Facebook’s Balls Drop
Tired of stalking all your old girlfriends from Facebook? Well, now there is something a little more relevant that can you can defend your use of Facebook for: following the Presidential Elections. Facebook has added a new application that now allows Facebook members to voice their favored political party on their profile walls.
This is a fascinating new tool. Once you join its application you an see how many people have voted for which candidate and if they choose to make their vote public to other Facebook members you can even find out who voted for who. It even offers news feeds that users can click on to stay updated in the goings-on of the political election.
For political analysts this is another interesting tool to see what demographic is voting for who?
Finally after all the mindless applications that Facebook offers this is the first one that is a credit to the Facebook system. This application is going to make politics and important issues more widely available to younger generations.
So now when people are giving you guff for checking your profile you can defend your intelligence by claiming to be reviewing the current news of the election. Now you look smart.
In hope what could be the beginnings of the slow death of political apathy amongst young teens this facebook application is bringing with it the air that it is “cool to talk about politics” and be passionate about real world issues other than which celebrity is sleeping with who and who is getting fat.
By adding the application and posting it like a badge on their profile it sends the message to friends that you are getting involved and they can too.
To load the Election application is very simple. You just click on the link and then click add. It gives you a few privacy options such as whether or not you want your profile to be added with you vote so others can see it and if you would like to invite other friends to this application.
On getting the usual list of boring mundane applications that will collected digital dust on your sidebar this application is something that will be useful all the way to the presidential elections. The political news feed is updated hourly and you can also subscribe to the RSS Feed and post it on other personal websites.
The Election Application was first launched in January of 2008 in the wake of the growing interest in the presidential elections. It was designed as a social tool to get young voters more aware and involved. It seems to be working. With 56 million people logged onto Facebook the percentage that are using this application is in the thousands and inviting other friends to download the application increases every hour.
This reinforces the my topic of discussion because it is the continual evolution of the political word because of the world wide web. The candidates are making more of an effort to reach voters in every possible venue (even going on RAW Wrestling to get the WWE votes).
The beauty of the internet is that it is a two-way discussion. It is not like a TV ad or a letter where the dialogue is impossible. Now voters can literally be heard. Everyone, anywhere can have immediate access to all the information available and express their opinions. It is involving.
Facebook started as a social network amongst colleges, then it incorporated High Schools and soon after the general public. Predominately the demographic of people that se facebook are in the majority under 25. The applications that have been made produced and download are generally fun games, amusing greetings, and time killers. The Facebook Election Application is a mature step for the network.
What this application is doing letting the youth know is that politics is the business for the people and that means them as well. Some may argue that the Election application may be predominantly used with younger unregistered voters and therefore may have no impact at all on the election. Yes, that may be true but the beauty of it all is that this application is getting the awareness of the interactivity possible with politics and is instilling this in their minds at a young age. So that they may be more likely to vote when they are of age.
Facebook to me was the ultimate tool of apathy and boredom. Sitting on a webpage, updating your profile about your ego, deleting photos of yourself that you don’t like, and giving weak and halfhearted greetings to people you wouldn’t normally talk to in person. But now this may be the first step towards a maturing network of discussion amongst young thinkers.
