substantial effort to encourage users to vote and it appears to have worked.
I would have guessed that the majority of Facebook users 18 and older were registered to vote. Whoever these individuals end up voting for, the 18 to 24 demographic could have a huge impact on the election. Given that the 18 to 24 year old demographic is still Facebook’s largest group on the site, Facebook is in the position to potentially help swing the vote in key states.
While the tool has not actually been used to target specific users (as far as we can tell), the application was promoted heavily when it first launched and it looks like that promotion has paid off. Over 600,000 users have invited more than 300,000 of their friends to vote on election date. While these Facebook statistics don’t necessarily translate into real world action, the numbers are significant.
As the campaign draws closer to the end, Facebook is helping spread the word about the importance of participating in next week’s election. It’s great to see Facebook as well as other social networks take advantage of their influential position to drive people to action.
Related to this, we've created a Facebook app that lets you show off your prediction powers and compete against your friends- Hoot. Hoot has a special election challenge where you can predict what will happen on November 4. Please check it out:
http://apps.new.facebook.com/hoothoot/prediction/...
I think it is very exciting to see how social media is playing such a huge roll in this election.
Comment by Brian Lawrence — October 29, 2008 @ 11:44 am