I’m not the only one tracking candidate Facebook profiles. The Hotline, a political blog by National Journal, has been keeping stats, too. Check out this post from April 20 (which also has links to all the candidates’ Facebook profiles).
I’ve decided to join the research excitement; I’ve opened an Excel spreadsheet & I’m going to update the number of public “supporters”1 each candidate has on a weekly basis. Once I have enough data, I’ll put together a swanky little graph. I’ll also try to keep track of appearances on The Daily Show & The Colbert Report to see if there’s any “bump” following appearances. Should be fun!
FYI: Since the April 20 Hotline post, and as of only a few days ago, Bill Richardson has joined Facebook. And in a short amount of time, he’s gathered 1,753 “supporters”—which puts him in 5th place among the Dems (only three supporters shy of Joe Biden, who’s in 4th place). Running away w/ the lead, of course, is the seemingly unstoppable Obamamania train (his 66,994 is far beyond 2nd place Hillary Clinton’s 19,298). Rudy Giuliani still doesn’t have a Facebook profile—though his website (joinrudy2008.com) is rather smooth.
You can also find some interesting analysis of candidate web presence—and its effect on their campaigns—at Blog PI. Ah, the internets!
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1 Yes, I realize that there’s a potential methodological problem in recording “supporters” but not taking into account membership in Facebook groups (especially since some candidates don’t have Facebook profiles, but do have Facebook support groups). But if we count membership in Facebook groups, we have the problem that there are thousands upon thousands of such groups, not all of them official, and many w/ cross-membership (people can join any number of groups supporting the same candidate). Since Facebook candidate “supporters” are treated like “friends,” each supporter is counted only once, which significantly reduces potential measure errors. Of course, this counting rule can’t measure support for candidates who don’t have (official) personal Facebook profiles.
