Facebook graph and politics
In last week’s Polichat the question was asked how Facebook’s graph search would change a campaign’s online advertising strategy. The fact is graph search doesn’t change much for campaigns, but the social graph can be a very powerful tool.
Facebook’s social graph is simply the people and connections a user has to everything they care about. This is what the Obama campaign tapped into with it’s targeted sharing tool it released towards the end of the 2012 campaign. It used the social graph to not just show users a random collection of friends to reach out to about helping the campaign or voting, but to show them close friends in key swing states like Wisconsin, Virginia, etc.
The campaign also used the graph to show users which of their friends were making phone calls, or which of their friends on election day should be encouraged to keep standing in line to vote. All of these actions that were shared with friends could then be boosted as an ad to those friends as well.
Graph search is simply a way for users to look up anything shared with them on Facebook and for others to find stuff shared with them. Each person see’s unique results. Campaigns can use this to show visitors to their website that have logged in with Facebook specific friends to share content with.
To learn more about the graph and how you can integrate it into your website visit developers.facebook.com.
Katie Harbath is a Manger for Policy at Facebook
