Thursday, February 7, 2008
Social Networking and Politics
Much of the attention to social networking focuses on two points: the vast numbers of people participating (over 100 million on MySpace, getting up to 70 million on Facebook) and the ways in which their interactions with the sites and with one another can spread to their friends. On Facebook, developers of games and generic sites (what flower/car/geological era are you, send a virtual cocktail/toy/hug/piece of furniture, etc.) collect thousands and tens of thousands of visitors to their sites which lets them monetize their work by placing ads on them. The numbers can be staggering.
But there's more than just raw numbers. When the substance of the app is something that people care about, the interaction with the app and friends becomes much more potent. When your News Feed reports that a friend has sent a virtual gift, that's very different from seeing that a friend now supports Barack Obama or Mike Huckabee--at least if you're a political junkie.
It all feeds on itself. People who are interested in politics are likely to have friends who are also interested in politics, and the News Feed items and friend recommendations are all the more potent. When you look at cause-related Facebook Pages, some of them are sort of generic socializing pages. But others get it. Substance is magnified by the social interaction. The power of the social graph is not just the big numbers but also this potent interaction.
We all know this, of course, but sometimes the big numbers and the entertainment distract us.
But there's more than just raw numbers. When the substance of the app is something that people care about, the interaction with the app and friends becomes much more potent. When your News Feed reports that a friend has sent a virtual gift, that's very different from seeing that a friend now supports Barack Obama or Mike Huckabee--at least if you're a political junkie.
It all feeds on itself. People who are interested in politics are likely to have friends who are also interested in politics, and the News Feed items and friend recommendations are all the more potent. When you look at cause-related Facebook Pages, some of them are sort of generic socializing pages. But others get it. Substance is magnified by the social interaction. The power of the social graph is not just the big numbers but also this potent interaction.
We all know this, of course, but sometimes the big numbers and the entertainment distract us.
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