According to a recent poll, most voters would prefer Barack Obama as a Facebook friend. Based on the results of the Esquire and Yahoo! News survey, of the 1,000 respondents asked, 48% replied that they would pick Barack Obama as their Facebook friend, as compared to 25% who would want Romney to be their friend. This seems to be an indication of the like-ability of the respective presidential candidates – for another 54% of the respondents said that they would prefer to take a road trip with the President compared to 29% who would prefer to hit the road with Mitt Romney. These results, overwhelmingly favorable for Barack Obama, are not indicative of how the population feels about who would make a better president – on that question, the public is much more narrowly split. Today’s Gallup Poll finds that registered voters are divided 50% for Obama and 45% for Romney with a 1% margin of error.
The fact that voters would prefer to road trip or have Barack Obama as a Facebook friend, despite maybe not preferring him for president, is a fascinating statement about how voters see Facebook. To them, Facebook appears to be a social space – one that they would prefer to fill with people whose company they enjoy, not necessarily who’s policies they support.
This is also indicative of a successful social media strategy employed by the Obama Campaign. For the idea is to be hip on Facebook. In many ways, it’s similar to the practice social advertising that we discussed on Tuesday – users are more likely to click on an advertisement if a friend is associated with it. And individuals are much more likely to like the Obama or Romney campaigns on Facebook if they get the impression that all their friends are on board. Last year, I had the opportunity to interview a former Clinton White House communications operative about the changes social media is making to the way that campaigns work. He referred to social networks as having a “virtual water cooler effect.” As he described it, campaigns can involve people in their operations on social media by making casual connections via their friends. In other words, if you see that your Facebook friends are sharing links or memes about Barack Obama on Facebook, it’s akin to having a casual conversation with a coworker by the water cooler in the office. You learn about it from people you know (much better than conversing with an unknown campaign operative over the phone), and you are much more likely to jump in.
As part of this strategy, campaigns use social media to highlight the more popularly appealing sides of candidates. Barack Obama’s Facebook Page is home to compelling family photos and personal stories of meeting with supporters. These endearing images are much more likely to spread across social networks, engendering support from friends as they go.