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By KAREN BROOKS / The Dallas Morning News
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December 27, 2007
AUSTIN – Call it the newest online hookup.
Social-networking sites are settling into a long-term commitment with someone they recently met online: the 2008 presidential campaign.
As candidates increasingly see the need to incorporate strategies such as MySpace profiles and Facebook groups, those sites are finding politics to be a vital part of their marketing and customer-service strategies.
On Jan. 5, right after the Iowa caucuses and a few days before the New Hampshire primaries, Facebook – with its 59 million users and growing – will partner with ABC to host presidential debates in New Hampshire.
The debates come as MySpace hosts its own "online primary" over two days, allowing its 70 million American citizen- users to vote on their favorite candidates online.
That primary comes on the heels of three MySpace/MTV candidate roundtables, which drew an estimated 3.3 million viewers.
And, of course, there was the YouTube/CNN debate in which a snowman asked Democratic candidates about global warming.
These social networking sites are seeing how priceless the campaigns are in offering exposure to demographics they're still courting.
"We think that Facebook has always been a great utility for connecting friends around the issue that they care about," said Chris Kelly, director of privacy for Facebook and spokesman for the ABC debate. "To the extent that we're bringing more people into that environment, we think that's a great additional benefit."
No longer simply the domain of teens and college students, the social sites, which allow users to communicate and share photos and journals, report exponential growth in their over-30 populations. That's feeding an increasing demand for civic-minded uses that go beyond artist pages and random hookups.
If the sites are to stay competitive, politics is something they can't just leave to the campaigns' own Web sites.
Aside from the simple profile pages, the sites are broadening their political horizons every day. Facebook has a U.S. Politics "application" that users can download to their pages and use to become activists. MySpace profiles can use PayPal to donate. Both have ways for users to register to vote online.
And that's just the tip of the iceberg in getting active politically on those sites.
In November, MySpace began doing monthly surveys of its users to show how politically active they are – asking how they vote and whether they go to campaign Web sites or watch the debates.
The results are sent to the media and the campaigns, with the unspoken message being the same message the other sites are trying to put out there: "You need us."
"We wanted to show a trend throughout the campaign season to see how active MySpace users are and how it continues to grow, ideally, and how campaigns can successfully use MySpace to their advantage," said Lee Brenner, director of IMPACT MySpace, the site's channel that launched in March for the more political and civic-minded users.
This doesn't mean that the only motivation is the profit-based benefits that come from free advertising before millions of people – and the buzz that is attached to your name once you've broken a record for TV debate viewership, as YouTube can boast.
The sites say that – like the Rock the Vote initiative of the early 1990s – they also want to make a real impact on the communities around them.
At the 10-year-old BlackPlanet.com, the extreme popularity of Illinois Democrat Barack Obama on that site sent a message that the black community cared more about politics than the candidates – or the community itself, for that matter – probably thought, said Kay Madati, vice president of marketing for Community Connect Inc., which runs several niche profile sites such as MiGente.com, Faithbase .com and Glee.com.
"What I love most about stepping into the political fray to help these candidates is that traditionally, most of the audiences we represent – and particularly the African-Americans and Latinos – have been taught not to be interested or really passionate about politics. And in one fell swoop, with Barack launching his page, we've proved that to be false," Mr. Madati said. "He had 60,000 friends within three days."
Community Connect has even created a Candidate Terms of Engagement document, saying that the company will do some basic things for the candidate's profiles – like a one-time blast to all the members telling them the site is up. If they want more help, Mr. Madati says, the site plans to charge the candidates for extra services.
None of this, by the way, is lost on the campaigns.
Candidates such as Mr. Obama and Republican Mitt Romney are among those who have created social-utility tools of their own – along with the national Democratic and GOP committees – as a way to organize and raise funds through online groups, debates and profiles.
An indicator of how seriously some of those campaigns are taking social networking: Mr. Obama hired Chris Hughes, one of Facebook's founders, as his online guru and to help design the campaign's social-networking site, My .BarackObama.com.
"It doesn't have all the bells and whistles of the consumer-oriented sites, but it's really focused on being a tool set for organizers to bring more people into the campaign," Mr. Hughes said. "I don't know what we would have done without it, because it's been so integral in enabling our grassroots supporters."
But while the campaigns recognize – and in a lot of ways are still trying to measure – the benefit they get by keying into the online political trend, they are also aware of how much the sites want them around.
Stephen Smith, director of online communications for Mr. Romney's campaign, says sites have contacted him "to varying degrees" to make sure he is staying active on their pages.
"Some have a bigger commitment to actually trying to have an influence or a real role in their community," Mr. Smith said. "But at the very least, all of these social networks want a profile by Governor Romney or Senator Obama to generate traffic and media attention."
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