Can Obama Turn Friends into Voters?

Online fans don't always make it to the polls. Now the candidate and social networks like Facebook and MySpace are laboring to get out the vote

Barack Obama's web site banner announcing Joe Biden as his running mate.

by Catherine Holahan

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If online "friends" were a proxy for voters, Barack Obama could accept the Presidency, and not just the Democratic nomination, on Aug. 28. With more than 1.8 million supporters on Facebook and MySpace (NWS), Obama's base on the leading U.S. social networks is nearly seven times that of John McCain.

But history hasn't shown that online supporters turn out in November. If anything, it's proved the opposite. Remember the Deaniacs? Howard Dean's supporters were all over social networks such as Meetup.com in 2004, making the current Democratic National Committee chairman the presumptive nominee that year. But Dean's overwhelming Web support didn't translate into dominance in the primaries.

Already, some of Obama's highest-profile online supporters have proved fair-weather friends at the polls. The famed "Obama Girl," whose video about having a crush on the politician has been watched nearly 9.3 million times on YouTube (GOOG), reportedly didn't vote in February's primary in New Jersey, where she is registered.

Obama's campaign and the social networks themselves are determined to make sure this election will be different. They're employing a variety of techniques unique to social networks, such as leveraging users' friend connections, to try to ensure that supporters turn out in November. "There is a huge difference between 2004 and 2008 because of social media," maintains Andrew Rasiej, co-founder of the Personal Democracy Forum, a nonpartisan site that monitors how technology affects politics.

Peer Pressure

Take MyBarackObama.com, for example. When users log on to the Obama campaign's social network for supporters, they immediately see an "activity index" measuring their recent involvement in Obama's campaign. "Activity" in this case includes calls made to voter lists, events hosted, and funds raised. The index, which displays actions taken on behalf of Obama in the past week, month, and throughout the campaign, includes a public ranking between 1 and 10, with 1 being the lowest.

That ranking is visible to fellow social network members. The idea is to create peer pressure on individuals to raise their ratings. After all, it could be uncomfortable to be exposed to friends and fellow supporters as having done little for a shared cause. It would be especially embarrassing if a member's friends learned they hadn't even bothered to vote. (The profile asks users to submit information about whether they are registered to vote and, presumably in the future, whether they did go to the polls.)

Social pressure is a proven method used by organizers to get people to actively support a cause, says Joe Green, co-founder of Causes, a Facebook program that lets users show support for their favorite causes and drum up donations for charities. Nonprofits regularly publicize the names of top donors, in part to spur competition for recognition among community members. Social networking tools that allow members to see who participates in a cause do the same thing, says Green, and encourage users to become active in greater numbers. The key is having users' authentic friends involved so those members feel someone they care about is relying on their support, says Green.

Obama App

The problem for Obama is that his social network's members are more likely to vote anyway, says Green. So the Democrat also is reaching out to those networks where less active supporters and their friends spend time. His campaign has created a program for Facebook that shows users how many peers also support the candidate. That so-called Obama App, or widget, taps two forces in social networks: people's fascination for seeing what their friends are up to and peer pressure.