My Lovely Blog

Social media is becoming increasingly more popular and prevalent in our country, as demonstrated by the success of websites like Facebook and MySpace. People have embraced these tools, and now many companies and organizations have jumped on the bandwagon and are using these platforms to promote their product and/or company.

The presidential election this month demonstrated the vast popularity of social media, as it had a large impact on the election.

Many will remember that news of Barack Obama’s vice presidential pick was delivered via text message to those people who signed up on his website to receive the text.

Although the campaigns still spent huge amounts of money on TV ads, many of my friends used YouTube to watch campaign messages from the two candidates.

Facebook is one social networking site that definitely tapped into election fever. There were hundreds of Facebook groups in support of both candidates, as well as ads on the side of the website reminding people to vote and promoting the candidates. On Election Day, there was even a special box at the top of the homepage where users could find their polling location and report that they had cast their vote. There was a running tally of users who had placed their vote that day, and by the end more than 5,000,000 Facebook users reported that they had voted.

Twitter had a special page dedicated to the election where users could voice their political opinions and ramblings all day long. Some of the people I follow on Twitter had updated their statuses from their phone to let their followers know how long the poll lines were where they were.

News stations even completely embraced social media throughout the election. I remember watching the news on Election Day and seeing pictures of the long poll lines that ordinary people had sent into the news station via phone.

I think one of the most significant things about social media in regards to politics is the fact that anyone can voice their opinion and state which candidate they are running for using these sites. I know many people who are more swayed by how one of their friends or someone they admire is voting, than TV ads or smear campaigns.

Obama’s campaign truly embraced social media, much more so than McCain’s campaign did. Obama encouraged his supporters to blog, chat, and he had an account on most social networking sites, including Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn.

This is something that I think helped Obama out a lot in his campaign. With young people so infatuated with social media, there is no question that his involvement and promotion of it helped garner support from the younger generations.

Social media is not looking like it’s going to fade away any time soon, so we might as well embrace it. Hey, Obama did, and look where he got.