Facebook Changing Politics...?

Is facebook going to revolutionize the face of politics in the United States?

I doubt it. All the side-bar facebook advertisements with politicians' faces on them in the world wouldn't sway me to vote one way or the other. For me, it's about fundamental beliefs and provocations...what their face looks like doesn't matter to me. I've long heard that the younger, college-age generation has the most power to sway elections. Why? Well, we can organize in mass to vote, we're more likely to want to vote because we believe it will make a difference, and our demographic has special voting habits (tendencies) that can exploit one party or the other.

In South Korea many politicians use Web 2.0 services, namely blogs, to help get their campaign and image out to the public. For that society, such a technique has a measurable impact. I believe that it's yet to be proven that political blogs have an impact here in the US.

As far as making other impacts goes, these two teens were able to raise several hundred thousand dollars for their campaign to support Darfur. Being invited to Capital Hill to speak definitely implies that your social networking efforts have had an impact on politics. However large or small, you've done something.

Web 2.0 efforts have the ability to revolution specific causes, and have an even greater chance of getting a huge outpouring of participation when the day comes when US citizens can vote in elections online. In my nine-thirty post, I discuss the pros and cons regarding online voting. It's something that I think the US should do. With current Web 2.0 technologies, a non-biased facebook ad encouraging me to vote would do a great job of reminding to perform my civic duty. By eliminating the need to physically travel someplace to vote, apathy will no longer be an excuse for political inactivism.

The Eight-Thirty

One could call it a title-downgrade from The Nine-Thirty, but The Eight-Thirty has a lot of interesting posts containing my opinions on numerous topics having to do with Social Networking and its interaction with Business. Business is quickly growing into a more online world, and social networking in that world is bringing business people together. Learn about it as well as find interesting commentary, links, and references to printed materials all having to do with social networking and business.

Also, if you have any interest in Mocial Networking (Mobile Social Networking) and all the really exciting, emerging technologies that it's beginning to feature, then check out this post at http://eight-thirty.blogspot.com/.

Just click!

Mocial Networking

It's Social Networking on steroids. The latest wave of technological advancements involves taking social networks mobile. I was very excited when I coined the term Mocial Networking (Mobile Social Networking), until I discovered this website where someone seems to have coined it before me. There's also another site that has adopted the word "mocial."

I'll elaborate on my understanding of mocial networking, as I've defined it. Mocial networking is web 2.0 but on an extremely mobile platform. The best way to engage in mocial networking is to have a GPS-enabled cell phone. With that, you can use sites like Kakiloc, Trackut, Socialight, Fring, and Bliin. Altogether, these sites allow you to place geo-specific digital sticky notes with text and pictures that provide information or opinions about specific locations, and are permanent to the specific location from which the user uploaded it. Also, these sites allow friends of yours to track you in real-time as you travel anywhere in the world.

People you designate as your friends can receive permissions to track your whereabouts at all times using Google Maps. The sites mentioned above can even tell your friends the speed and direction you're traveling, as well as where you're going if you designate your destination ahead of time. Of course, you do have control at all times over who you want to see what...

This is very awesome technology, however there are concerns about people abusing it. For example, tracking gullible minors (or even adults) for purposes of abduction.

Regardless, Stef Kolman from Bliin says that the risks associated with mocial networking aren't any greater than with traditional social networking (1.0/2.0) methods.

What do you guys think? How likely are people to abuse this new, exciting technology?