techPresident - What Your Friends Say About You - Comments

An Avenue of Attack

Michael Turk — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 13:53:24 -0500

It's definitely an avenue of attack that not many people are looking at or thinking about, but one that seems ripe for the picking. I don't honestly know if there is a "guilt by association" with friends.

I only clicked through a few of Edwards' friends, based on the more egregious screen names or photos, but I suspect if you dig through any of the candidate's pages, you'd probably find more than a couple of "friends" who express racist, anti-Semitic, homophobic, or other leanings.

Look at the flap over the anti-Semitic comments at MoveOn. Granted the difference was it appeared on their site, and they had the ability to moderate it. Does accepting a friend request imply a tacit endorsement of any ranting that appears on their page?

I imagine an enterprising opposition researcher would have an easy time compiling a list of questionable associates - especially if you're dealing with tens of thousands of friends.

Valid questions

Fred Stutzman — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 23:49:30 -0500

Can you judge a candidate by the people who go to his/her rallies? In the age of SNS "friendship", what does that bond mean?

As much as I want to write this off, I think there's something valuable here. What does it mean when a presidential candidate friends you? What is the value of that transaction? What is the value that will be extracted by opponent research, and how will it be spun? Will it stick?

This is a useful line of questions. I may join you in hypothesizing. There's a lot to think about here.

What Your Friends Say About You

Michael Turk — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 11:41:50 -0500

My parents always taught me that you can learn a lot about a person by looking at the people with whom they choose to associate. It's something I have always believed. It is, however, something that is being tossed on its ear by social networking sites.

My question has been, and remains, what do your MySpace or Facebook friends say about you? Will campaigns be judged on the people they publicly affiliate with via social networking sites? Most importantly, will the media care?

Most mentions of social networking focus on the number of friends a candidate has, but nobody seems to care about the people that make up that number?