Sorry Colbert, a million Facebook supporters doesn't mean jack.

I’m sorry. I’m not quite sick of talking about Facebook yet. Rest assured that I will be sick of talking about it after today.

As far as Facebook and politics go, I found opinions all across the spectrum. Personally, I see great potential for Facebook to have a substantial effect on the upcoming election; however, this effect will only go as far as the lazy college students that created the phenomenon to begin with. It’s much easier to join a group supporting Barack Obama than to actually go out and vote for him; it will be interesting to see if Facebook supporters will show real support when the time comes. This poll asked 239 people what kind of effect “Facebook campaigning” would have on politics. 129 (54%) said the impact would be minor, 84 (35%) said there would be no effect, and 26 (11%) said the effect would be enough to sway the vote.

Really, there’s no way of knowing for certain how social networking websites will effect the election until election day, or the primaries at least. This section of blogs argues that people use Facebook merely for recreational purposes, and will be turned off by applications that offer opportunities to engage in debate (such as US Politics, which I mentioned prior). This intrigued me; so I found an interesting study done on how Facebook users spend their time. Because I can’t hope to explain the data in a way as exciting as the riveting circles on the website, I suggest going there and looking for yourself. The findings surprised me, and they show that the argument claiming that Facebook users aren’t interested in political applications or groups (as shown by the low activity with applications and group browsing in comparison to other activities) can carry some weight. Still, I stay with my original pessimistic prediction; the 18 – 24-year-olds, while they willingly place pictures of Ron Paul all over their profiles, might not make the real world sacrifices to go out and vote.

The other article is slightly older; I think this may contribute to the optimistic outlook it takes.

This article offers a humorous interpretation on the Facebook’s effect on the election.