techPresident - Facebook - Comments

Glad to spark such a lively discussion!

Colin Delany — Tue, 06 May 2008 15:41:56 -0400

There have been some excellent comments over at e.politics as well -- I gathered 'em into a new piece yesterday.

Colin Delany
e.politics
http://www.epolitics.com

online leads to offline

Joshua Levy — Tue, 06 May 2008 15:28:00 -0400

Colin and Nancy aren't talking about opposite ideas. If organizers are only looking to create action in the context of Facebook then, as Colin suggests, there isn't much data pointing to success. But in her article Nancy describes examples of activism originating on Facebook but quickly moving beyond it, towards other online sources and, more importantly, offline.

Seen this way, Facebook can be seen as successful or not depending on your goals. If the goal is list-building and fundraising, it hasn't proven itself much. But if the goal is group-building, that can happen amazingly quickly. The lists and money come later, after a movement is built and it transitions from a Facebook phenomenon to something independent of the platform.

That's a Very Large Brush

Nancy Scola — Tue, 06 May 2008 13:41:40 -0400

Thought-provoking post, Colin. But as the author of a recent article called "Despite Negative Press, Facebook Is a Powerful Agent for Social Change," I will suggest some caveats -- namely that not every political action is, thankfully, a candidate looking for money or an established non-profit building its email list. The three cases I mention in that article are how the relatively tiny group Students for a Free Tibet have used Facebook to organize around the Beijing Olympics, how one Canadian university student used Facebook to draw widespread attention to Burmese monks' Saffron Revolution, and how within the span of just one month a few Colombian professionals used Facebook to pull together global anti-guerilla rallies on the very same day.

As a political tool, Facebook is flawed. In fact, you can fairly easily make a convincing argument that it's fatally flawed. But it's tough to argue with the millions of boots it has put on the ground in circumstances where the political actors have no expectation of every otherwise achieving those goals so cheaply or easily. For me, it's about teasing agency and action out of networks were before it might have just withered away. And should Facebook fade away or get locked up so tightly as to be useless, then that's just incentive for some clever folks to figure out how to draw those connection and tap that energy even more effectively.

I'd offer you the idea that when we talk about the potential of any technology as a political tool -- whether its Facebook or SMS or what have you -- it's important to keep in mind just what kind of political action we're covering with our critique.

Whoa?

gibson_stevens — Tue, 06 May 2008 10:37:16 -0400

Interesting post, but wrong. No one has yet really invested in a well-thought-out strategy yet. The features of Facebook are limited, but the application platform is much less inhibited. And yet, Obama and Clinton have made minimal investments of time and energy in their applications, and McCain's is nowhere to be found. Non-presidential apps by major political groups, organizations, etc., have been few and far between.

To consider the value of 20+ million US users connected via Facebook a dead end at this point is premature.

Full disclosure: I helped produce Clinton's Hillary Gifts - what I expect(ed?) to be the beginning of a longer-term investment...

More of my musings...

Amen

Patrick Ruffini — Tue, 06 May 2008 00:43:10 -0400

Facebook works when you use it for what it was intended for: spreading messages organically through first-hand connections.

The 1,200 limit on group messaging is alone enough to kill off its potential for mass communication. My own experience suggests that clickthroughs from a Facebook message can match or exceed email response rates. But since it can't scale, you'll only see its potential reached at the state level or lower. A Congressional candidate who can get 500 core supporters in his or her Facebook group (not Page) can hit the activism sweet spot, with the ability to use the group to simultaneously engage users, message to them as though it were email, and use the popular Events feature to get them out doing stuff in the real world.

And Pages are just a joke since messages don't reach the inbox and you have to jump through 3-4 hoops just to read them.

I can't say I blame Facebook for these limits either, given pervasive application spam. Lots of people would be empowered to build their own mini-MoveOns with the ability to message everyone in their group -- that's how powerful Facebook *could* be (the Million Against Hillary group alone would be bigger than most advocacy groups could ever hope to be). But since it cuts against the grain of building trust through individual user networks, we won't see it happen.

You busted me

Colin Delany — Tue, 06 May 2008 00:15:16 -0400

Eric, you are as always a most perceptive observer. I did indeed extend the "jump the shark" metaphor beyond its original, Wikipedia-sanctioned meaning of the moment when a successful pop culture phenomenon goes flat. But I'm a writer; I get to do things like that. Heh!

Colin Delany
e.politics
http://www.epolitics.com

A far more sober view of social networks............

Freedomfighter — Mon, 05 May 2008 23:14:05 -0400

This article is pretty, but could use more supporting factors. Here are some serious problems with Facebook and social networks:

1) Dominated by the under 25 crowd. Because of the aqe cut off, young people are cut off from older and more experienced people and activists.

2) The "me too" syndrome and "save the world syndrome". People tend to join groups to support their own thoughts and engage the idea of saving the world, instead of engaging in debater or taking practical action. As of now, things like Facebook suffer a bubble syndrome. Everyone knows Obama is king on Facebook, but what happens in the general election?

3) Engaging other media. So far, social networks ride on free publicity on the internet and news stories. If a social network gets serious, it will have multimedia advertising trying to broaden its network and attract more advertising.

Jumped The Shark?

EricFrenchman — Mon, 05 May 2008 22:58:04 -0400

Colin,

As someone who actually watched Fonzie jump the shark when it was first aired, it implies success prior to the actual shark and then some amount of failure afterwards. I'm not sure if jumping the shark can be applied to Facebook as a successful political tool. :-)

Eric

Great points

benrattray — Mon, 05 May 2008 14:06:09 -0400

Hey Colin,

Great points. One thing I would elaborate upon is that one of the big problems with Facebook in general (and political apps in particular) is that even if people like political apps, it's impossible for them to get distribution without having a viral coefficient of at least 1 (meaning each new user who joins recruits an average of at least 1 additional user).

This is a significant structural impediment that prevents quality applications that are not specifically structured for viral distribution from reaching any real audience. I've actually just written extended commentary about this that Andrew Chen posted on his blog here: http://andrewchen.typepad.com/andrew_chens_blog/2008/05/facebook-apps-w.....

I didn't write it specifically about political apps (rather, about Facebook's structural bias against "useful" apps in general), but it applies to them as well.

kudos!

Freedomfighter — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 08:27:24 -0500

My bet the political parties want to buy ads and have continually requested it because they did not like the "conservative" and "liberal" labels. However, I think a strong minority of people do not want to be affiliated with a political party so the net result may be cheaper ads targeting fewer people.

Tagging political identities

Nancy Scola — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 11:22:26 -0500

I should note that there is a way of freely tagging your political identity and ignoring the options that the drop-down populates for you -- comma separate the tags that work for you and escape out of the menu.

Corrected

Michael Whitney — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 11:11:08 -0500

Sorry about that Justin, I changed it to reflect that you created the progressive group.

I also fixed some international numbers that were outdated on Facebook's press page.

Here here, Nancy

Michael Whitney — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 10:49:24 -0500

Very well put. All signs do point to this being a marketing decision, with little to no thought of how users actually think of themselves.

Just to clarify...

justin@justinhamilton.org — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 09:52:40 -0500

I started the group.

debate

mary62 — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 14:34:26 -0500

Did Obama know questions before last nights debate?
I think so, because.
When a person in a debate is asked a question they pause, think and then answer.
Mr. Obama did neither when asked questions, even the best debater will tell you the same thing.
It would not surprise me, the way MSNBC favors Obama.