Obama Rules Facebook? A Million Pokes, NOT Votes!
By DONNA BOGATIN • Jun 23rd, 2008 • Category: CONFERENCE CIRCUITThe hard economic value of Facebook is as vaporous as the hard political value of Facebook friends.
Barack Obama has 1,000,000 Facebook friends, the democratic presidential nominee’s Internet strategy spokesperson beamed today at the Personal Democracy Forum in New York City. Big deal! His John McCain counterpart countered.
Obama may be leading McCain 9 to 1 in terms of Facebook bragging rights, but adolescent poking is not a proxy for real supporter commitment, and votes, the McCain campaign is confident, and thankful.
Brand Barack Obama’s “change” slogan is tailor made for Facebook’s facile political “engagement” pitch.
Whlile Obama claims to be offer real revolutionary leadership in the style of John and Robert Kennedy, the American “engagement” he believes he is inspiring is as facile, self-satisfying, and ultimately empty, as the act of putting a “friend” check mark on the Obama Facebook page.
Millions of MySpacers are automatically Tom Anderson’s “friend”: A Facebook Obama “friendship” is almost as rote.
Obama is happy to inflate Facebook “suppporters,” nevertheless, by bestowing a Facebook poke with momentous implications:
For those who have touted the conventional wisdom that young people don’t care about politics, there couldn’t be a better (1,000,000) testament to the energy and enthusiasm of young people today.
Obama’s political feel-good strategy is age agnostic: He flatters all Americans into believing that a vote for him is a proxy for the actual feet-on-the-street Chicago “community organizing” he waxes poetic about on the campaign trail.
Obama hails on his fundraising Website: “I’m asking you to believe. Not just in my ability to bring about real change in Washington, I’m asking you to believe in yours.”
Unfortunately, however, the only “change” Obama actually provides any actionable guidance on concerns how to vote, and get out the vote, for his own personal candidacy for the presidency of the United States.
DONNA BOGATIN is the Founder & CEO of STARTUP ALPHA
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