by david_shankbone
Facebook Gives Politico Deep Access to Users’ Political Sentiments
[Via AllThingsD]
Counting Twitter mentions would have you believe that Ron Paul is the most popular Republican candidate in the ongoing U.S. primaries. Umm, right. But some social media analysis of politics is going beyond that. A partnership between Facebook and Politico announced today is one of the more far-reaching efforts. It will consist of sentiment analysis reports and voting-age user surveys, accompanied by stories by Politico reporters
[More]
Let’s make Colbert the top choice, at least on Facebook, so that Politico will have to write about it.
Of course, this will work because Facebook is such an accurate reflection of all of America /snark
Look at the demographics of Facebook and you find that 5 times as many people between 18-24 use it than the people between 55-64. Yet, in reality, the numbers are about the same – about 10%
Twice as many women between 55-64 use it than men. In reality, there are only 1.3 times as many women 65 and older as men.
10% of the users cannot even vote, being under 18 – meaning that 90% of the users are 18 or older. Yet, in reality, the percentage of people 18 and older is 75%
65% of the users are under the age of 34, while in reality, 48% of Americans are under 34.
Minorities use Facebook in ways that Caucasians do not. Substantially more Hispanic and African-Americans use Facebook to support causes than Caucasians.Almost twice as many people from minorities use Facebook to get the word out that whites. In fact, according to this Facebook page, a higher percentage of each minority visits Facebook than Non-Hispanic Whites (i.e. 36% Latinos use Facebook vs. 19% of Whites).
While 16% of Facebook using households make less than $30,000 a year, 34% of Americans do. In fact, the wealthy are over represented on Facebook. Only 6% of households actually make over $150,000, yet more than 10% of the Facebook users do.
So, while it is good to see that minorities may have a greater voice than normal, the poor do not. It also means that without careful analysis, the sentiments on Facebook may have little to do with actual sentiments.
But it will surely give Politico crap to write, which is all they care about. actually providing objective, useful facts is secondary.
So, in the spirit of things, I want my voice to count to I really think Colbert should be President as he is the best one. The really, really best one. The bestest one since, well, forever. It would mean that someone whose name is pronounced slightly Frecnhy would finally become President, showing we have overcome our prejudice against the French – who, after all, were our staunch allies when it counted most on the late 18th century.
Colbert would be swell. I hope I get a chance to vote for him.
