The Qube Exchange

The NY Times reports that Obama has launched an application on the highly publicized Facebook open platform. Since Facebook opened its doors to third-party applications, many new apps have seen exponential growth since joining the platform. Perhaps the most notable is iLike, the online music service which is signing up about 300,000 users a day thanks to Facebook.

But the Obama camp is the first presidential hopeful to build an app on the site. The application adds a widget to your profile that shows videos, news, and calls to action from the campaign. It also allows you to see how many of your friends also have the application. The campaign is truly innovative in leveraging the social appeal associated with the candidacy in a place where users are concerned with their appearances to friends. Because of this, the application will likely experience strong viral growth. To read more about the app, Rick Klau has a great summary on his blog.

But how far will the political camps push this? The Facebook platform provides a great opportunity for all candidates to publicize their policies and popularity, but Facebook also has great potential to be the newest location of young adult voting drives. Remember MTV’s Rock the Vote? MTV, begin building Facebook application….now! “I Rocked the Vote” widgets may become as symbolic as the Iraqi purple fingers amongst American young voters next fall. Drew Meyers writes more about social media in political communications.