Facebook Changes Dynamics of Race

Nov. 3, 2008— -- Facebook, a network that lets you log on, trade messages and share photos and videos with friends, has become a 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week hub of political interaction.

Americans are voraciously swapping news and videos from the campaign trail, and analyzing the candidates.

"Facebook is going to be a generational transformation of American politics and forever it's going to change the way campaigns are run," Columbia University history professor David Eisenbach said.

According to a January ABC News/Facebook poll, the Internet rivals television as one of the top sources of news about the presidential race.

"Every day we see over 200,000 posts that mention either [Democrat Barack] Obama or [Republican John] McCain," Facebook market development director Randi Zuckerberg said.

The Obama team got into Facebook early in the campaign, and more than 2 million users have signed on as Obama supporters. The McCain camp has rallied more than 600,000 Facebook supporters of its own.  A team of campaign workers are dedicated to reaching them with messages, getting the word out to an unlimited number of users

But it's not just the big race -- Facebook is having a significant impact on local races, too.

"In some ways Facebook can be even more influential to local campaigns and politicians," Zuckerberg said. "Because those are places where a few thousand votes really matter and a few thousand votes can really swing a race."

New Jersey Democratic congressional candidate Dennis Shulman uses Facebook to rally support in his race against incumbent Rep. Scott Garrett.

"We have over 400 supporters and it makes it possible for us to keep in touch with all of them," Shulman said.