Tactic: polling the Facebook way

Written by Mary on May 30, 2008 – 4:35 pm -


logos of the different Facebook groups that MoveOn members can join to express their opinion about the Democratic party’s nomination battle

Description: The progressive group MoveOn wants to know how its members feel about the struggle between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton for the Democratic party nomination. Instead of using a tradition poll, they created a series of Facebook groups and asked members to vote by joining the group whose message they most agreed with, ranging from “wake me up when this primary is over” to “Obama: you won! time to focus on McCain” (see graphic above). MoveOn staff will track the number of members who join each group and from these numbers will be able to tell which views are most popular with their members.

Organizer: MoveOn is an influential online progressive group in the US with 3 million members.

Purpose of Action: To gauge the feelings of MoveOn members about the primary battle between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, the contenders for the Democratic party nomination. MoveOn will use this knowledge about its members’ preferences to guide its own actions as an organization. It does not want to promote a policy that its own members don’t support.

Organizing Tools: Facebook

Outcome: About 3,800 MoveOn members have voted since the poll opened two days ago. The winning message so far, with 1,667 members, is “Obama: you won! time to focus on McCain.”

Ease of Replication: It is free to start a group on Facebook and fairly easy too. You just go to the Facebook Groups homepage and then click create a new group. You can create as many groups as you want. Then inform your supporters of the poll via e-mail or a Facebook message and tell them to join the group they most agree with.


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Posted in Americas, Social Networks, Tactics |

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