Alan Dodaro

Matt Drobysh
Jessica Radogno
Final Project Report: Political Facebook

Competitive Analysis:
I. ORIGINAL FACEBOOK
Logo:
About: Facebook.com is a social network originally started to bring college students together
based on their schedules. It has evolved into a network that anyone can join to communicate,
post their interest, share pictures, videos, notes, blogs and more. Facebook is primarily what
we based our offshoot – “Political Facebook” – off of. Several political candidates do have
social facebook profiles already.
What we will use and do differently: Presently, if you look at a candidates profile on
facebook there is a lot of personal information. We want to eliminate this type of information
on our site and stick strictly to factual information that has to do with the issues (positions
held, main concerns, voting records, etc.)
II. PAYATTENTION.ORG
Logo:
About: PayAttention.org is a website that is devoted to informing people on the importance
of voting and of being aware of who you are voting for. There primary tactic is a website that
creates a spoof election including candidates such as “bag of leaves” and “side of hash
browns”. They emphasize that by not voting you are ultimately affecting the outcome of an
election. They include a link to voter registration. Although they do not directly provide any
information on candidates, they link to project vote smart, another one of our sources.
What we will use and do differently: What we will be taking from payattention.org has to
do primarily with theoretical ideas. We share the belief with them
that people need to be more aware of whether or not they are voting as well as who exactly
they are voting for. However, it does not seem like payattention.org takes a very proactive
approach to this problem. While it is funny and entertaining the site itself does not have any
relevant information on the candidates.
III. PROJECT VOTE SMART
Logo:
About: Project Vote Smart actually encompasses a lot of the information and the type of
information that we wanted to include on Political Facebook. They provide information about
candidates such as voting records, committees, experience, education and position on issues.
With regards to unbiased, factual information (as much as information can be unbiased in the
political industry) Project Vote Smart does the most efficient job and for this reason we based
a lot of the kinds of information included on our site from here.
What we will use and do differently: While we like all of the information that vote-smart
has to offer, and feel that it does the best job in providing factual unbiased information, there
are things that we want to do differently. Vote-smart’s interface is not extremely user
friendly. We plan to create an interface that is fun and easy to navigate – our goal in doing
this is that people will be more likely to use the site and for longer periods of time because
they will not be bored, confused or discouraged in searching for something.
IV. MYSPACE.COM
Logo:
About: Similar to facebook, myspace.com is a social networking website through which
users can create, update and maintain personal profiles. It has many of the same features of
facebook including profiles for candidates. In the future MySpace actually plans to do
something similar to what we have proposed and host a mock election.
What we will use and do differently: We also plan to do the mock election. Like facebook
however, we do not approve of the type of information that is presented on the candidate’s
profile pages. It is clear that the pages are being run by the candidates
themselves or someone from their camp. A recent legal situation with Obama and the man
who had previously been running his MySpace page demonstrates how much candidates
want to be in control of their own profiles. We plan to avoid such conflicts by removing
superfluous information such as announcement speeches, biased headlines and an overload of
hand-selected photographs.
V. SELECTSMART.COM
Logo:
About: Select-smart is a website that provides a number of different quizzes that, based on
your answers, advise you as to what decision to make about a particular subject. We used
their 2008 presidential candidate selector on our site.
What we will use and do differently: Originally we had planned on developing our own
quiz primarily because we didn’t want to use someone else’s. However, in reality, we
decided that none of us were qualified enough to develop quiz like the one we wanted. We
did however make a change to SelectSmart’s quiz in order to enhance it for college students.
A lot of college students who will be coming to our page in the first place do not have
extensive knowledge of candidates OR issues. We added hyperlinks into the quiz so that a
student could click to find out more about a particular issue before stating where they stand
on the issue.
VI. 4PRESIDENT.ORG
Logo:
About: 4president.org is a site we briefly referenced to illustrate the magnitude of sites that
are out there attempting to provide information about political candidates – this case for
president. The page provides very limited information on candidates and is relatively difficult
to navigate. We aren’t really using anything from this site other that the theoretical idea that
