While we’re on the subject of social networking, here’s a quick Facebook tip: on a confence call today, Farra Trompeter mentioned that a she’d received Facebook message from a pro-Obama group she’s joined, asking her to change her Facebook Status to “voting for Obama.” I’m sure this isn’t new, but I hadn’t thought about it enough before to see it as a communications tool. Clever, since regular Facebook users see their friends’ Status messages (“Colin is…”) often.
– cpd
Using status in this way is a pretty common campaigning technique in the UK, though what’s become more popular here (at least in the Liberal Democrats) is changing your profile picture to a graphic that says you are backing / have voted for a particular candidate.
We did this in Australia last week. Our parliament apologised on behalf of previous governments to Australia’s Indigenous Stolen Generations. We suggested to both our Facebook and MySpace friends that they change their status to “is sorry” on the day of the apology. Lots of people did, and as an added extra, hundreds of people joined our cause that day 🙂