Preparing a I’m Voting app
The partnership will harness Facebook’s data and research team to monitor social buzz and conduct voter surveys, but the most interesting development appears to be the creation of the “I’m Voting” Facebook app.
According to a release from CNN and Facebook, the app will “enable people who use Facebook to commit to voting and endorse specific candidates and issues. Commitments to vote will be displayed on people’s Facebook timeline, news feed, and real-time ticker.”
The app “will enable people to share their commitment to vote and support of particular issues or candidates with friends and will provide a way to see how many of their own friends they’ve enlisted to support those issues or candidates,” Facebook and CNN said in company posts announcing the news.
Launch date yet to be announced
Facebook and CNN aren’t saying yet when they will initiate the app. The two companies are also teaming up to measure the Facebook discussions of the campaigns of President Obama and challenger Mitt Romney and to survey voting-age U.S. residents.
If the app catches on with users, CNN may be able to take the pulse of the electorate in useful, real-time ways.
Excellent! The ability of politicians to get elected in a democratic society while serving the needs of a small, ruling elite is heavily dependent on their ability to reduce overall voting so that those cast in their favor now make up a larger proportion of the total votes cast (in contrast to the majority wish the entire population may have).
So this may very well have the ability to increase the number of total votes cast, and so should serve as a great indicator of which party is controlled by the ruling elite by noting which of them tries to sabotage FBs adoption of the app.