Facebook’s Continuing Expansion into Politics

Facebook can seem ubiquitous. Between individual pages, campaign pages and corporate pages everyone seems to be on the social networking service. But at this year’s Art of Political Campaigning Conference, Facebook’s Andrew Noyes said that there is more to come.
“At Facebook we know that if we don’t keep innovating someone else will, and our users will go there. The same thing applies for campaigns. Continue to innovate through social media,” said Noyes, a representative from Facebook’s Washington D.C. office. Noyes joined Julie Germany of the DCI Group and Vote iQ’s Rick Shenkman for a new media panel during the three-day conference.
Noyes talked about U.S. Politics on Facebook and Congress on Facebook, two new products launched last month from the social media giant. US Politics on Facebook is a source of free information available to users, which highlights the innovating and latest uses of Facebook by politicians, elected officials and political campaigns. In addition to aggregating political news on Facebook, it shares tips and guidance for using the social media vector.
Congress on Facebook is another page run by administrators from the social media network highlighting innovative uses of Facebook by members of Congress. They list members’ pages and communicate news and information about Congress.
Noyes charted some of Facebook’s rapid growth in campaigns and government. Adam Conner started as Facebook’s first Washington employee back in 2007, with the sole responsibility of explaining what Facebook was to government. In 2008, 5.5 million users proudly declared “I voted” and Facebook helped 60,000 users register for the 2008 election. Christopher J. Santarelli is an editorial intern at Campaigns & Elections.