Tuesday, November 02, 2010

Social Media Makes It Hard For Americans To Forget To Vote


Posted by Amanda Walsh


Without crossing the line of addressing politics, I wanted to highlight one Election Day Web 2.0 change that caught my attention today on Facebook.


This morning on the landing page, at the top of my news feed, a box appeared that read, “Today is Election Day.” This box featured a running counter of all Facebook users who had clicked "I voted" including a personalized running tally of my Facebook friends who had gone to the polls today.


Wow, what a nice reminder to voters. To make things more convenient, the Election Day box also had an embedded link for users to find out where the closest polling booth is in their neighborhood.


I checked out the headlines on CNN.com where I found this article, No dearth of U.S. voter resources online by Mark Milian. Milian reports on the Facebook reminder box and Politics Page, that is visible to even non-Facebook users (there are still some of you out there). The article continues and highlights Google's Election Center, which among other things, offers an Elections application that allows users "to search for election information by entering their home address."


With Election Day reminders all over social media platforms this year, as Milian notes, it will be unbelievable for many Web-surfing Americans to try the old "I forgot to vote" excuse!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Lots to be said for social networking sites in spreading the word about things - whether good or bad.

DC Criminal Lawyer