The app that ushered in a new way to use social media to dramatically affect results in the last presidential election has been scrapped by Facebook. The targeted sharing technology – which allows users to share their friend list with official campaigns of candidates - was instrumental in propelling Barack Obama’s reelection campaign.
The app allowed the campaign to use the names obtained from Facebook users to then suggest to supporters which friends to share political information with. The social media targeting model proved more effective with some voters than traditional advertising methods.
But Facebook has decided to shut down the strategy by rolling out changes to its product (API + TOS), preventing future campaigns from using the tool that helped pull off a historic victory.
The change is line with earlier Facebook changes this year related to privacy and data sharing with third-party applications. It updated its API and TOS and extended existing apps until April 2015 before the new changes will kick in.
Essentially, the privacy changes make it more difficult for people to share their friend list with an app - only if that friend also uses the app can the friend’s information be shared.
The discussion examines how these changes are likely to affect upcoming elections and raises the possibility of additional changes before the next presidential election in 2016.
Comments