Facebook Friends...Are You Serious?

Many of you may have noticed something in our candidate write-ups...Facebook friend counts. You must be thinking we can't possibly be serious. It's Facebook! Friends aren't some popularity contest. This is dumb.

Let me give you a little history of NISG Presidential races...

• 2007 - Morse-Bentley run unopposed and win.
• 2008 - Bentley-Doudna v. Cezar-Lodbell. Both groups launch their Facebook groups day one of campaigning. Bentley-Doudna take an early group size lead, then Cezar-Lobdell surges back. For the final 3 weeks of campaigning, Cezar-Lobdell holds the group size edge. They win the election.
• 2009 - Haselhuhn-Rudy v. Boeckmann-Palomo. My ticket took an early lead in the Facebook group race. Adam's ticket surges back to start off week three of campaigning. They hold the edge for the next month and win the race.
• 2010 - Anderson-Hashman run unopposed.

In every race since the explosion of Facebook, the bigger Facebook group has won. Now, let's look at the friend totals of these candidates in the competitive races:
Bentley: 1090 (down from 2k while running)
Doudna: 1473
Cezar: 3228
Lobdell: Unknown (was over 2k while running)
Haselhuhn: 1324
Rudy: 1389
Boeckmann: 1607
Palomo: 772 (down from 1k+ while campaigning)

These counts are all well above typical friend totals. Do they mean that these people are popular so people vote for them? No, of course not. Large friend counts are important because of the outreach potential they give you. You're able to invite your whole friends list to your Facebook group, which gives you a chance to promote your ticket. Your posted items and statuses get more likes and comments. More likes and comments puts it onto more newsfeeds which gives it even more likes and comments, and so forth. Large friend counts let you get known.

You don't even have to know all the people (though it certainly helps). When I was preparing for my run, I was adding friends like a madman. The Econ Club? Add them all. UNI Freethinkers and Inquirers? College Republicans? Every person in those groups got a friend request from me. A large percentage of them accept and you start generating views on your profile.

In the two days of this blog's existence, Adam and I have been able to get nearly 300 hits to the site by merely posting it on Facebook. Do you think this would be possible if we only had 300 friends a piece? Of course not. But with our 2600 unique friends between us, we're able to gain an audience. Imagine the advantage this gives to candidates.

Still don't think Facebook matters. At the time of this post, Potential Candidate Rhonda Greenway had 1,021 friends. That is an increase from 849 after our first post about her candidacy. How about her VP, Adam Beaves? Yesterday he was at 757. As of this post, he was up to 827. Also take a minute and think about the amount of time you spend on Facebook each day. I bet for the majority of you, it is typical to log on over three times a day! Facebook is one of the most important tools a campaign has at its disposal - let's see who uses it best!