Facebook offered a great way to connect people and enabled them to communicate quite efficiently. As such, it is slowly becoming a very important tool in politics. The way Barack Obama primarily used it (i.e. to communicate with the electorate) was just the beginning.
Thanks to the ease of spreading what you have to say and gaining supporters in just a few clicks, we see and are going to see Facebook used as a hub for political movements that were too weak to gain attention among their potential followers in pre-Facebook days. Moreover, it has never been so fast and easy to coordinate activities, vote and present outcomes to the general public on a massive scale.
This is how you do it
Over 15,000 individuals "from Facebook" signed a virtual petition for the new controversial Czech National Library by supporting it on Facebook. Furthermore, they used Facebook to coordinate a manifestation. This was the first time I've heard about Facebook in Czech media, who rather clumsily treated the Facebook community as almost homogenous "people from Facebook".
The Causes application looks like it was created just to make people's voice heard and is likely to play a role in the future. Wanna "Make St.George's Day a Bank Holiday in England" - fine, join the cause, like over 500,000 individuals did! How long would it normally take to get 500,000 signatures on a petition? Would it be even worth it? This is a massive public force forming here...
... and some people are sure to abuse it. This specific cause entry created by English Democrats looks more like being focused on collecting donations than supporting the cause.
What I'm trying to say is that Facebook is a potential source or rather a vehicle of tremendous power and let's hope it's going to be used in a way beneficial for everyone.
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