You can message them, friend them and write a note about them. If you really want to get their attention, you might even want to poke them.
You may not know a thing about Facebook, but they sure do.
Eager the win the `Generation Y` vote, candidates on the national and local level are beginning to turn toward technology that even they do not fully understand, but, according to many of their campaign staffers, it is a necessity. In order to make the best use of their resources, staffers say, candidates must jump on the social networking bandwagon to stay afloat in the race for the 21st District Congressional seat.
Facebook, a social networking Web site, allows its users from around the globe to log on and search for people they know, or want to know. Once found, there are various options as far as how to get in touch with the person, including an informal attention grabber called a `poke,` where Facebook simply lets the person know another user has found them.
Facebook began as a medium for college students to remain in touch with their high school friends after leaving home to attend universities and pursue careers throughout the country. Soon, the site opened up for community college users, then high school users, then adults.
Nearly five years after its introduction, Facebook has become a place not only for the average person to make friends, but also for celebrities to gain fans, and politicians to gain supporters.
Support was one of the reasons candidate Tracey Brooks got on Facebook when she began her campaign in February.
`When she launched her campaign in February, she launched her campaign in a net-roots and grassroots way,` said Brooks’ spokesman Kyle Kotary. `She said right off the bat, ‘I’m going to combine high tech tools with grassroots [techniques].’`
Kotary credited the Brooks campaign with being one of the first to focus on online campaigning in an aggressive manner. Brooks is featured not only on Facebook, but also MySpace, Flickr, YouTube and Partybuilder.
Brooks is not the only candidate using various social networking Web sites.
Fellow Democrat Darius Shahinfar can be found on Facebook, YouTube, Flickr and Linkedin; Republican candidate Steven Vasquez is on Facebook, MySpace, Linkedin, Break the Matrix and Meetup; and Democrat Phil Steck is on both Facebook and Linkedin.
Vasquez is the only candidate to have a personal page, along with his political page. On it, Vasquez writes messages to friends, updates them as to what he is doing (about which he wrote, `Steven Vasquez is campaigning until he turns red, white and blue`) and has taken advantage of a feature called `super poke` in which it appears that he has thrown a fictional gummy bear at a friend.
While he has campaign staffers maintaining his political page, Vasquez said that with his personal page he is able to reach voters in a different way.
`It makes it so that I appear to be more approachable,` he said.
Democratic candidate Joe Sullivan said he is limiting his online presence to his campaign Web site.
`I’m just not familiar with them [social networking sites], so that’s primarily it,` he said. `Hopefully, you will look at my [Web] site, and you will see that there’s a lot of substance there.`
Sullivan is not the only candidate who is not on Facebook. Also forgoing a Facebook presence is Republican candidate Jim Buhrmaster, though he does have a MySpace page.
According to Buhrmaster’s campaign spokesman Josh Hills, the candidate wanted to `keep it simple` on the Internet.
`In political campaigns, the Internet is getting much more credibility as a voter contact tool than it really is,` he said.
Shahinfar, however, said the Internet does deserve credibility for `[reaching] younger voters in a way that they like to be reached.`
`As you know, they’re a group that doesn’t always engage in politics,` he said. `This is one of the things we can do to engage younger voters.`
Tom Nardacci, spokesman for Phil Steck, said Facebook and other social networking sites are a way for the candidates to reach Generation Y voters, a group of people between the ages of 18 and 28.
Nardacci said one of the reasons for the page is that this generation is `most likely not watching the 6 o’clock news,` and that Steck wanted to reach voters on the Internet.
In addition to his main political page, Steck has a student support page run by student voters.
Paul Tonko’s Facebook page is run by younger campaign staffers, according to his spokesman, Beau Duffy, who said that Tonko has, on occasion, maintained the page on his own. Duffy said the page helps campaigners reach voters in `a structured way.`
Looking at the affiliations, or `friends,` on each candidate’s page, something is missing from each and every one: the other candidates.
All of the candidates’ spokespeople, as well as Vasquez and Shahinfar, said that while they may not currently be friends on Facebook with the other candidates, they would welcome the idea.“