In a Spin – a Facebook Thing
20Aug2007
I recently wrote about one of my Facebook friends being the Premier of Bermuda, Dr. Ewart Brown. Well, now I am proud to say that I am also friends with Michael Dunkley, the Leader of the Opposition.
Many would wonder how I can be friends with the two most politically influential people in Bemuda. Am I a spin doctor in my spare time? No. But there is definitely some spin doctoring going on here. Both have seen (or, more likely, have been shown by those spin doctors) the power and scope of Facebook. They are both trying to appeal to the youth vote. I see two major problems with that approach:
1) The average age of the typical user is increasing now that Facebook has opened up membership to non-college email addresses. I would guess that there are many more thirty-somethings now than there ever were. So there are still many young college graduates on the site, but it is not targetting the youth vote that maybe it once could have.
2) Not everyone they are trying to target is a voter. Take me, for example, I am a Facebook user living in Bermuda, but I am also an expatriate who can’t vote. What use am I to Dr. Brown or Mr. Dunkley?
So, down to the brass tacks, who is the more popular? At the time of writing this entry, Dunkley only has 255 friends in Bermuda, whereas the Premier has 350. But I do like how Dunkley lists his employer as the “People of Bermuda (By election)“. Nice touch. And I notice that they haven’t befriended each other. Strange, that…
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