The Daring Exploits of Facebook and ABC News
Saturday’s Republican and Democratic presidential debates were curious to say the least, the former dominated by Giuliani’s incessant talking points on September 11 and Ronald Reagan, the latter intensified by a brief pissing fight between Hillary and Barack.
In the end, the most intriguing participant of all was Facebook (Kucinich would be a close second except for his absence). Quite frankly I was blown away by the novelty of seeing Facebook’s quiet branding sitting next to ABC’s logo in pre-rolls and the like. Finally, I tell myself, the barriers are coming down! Born of creative commons and dorm room inventiveness, the seat-of-your-pants startup is neck and neck with the slow turning ship!
But take a look at the numbers. During the debate, poll questions on Facebook were averaging a rough 5,000 responses each. Participation at this level is so minute - Facebook’s user base is in the millions - that it only represents a slice (politically engaged Facebook users) of a slice (Facebook users) of a slice (the computing population) of the larger public.
There are at least two reasons for this “low turnout”. For one, Facebook is a social networking platform, steeped in the traditions of poking, stalking, and otherwise exploring the lives of others (not to mention Facebook’s top applications are, for all practical purposes, incredibly useless). Users do not go to Facebook to get their news content, let alone engage in political debate.
With that in mind, most Facebook users probably don’t get their news from ABC News either. Sure, Diane Sawyer is hot, but so are the smartly written blogs that cover both hard news and the really fascinating stuff (think Huff Post, Geekologie, Gawker, and Valley Wag, among others).
The co-sponsorship was valiant, and at least a start toward demonstrating how the web’s social model (personal opinion rules) can apply to the larger offline world (yes, Bill O’Reilly makes his guests sit in chairs lower than his). The next step: convince Facebook’s predominantly white, college educated, binge drinking demo to care.