Right as I was about to start writing this post, I just discovered one of the cooler things I have ever seen on Facebook.  A friend of mine from South Korea, who attends Princeton, posted something written in Korean on one of his friend’s walls that came up in my feed.  His post was written in Korean so obviously I couldn’t understand it, but right next to the characters was a link that said, “see translation” (translated by Bing). I just thought it was really cool how Facebook truly does connect people in so many ways, including connecting people who speak different languages. I’m sure many of you have already seen this cool function on Facebook, but I thought it was worth sharing.

Anyways, what I actually wanted to write about in this post is how Facebook can play an important role in the upcoming election.  This will be the first time in my life I can vote in a presidential election, so I want to be extremely well informed, and along with many other things, being involved in the Facebook part of the campaign will be a good way to stay up to date with what is going on. The candidates both will spend millions of dollars advertising, and many millions of these will be spent advertising online, and some undoubtedly will be on Facebook.  On Romney’s Facebook page, he has over 7 million likes, and over 2,000 comments on his cover photo.  Compared to Obama’s 28 millions likes, this makes Romney’s page seem much less significant. However, it is clear that Facebook drives discussions about elections, encourages people to vote, and enables the candidates to express their views, share news on upcoming debates and things of this nature, and advertise for their campaign.  It is also interesting how this is such a new method of campaigning, seeing how Facebook was only launched in 2004.  Facebook grew at an incredible rate from the time it was launched, and it didn’t take politicians long to figure out this could be a good place to connect with their supporters.  Because I am interested in seeing just how much Romney and Obama will advertise in the time leading up to the election, I have just liked both of them to see the extent to which they advertise, and how they utilize the social network to gain support from Americans.  I expect to see a lot of posts from them about their plans for America, rallies that their supporters can attend, and once election day rolls around, I’m sure they will telling EVERYONE to get out and vote.