Is Facebook now the most important weapon in a politician’s digital armoury? Barack Obama certainly seems to think so. The US president has just launched his re-election campaign, and Facebook seems to be at the centre of it.
The Obama Facebook page, created way back during the last campaign, has this message at the top from the president:
“Today, we are filing papers to launch the 2012 campaign. Say that you’re in.”
Saying that you’re in means telling your Facebook friends that you support Obama and want him back as president in 2012 - a very cheap and viral way of getting your message out, compared with the huge cost of running a traditional American campaign.
The campaign website looks very sparse right now - indeed, it makes a point about being a work in progress - so the Facebook page, which is already “liked” by nearly 19 million people, looks more likely to receive the most traffic. The possible Republican contenders also have a big presence on the leading social network, though Sarah Palin, with 2.8 million fans on her page, seems to be far ahead of others from her party, even though it is by no means certain hat she will run.
As for other digital tools, a YouTube video was used to launch the campaign, joining the many Obama videos which were a feature of the last Presidential race. Twitter, though, seems less prominent.
The 2008 Obama campaign became a byword for innovative use of digital technology and social media - although all the excitement about the use of Facebook and YouTube concealed the fact that older techniques such as email databases and telephone banks may have been more important.
When I was covering the digital side of Britain’s general election last year, all the parties appeared desperate to learn lessons from across the Atlantic. But British politics became fixated not on Facebook, but on Twitter. Suddenly, it seemed every MP, every candidate, every spin-doctor was tweeting day and night.
While Twitter is now an essential tool for anyone wanting to tap into political news or watch a story unfold, many political strategists are sceptical about its value as a medium to spread your message and engage new supporters. They point to the fact that Facebook has a much wider audience, and is better suited to local campaigns.
For the dull work of gathering a crowd to go out and knock on doors, a network which is already employed to organise everything from book clubs to anarchist demos may be the better choice.
Twitter may be the home to the chattering classes, Foursquare is the thing amongst twenty-something New Yorkers with great social lives, whereas Facebook, in the disparaging words of the digital prophet John Perry Barlow is "the suburbs". But that is where most people live - so no wonder Barack Obama thinks it is the place to win an election.
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Added to that, Facebook's fan pages have come on leaps and bounds since 2008. Back then, most campaigns could only exist as a Friend or a group. Now, you can setup an event on your fan page and have people "check-in" via Facebook places - useful function for a rally for example. And people are liking services and products more and more, particularly if they strike an emotional core/demonstrate a value.
Twitter became popular with UK politicians in 2010 for many reasons but a few that strike me as important are 1.It makes tracking of "success" simple - easy to show what impact you're having when considered against conventional comms 2. It was quite easy for staffers to get candidates to update via text message - not to be underestimated when older MPs and candidates only had basic Nokias 3. The media fell in love with it so it entered every conversation in press/tv/radio.
It'll be fascinating to see how things develop during the race for 2012. As we've seen with commercial products, I'd expect to see Facebook as the primary call to action on most candidate literature.
There are thousands of bloggers worth a read on this area - suggest a google for Mark Pack if you don't already read his blog.
P.S. The Obama team always said that email was way more important than social media in 2008 (for donations at least). Even though email usage is declining amongst younger users, be interesting to see what happens in 2012. If Facebook allow messages to be targetted based on a the profile information of a fan e.g. age, gender, an extrapolation of income based on job title, frequency of post interaction, perhaps email will be downgraded to equal partner status.
Agreed with the poster above, email vs Facebook vs Twitter. Should set out to be a very exciting and interesting use of communication to deliver campaign messages!
Obama promised change, we the world watched and were happy to see somebody with a higher than above intelligence get the position. But unfortunately we have been betrayed. Two faced would be an apt description of the incumbent. He said one thing in his campaign and did another. He said he'd bring the troops back from Iraq immediately when in office, and constantly delayed plans and has left thousands of troops to maintain the "peace". He then sends 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan and then commits to another war in Libya with out a vote in Congress. Similarly we in UK, committed our forces to action before a vote was called. But at least we had a vote on the subject.
Obama scares me more than Bush, why? Because Bush joked "It would be a hell of a lot easier if this was a dictatorship, as long as I was the dictator". Obama actually acts like a dictator and if you can't see it.. I'm sorry for your blindness to the truth.