I Voted: Thanks, Social Networking
Image credit: brettneilson on Flickr.
Today, is Election Day in the U.S. and I’m happy to say that “I Voted”. What I’m a little surprised to add to that is that “social networking really helped me to do it.” Today we saw some really cool election-related programs in social networks: there’s the “Election Day Message” on Facebook, there’s a new “I Voted” badge available on FourSquare and, of course, there’s a currently-thriving hashtag on Twitter.
I have to say, amid my somewhat-hectic collegiate schedule, if it weren’t for these social network’s programs (as well as the wonderful Google Tasks) I might not have gotten around to it.
*GASP* Oh, no. Is that unpatriotic to say?
No, no, I’m still a patriot. However, I’m also a citizen of the internet, and I think all this is a very interesting occurrence.
Alexander Howard’s exciting article at Read Write Web exposes the way FourSquare views Social Voting (and, indeed, FourSquare as a whole) as an exercise in Game Theory. I feel that this is an interesting development in the evolution of Social Networks.
Social Networks have always been driven by deeply democratic forces, and bringing that force to the democratic process of a nation is a very natural and awesome direction for these tools to go. What’s more, Social Networks are uniquely suited for Game Mechanics to a staggering level that traditional campaign management and advertising could only dream of.
It’s a certain coincidence that two wonderful TED Talks were published to TED.com back to back, the former being Tom Chatfield’s exciting talk on Game Mechanics in Social Gaming, and the latter David Bismark’s talk on voting technology. Both are worth a watch.
A democratic process with explicit Game Mechanics in play certainly seems to be the future, but, as with all technology, will also require us to rethink which forces are and are-not appropriate. At any rate, it helped me to vote, so my opinion is that it’s very worthwhile.