Politicians move to Facebook

When Facebook first came out, it was not a big thing but at one point it exploded and now basically everyone has an account there. It´s because Facebook has this intelligent image. There are communities about serious topics and you can really find people who think like you and share you´re ideas.

Recently I started to notice that more and more politicians are moving to Facebook. It really got me thinking that is it really possible that Parties and politicians have realised that there is a very large amount of uncovered ground. The minds and votes of youngsters who think that they have been left out of everything and due to that think that voting is stupid and won´t change anything. This is a really serious matter and actually I´m really happy that this is happening. Finally politicians are paying attention to youngsters who are our future.

This phenomenon is catching everyone. If typing in Obama to the search engine- there are over 500 results. Mccaine has a little bit over 200 results. What does this mean? It is becoming more and more of an self advertaising and strong campaigning space before the elections and even the time in between cause the communities stay active all the time the number of supporters grow everyday. This is an ideal space/ mean to get closer to goals.

This year there are the European Parliament Elections. The young candidates for example Karoli Hindriks, who is the third number of the conservative party IRL, have set up their support groups on Facebook.

Also there are the local government elections this fall. Some parties have already started promoting them trough Facebook and Orkut. Though the law in Estonia is that campaigning can start 44 days before the elections- this rule does not apply to the internet and social communities such as Facebook, Orkut and Twitter. So the parties are really taking advantage of this situation and creating their communities. Mostly this done by the youth organisation of the party. The way how to get trough to people are through their friends . If you see that your friend is a fan of Mart Laar then how can you not be. Therefore you click the button and the influencing begins.

This is a whole new area of self promotion and the ways of doing it are expanding everyday. We shall see how it works in Estonia. In the states it worked, Obama was elected. So lets wait and see what happens in Estonia.