In the final weeks of the 2008 Election, the Obama campaign rolled out Facebook Connect onto My.BarackObama.com (MyBO) allowing Obama supporters to connect with their existing Facebook friends on MyBO and bring more of their Facebook friends into the online campaign for organizational and fundraising purposes. Because Facebook Connect launched so late in the '08 cycle, we have yet to see a full-blown example from a campaign on how to integrate this amazing functionality.
Enter Michael Bloomberg's re-election campaign for Mayor of New York City. From day one, Bloomberg's campaign has served as a best practice for online fundraising and organization. This week, the Bloomberg campaign announced their new "online community" with excellent execution of Facebook Connect allowing Bloomberg supporters to "connect" with their Facebook friends already on the Bloomberg site, but more importantly, allow them to publish any action they take on Bloomberg's campaign site onto Facebook, making the campaign's fundraising and organizational efforts more viral on the leading social network. The campaign's integration of the feature is already being compared to MyBO by the New York Times and with the high-profile nature of this race, Facebook Connect is sure to gain exposure amongst political communications professionals across the country.
For purposes of this post, I tested out the functionality so you could see an example of this incredible feature. From MikeBloomberg.com, I logged in to the site using my Facebook login information. Not only does it integrate my Facebook profile picture and my location but it also shows me which of my Facebook friends are on the Mike Bloomberg community. Most importantly, it allows me to "invite friends" to join the Bloomberg community as well.
So let's say I am a Latino supporting Mayor Bloomberg and I join the Latinos for Mike Bloomberg group within the MikeBloomberg.com community site. With Facebook Connect, once I join that group the site gives me the option to publish a story about me joining the group on Facebook that will appear in my friends' news feeds. I can even add a message for my Facebook friends to see.
Now, enter the magic of Facebook Connect for campaigns. Once I select publish and voluntarily post a story on Facebook about my involvement with the Bloomberg campaign, the viral effect of social networking can take shape to the benefit of the Bloomberg campaign. By publishing my activity on MikeBloomberg.com, I have allowed my Facebook friends to "comment" or "like" my Facebook post and even "join" the Bloomberg campaign directly from Facebook. One of the cool features of Bloomberg's integration of Facebook Connect is the third "join" option given to Facebook users which links people to the MikeBloomberg.com homepage to collect their email addresses in one of the most creative and presumably effective ways I have seen yet. Here's what the news story I published from MikeBloomberg.com looks like on my Facebook profile and in my friends' news feeds:
And while this is really cool functionality for joining a group, imagine the power it holds for online fundraising. With Facebook Connect, campaigns can now take the viral effect of online fundraising to Facebook. When I give $5, I can now let all of my friends know and invite them to do the same on the social network I, and my firneds, are using every day. That is the power of online fundraising.
Similar to MyBO, the new Bloomberg custom social network only allows supporters to take a limited number of actions for the campaign (join a group or RSVP for an event). In 2008, this was the best model as it only allowed supporters to take action that would be beneficial to the campaign. MyBO and the Bloomberg community do not allow supporters to upload pictures, videos and other fun items found on Facebook and other social networks and in 2008 this made sense as their was no viral or social benefit to the campaign to integrate these features. But with the emergence of Facebook Connect (and I am sure other services like it from other social networks between now and 2010) I am a little bit surprised that the Bloomberg campaign did not find a way to allow users to take these extra actions and publish that activity as well to Facebook. With Facebook Connect, it is no longer superfluous activity for your supporters to upload pictures and video to your site if they can publish that activity on Facebook, thus bringing more viral attention to your campaign. I will be interested to see if other campaigns experiment with this between now and November 2010.
Enter Michael Bloomberg's re-election campaign for Mayor of New York City. From day one, Bloomberg's campaign has served as a best practice for online fundraising and organization. This week, the Bloomberg campaign announced their new "online community" with excellent execution of Facebook Connect allowing Bloomberg supporters to "connect" with their Facebook friends already on the Bloomberg site, but more importantly, allow them to publish any action they take on Bloomberg's campaign site onto Facebook, making the campaign's fundraising and organizational efforts more viral on the leading social network. The campaign's integration of the feature is already being compared to MyBO by the New York Times and with the high-profile nature of this race, Facebook Connect is sure to gain exposure amongst political communications professionals across the country.For purposes of this post, I tested out the functionality so you could see an example of this incredible feature. From MikeBloomberg.com, I logged in to the site using my Facebook login information. Not only does it integrate my Facebook profile picture and my location but it also shows me which of my Facebook friends are on the Mike Bloomberg community. Most importantly, it allows me to "invite friends" to join the Bloomberg community as well.
So let's say I am a Latino supporting Mayor Bloomberg and I join the Latinos for Mike Bloomberg group within the MikeBloomberg.com community site. With Facebook Connect, once I join that group the site gives me the option to publish a story about me joining the group on Facebook that will appear in my friends' news feeds. I can even add a message for my Facebook friends to see.
Now, enter the magic of Facebook Connect for campaigns. Once I select publish and voluntarily post a story on Facebook about my involvement with the Bloomberg campaign, the viral effect of social networking can take shape to the benefit of the Bloomberg campaign. By publishing my activity on MikeBloomberg.com, I have allowed my Facebook friends to "comment" or "like" my Facebook post and even "join" the Bloomberg campaign directly from Facebook. One of the cool features of Bloomberg's integration of Facebook Connect is the third "join" option given to Facebook users which links people to the MikeBloomberg.com homepage to collect their email addresses in one of the most creative and presumably effective ways I have seen yet. Here's what the news story I published from MikeBloomberg.com looks like on my Facebook profile and in my friends' news feeds:
And while this is really cool functionality for joining a group, imagine the power it holds for online fundraising. With Facebook Connect, campaigns can now take the viral effect of online fundraising to Facebook. When I give $5, I can now let all of my friends know and invite them to do the same on the social network I, and my firneds, are using every day. That is the power of online fundraising.Similar to MyBO, the new Bloomberg custom social network only allows supporters to take a limited number of actions for the campaign (join a group or RSVP for an event). In 2008, this was the best model as it only allowed supporters to take action that would be beneficial to the campaign. MyBO and the Bloomberg community do not allow supporters to upload pictures, videos and other fun items found on Facebook and other social networks and in 2008 this made sense as their was no viral or social benefit to the campaign to integrate these features. But with the emergence of Facebook Connect (and I am sure other services like it from other social networks between now and 2010) I am a little bit surprised that the Bloomberg campaign did not find a way to allow users to take these extra actions and publish that activity as well to Facebook. With Facebook Connect, it is no longer superfluous activity for your supporters to upload pictures and video to your site if they can publish that activity on Facebook, thus bringing more viral attention to your campaign. I will be interested to see if other campaigns experiment with this between now and November 2010.
