Thursday, January 17, 2008
Forget stalking friends on Facebook. Facebook users can now stalk politicians instead through the "U.S. Politics" application.
The application was first available to Facebook users last summer. At that time, the application only allowed its users to support presidential candidates on their profiles.
In November, the Web site announced it would partner with ABC News for the remainder of the presidential campaign.
Since then, the application has become more interactive and now includes a “soundboard” where users can type what they think about the campaign. The soundboard is similar to the status updates on users’ profiles and selected responses are shown on ABC.
The application features updates from the ABC News political reporters similar to the mini-feed on Facebook users’ profiles. In addition, the reporters have special profiles that users can follow and the application allows users to see the up-to-the-minute stories the reporters write from the campaign trail. Facebook also sponsors debate groups through the application where users can vote and comment on the poll questions for that specific group.
Roderick Patton, Olathe sophomore, has had the application since this summer. Patton said the debate feature greatly enhanced the application, but that he would like to see the candidates’ campaigns become more directly involved with the application. He also said he would like to see the candidates make a more direct appeal to younger voters.
Brianna Saunders, Vancouver, BC, junior, said that she would like to see the application add a feature that users could use to contact the candidates and ask them questions. Saunders said she liked the application, but she would also like to see Facebook add an interactive map of the U.S. to the application so users could indicate which state they live in and contact their local politicians as well.
“I think the (poll questions) are sometimes too simplistic, but overall, I think it’s pretty decent,” Saunders said. “It’s a great way to make politicians understand what college students’ points of view are.”
The application has more than 7,300 daily active users, which is about one percent of all Facebook users.
Prior to and during ABC’s New Hampshire presidential debates on Jan. 5, Facebook asked U.S. Politics users several poll questions that related to the New Hampshire debates and primaries. During the debates, ABC aired the results to those polls and selected users’ comments.
Both Patton and Saunders said they did not participate in the debate groups that took place during the debate, though, because they were doing other activities while they watched the debate.
Andy Haverkamp, Hoyt freshman, said he did not participate in the debate groups on Facebook during the New Hampshire debates either because he thought the Facebook part of the debates was not as interesting as watching the debates. Even though he did not participate in those particular debate groups, Haverkamp said he was pleased to see Facebook partner with ABC.
“You don’t often see Web sites in general linked in with press coverage, especially with politics,” he said. “It’s interesting to see a Web site be a big player in a debate.”
Haverkamp also said he thought the Facebook/ABC presidential campaign partnership set an important precedent.
“It’s great that the candidates can see live what the student and young American demographic is thinking right as they are debating it,” Haverkamp said. “I think we will see a lot more of that in the future.”
Facebook is not the only Web site that has tried to involve younger voters through a partnership with a major news network. Last summer, Youtube partnered with CNN to host separate Democratic and Republican presidential debates. YouTube users submitted questions via text or video e-mail before the debate, some of which were asked during the debates and credited to those users.
— Edited by Kaitlyn Syring
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