The Barack Obama campaign took Facebook campaigning to the next level today by launching an Obama application that users can add to their Facebook profile.  We haven’t had much of a chance to look around or investigate, but we can already feel that this is a big step in translating online support into offline action, the puzzle we all try to solve when dealing with social networks.

Here’s what the application does:

The Obama application puts the most recent campaign video and news on your profile and in front of your friends. It also enables you to easily communicate with your friends in early primary states where support for Barack is especially important.

More:

By adding Obama to your Facebook account, you allow it to put a box on your profile, place stories in your News Feed and Mini-Feed, add a link to your left hand menu, and to see portions of your Facebook data.

We’ll have a more in-depth look at the functions of this application and screenshots early this week, but from what we can tell already, this is a big step in Facebook campaigning.  This is the first step we’ve seen in actually harnessing all the Facebook can offer.  Aside from the profiles that Facebook offers the candidates and the subsequent support groups that have been created, not much has been done that can be translated into actual offline action. 

Until now.  Applications like this indicate the next level of supporter, not just someone who wants to be your “friend,” but someone who wants to go the extra step and actually participate.  The application becomes part of their Facebook experience and, in effect, part of their identity.  Updates will be shown on their news feed and more features can be added to connect and organize supporters in various parts of the country.

One of the developers of the application was Chris Hughes, one of Facebook’s co-founders and the current director of new media for Obama’s presidential campaign.  Good investment on their part, especially if this finally translates Facebook support into actual support.Â

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 26th, 2007 at 1:05 am and is filed under 2008 Election, Facebook, Social Networks, Social Web. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.