Cross posted at Future Majority
If you haven't heard yet, FaceBook just shook things up big time by opening it's API to third parties. Now that I've had a chance to play around with some of the new FaceBook apps, I'm starting to like them.
Sticking to the political side, there's everybody's favorite app, The Compass, which is basically a political quiz, the results of which get posted to your profile (I'm a liberal). Another app, Causes, lets you raise money for 501c3 organizations through your profile. So far The League of Young Voters (Maine), MoveOn, Mobilize.org (the new incarnation of Mobilizing America's Youth) and a number of issue-based campaigns are using the new Causes App. It will be interesting to see if other youth orgs sporting a c3 status like Campus Progress or Young People For or the Bus Project can make use of the Causes App to raise small dollar donations from their young member base's social networks.
I would love to see these orgs take it a step further and start creating their own apps. The potential is now basically limitless. They could use FaceBook as a volunteer RSVP system, a way to share photos, push out information and action opportunities, etc.
That's exactly what Barack Obama did. Thanks to staffer Chris Hughes, formerly of FaceBook, Barack jumped way out ahead of the other campaigns today, launching his own App. The App connects supporters with friends in the early primary states and ask them to support Obama, it allows the campaign to send updates - videos, news, events - directly to a new window in your profile and let's you share those updates with your friends.
We'll see if this turns out to be information overload or if it really does substantially grow Obama's support within the FaceBook community. It could potentially be a great way to get all those friends working for the campaign in a more substantial way. While not entirely likely, there's a small chance it could be the SocNet equivalent of the Perfect Storm - an annoying bombardment of information about the candidate that turns off early primary voters.
The one thing the App doesn't do is collect donations from supporters. As we noted last week, no campaigns have taken advantage of fundraising widgets on MySpace, a trend that seems to have continued into FaceBook. I can't tell if this is a smart move or not. Not asking for money upfront can build trust and reduce potential cynicism/skepticism on the part of potential supporters. It might make it easier to raise money say, at the end of the 2nd or 3rd quarter, when it really matters. On the other hand, the Obama campaign has claimed that a substantial portion of their online donations came from students donating small dollar amounts. This could be the perfect opportunity to get the 350,000 Strong for Barack to do more than donate a case of beer. In which case, by not facilitating fundraising by supporters via FaceBook, all the Obama campaign is doing is losing out on money.
In terms of raw political power for young voters, the decisions seems to be a loser. Donations through FaceBook could be easily traceable, and 95% of those donations would likely come from young voters. That would set a baseline for how much it is possible to raise from young voters, and that type of metric is what it will take to convince skeptical campaign hacks and party operatives that young voters are a constituency worth their time, effort, and money. That's not really the campaign's job (though it would probably be a good card for the youth team to play in any internal disputes), but I'm just saying.