all of the candidates need to be presented somewhere and to illustrate the effort of people to
try and do this.
VII. ROCK THE VOTE
Logo:
About: Rock the Vote is geared toward a younger crowd which definitely applies to our
project. On their page you can register to vote, find out where to vote, join the team to help
others get out there and vote.
What we will use and do differently: We actually use the rock the vote campaign in our
site. They are most like our site with regards to the demographic they are appealing to. They
do not provide information on candidates and that is something we do include. Other than
that we like the interface and the goal they are trying to attain.
Design Log and Rationale
When we developed the idea of Political Facebook, we wanted to focus on creating a source
of information that college students could access easily and get plenty of unbiased
information. After several revised ideas, we developed a prototype that aims to achieve that
goal.
When we first got the general idea on the table, we envisioned persona(s). Our primary focus
is the “average” college student who doesn’t get much information on political candidates
and watches The Daily Show with Jon Stewart or the Colbert Report as a news source. We
also saw this persona as someone who is interested in networking online with Facebook. We
also figured that we could design for the college student who is politically interested or active
but doesn’t know about all of the candidates and focuses solely on their favorites. When we
thought about our design ideas more, we thought that Political Facebook could be very useful
for anyone looking for more information on all of the presidential candidates running for
office.
When we first came up with the idea, we wanted to have information from the popular
candidates as well as the lesser known candidates. Beyond that, we wanted to have legit
information that wasn’t biased. We saw this as a difficult task from the beginning.
Credibility was a huge concern for us. We thought we could address this issue by covering
the most candidates possible (if not all). Also, we thought that the information on each
candidate’s page should have equal amounts. Another decision we made was to exclude any
commentary on the candidates or any type of journalism as this almost always leads to bias.
As we began paper prototyping, we wanted to design a way for the user to have to look at
opposing candidates on each page. The original idea was to create a split screen with
different information on each side of the screen. We found this to be too intrusive to the user,
and we wanted to attract the average college student in order to spark interest instead of
putting them off.
As the prototype began taking shape, we considered adding video content. This we found to
be quite problematic for several reasons. One reason is that online video can
be easily manipulated, and there are countless videos on YouTube that have been edited to
change the original message. Another reason is that unpopular candidates don’t get as much
television coverage so the amount of video content would be unequal. Additionally, we
discussed how the actual video selection process would be biased, because we would be
determining which videos we thought were appropriate based on our opinion.
Our final prototype took into account these issues. We used a standard Facebook interface
that is switchable between the political candidates’ “social Facebook” (which are the
Facebook profiles pages created by the actual candidates), and “political Facebook (which
are the pages we created). This allows for a familiar user interface which will help attract the
average college student and be an easy process to learn. We focused on the key issues for
each candidate, and created a sidebar which had the photos of related candidates. The photos
do not include names so as to provide more incentive for the user to view their page. We also
included links to quizzes the user can take to get a better idea of which candidate’s political
views they most identify with. Overall, the design provides valuable information that will
hopefully spark the interest of the uninformed user and get them to look for more information
on various candidates.
Future Work
The first addition we would add to our prototype would be creating profiles for each and
every presidential candidate currently in the race. Additionally, we would like to implement a
Facebook primary in which users could vote for candidates and see the results based on their
network affiliation (school, state, etc.). Also, for each of the key issues on the candidates’
pages, we would use hyperlinks that would lead to where we cited the information.
We would also like to see how users interact with Political Facebook. We feel it would be
beneficial to get user feedback and see what features are most beneficial and which ones are
not. We learned that many of our realizations throughout the semester could have been made
earlier had we done more research as far as which features should be used. This of course is
difficult to foresee when creating a new design, but still may have helped. We feel that in the
future development of Political Facebook, user feedback will be essential.
Political Facebook Main Page

