The first Facebook election?
Updated on 21 March 2010
There are 24 million Facebook users in the UK - almost the same number of people who voted in the last general election. Will the social networking site change the political game in this year's contest?
Barack Obama, now the President of the United States of America, changed the face of campaigning when he galvanised the online community through Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to win the 2008 US Election.
As the election in the UK draws closer, all eyes are on our three major political parties - Labour, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats - to see how they will harness the power of social media and the internet.
Tomorrow, Facebook will launch a page called Democracy UK which will carry the latest campaign information from each particular party. Facebook users will also begin to see more targeted advertising from political parties on their pages.
Richard Allan, Facebook's director of European public policy and formerly a Lib Dem MP for Sheffield Hallam, says this could be the year when UK politicians wake up to the potential of social networking websites.
"Historically, the internet has been the dog that didn't bark in elections," he said.
"But this time what we're seeing is with 24 million users on a platform like Facebook, that's as many people as voted for all the three main parties in the last election. So you've got that scale and reach that we've never had before, and so many more people online than ever before, and I think that does create the conditions for Facebook, and for the internet generally, to be a game changer."
One thing Facebook does offer party leaders Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg is the opportunity to engage with the younger generation.
But so far only Cameron and Clegg have Facebook pages - not Gordon Brown.
Allan said: "He hasn't done to date - we would love him to have one, we hope he will have one. We'd like all the major political figures to become active on Facebook. But I know that all the parties are doing interesting work, whether or not it's through a single person's page or whether it's through other work they're doing with local groups, with interest groups and in particular consituencies."
Channel 4 News's Technology Correspondent Benjamin Cohen said: "Advertising on Facebook is particularly targeted, and it’s not hard to imagine why.
"You tell Facebook everything: your gender, age, sexuality, marital status, occupation, employer or university. It knows your hobbies and interests and through them it’s possible to guess if you have children.
"The political parties are creating highly targeted advertisements where they can advertise direct to the voters they need to reach in order to win a marginal seat. It’s highly powerful and much cheaper than full page ads in national newspapers."
