In the last 12 hours, I have been inundated with requests to “donate my cause” on Facebook, reminding people to vote for either McCain or Obama.
This represents Facebook’s most powerful tool. Why? Think about how most people use Facebook. They aren’t going through profiles and messing with applications nearly as much as they are looking at their news feed page. That news feed presents peoples’ network updates.
When all the people in a person’s given network are encouraging people to make sure to vote and vote for the candidate of their choice, it presents a great push in online WOM. It also presents a chance for things to spread virally.
The transparency achieved is also notable. People are publicly telling people who they are voting for. To the scale that this is happening in 2008, it is unprecedented.
Moving forward, we’re going to see a lot more “status marketing” on Facebook than widgets or apps.