Facebook Primary PageAs the increase in popularity of social networking is on a

constant rise,[20] new uses for the technology are constantly being observed.

At the forefront of emerging trends in social networking sites is the concept of "real-time
web" and "location based." Real time allows users to contribute content, which is then
broadcasted as it is being uploaded - the concept is analogous to live radio and television
broadcasts. Twitter set the trend for "real time" services, where users can broadcast to the
world what they are doing, or what is on their minds within a 140 character limit.
Facebook followed suit with their "Live Feed" where users' activities are streamed as
soon as it happens.While Twitter focuses on words, Clixtr, another real time service,
focuses on group photo sharing where users can update their photo streams with photos
while at an event. Friends and nearby users can contribute their own photos and
comments to that event stream, thus contributing to the "real time" aspect of broadcasting
photos and comments as it is being uploaded. In the location based social networking
space, Foursquare gained popularity as it allowed for users to "check-in" to places that
they are frequenting at that moment. Gowalla is another such service which functions in
much the same way that Foursquare does, leveraging the GPS in phones to create a
location-based user experience. Clixtr, though in the real time space, is also a location
based social networking site since events created by users are automatically geotagged,
and users can view events occurring nearby through the Clixtr iPhone app. Recently,
Yelp announced its entrance into the location based social networking space through
check-ins with their mobile app; whether or not this becomes detrimental to Foursquare
or Gowalla is yet to be seen as it is still considered a new space in the internet technology
industry.[21]

One popular use for this new technology is social networking between businesses.
Companies have found that social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter are
great ways to build their brand image. According to Jody Nimetz, author of Marketing
Jive,[22] there are five major uses for businesses and social media: to create brand
awareness, as an online reputation management tool, for recruiting, to learn about new
technologies and competitors, and as a lead gen tool to intercept potential prospects.[22]
These companies are able to drive traffic to their own online sites while encouraging their
consumers and clients to have discussions on how to improve or change products or
services.

One other use that is being discussed is the use of Social Networks in the Science
communities. Julia Porter Liebeskind et al. have published a study on how New
Biotechnology Firms are using social networking sites to share exchanges in scientific
knowledge.[23] They state in their study that by sharing information and knowledge with
one another, they are able to "increase both their learning and their flexibility in ways that
would not be possible within a self-contained hierarchical organization." Social
networking is allowing scientific groups to expand their knowledge base and share ideas,
and without these new means of communicating their theories might become "isolated
and irrelevant".
Social networks are also being used by teachers and students as a communication tool.
Because many students are already using a wide-range of social networking sites,
teachers have begun to familiarize themselves with this trend and are now using it to their
advantage. Teachers and professors are doing everything from creating chat-room forums
and groups to extend classroom discussion to posting assignments, tests and quizzes, to
assisting with homework outside of the classroom setting. Social networks are also being
used to foster teacher-parent communication. These sites make it possible and more
convenient for parents to ask questions and voice concerns without having to meet face-
to-face.

Social networks are being used by activists as a means of low-cost grassroots organizing.
Extensive use of an array of social networking sites enabled organizers of the 2009
National Equality March to mobilize an estimated 200,000 participants to march on
Washington with a cost savings of up to 85% per participant over previous methods.[24]

The use of online social networks by libraries is also an increasingly prevalent and
growing tool that is being used to communicate with more potential library users, as well
as extending the services provided by individual libraries.

A final rise in social network use is being driven by college students using the services to
network with professionals for internship and job opportunities. Many studies have been
done on the effectiveness of networking online in a college setting, and one notable one is
by Phipps Arabie and Yoram Wind published in Advances in Social Network Analysis.[25]

[edit] Social network hosting service

A social network hosting service is a web hosting service that specifically hosts the user
creation of web-based social networking services, alongside related applications. Such
services are also known as vertical social networks due to the creation of SNSes which
cater to specific user interests and niches; like larger, interest-agnostic SNSes, such niche
networking services may also possess the ability to create increasingly-niche groups of
users.

[edit] Business model

Few social networks currently charge money for membership. In part, this may be
because social networking is a relatively new service, and the value of using them has not
been firmly established in customers' minds.[citation needed] Companies such as MySpace and
Facebook sell online advertising on their site. Their business model is based upon large
membership count, and charging for membership would be counterproductive.[26] Some
believe that the deeper information that the sites have on each user will allow much better
targeted advertising than any other site can currently provide.[27]

Social networks operate under an autonomous business model, in which a social

network's members serve dual roles as both the suppliers and the consumers of content.
This is in contrast to a traditional business model, where the suppliers and consumers are
distinct agents. Revenue is typically gained in the autonomous business model via
advertisements, but subscription-based revenue is possible when membership and content
levels are sufficiently high.[28]

[edit] Issues
[edit] Privacy