Back when the social media concept was new, pundits had a field day wondering how it would affect the political conversation and whether tweets, blog posts, Facebook posts, etc. could affect the outcome of future elections.
You can't deny that the technology has power - Barack Obama used social media to great effect to raise a lot of money and win the Democratic primary, and it was a core part of his campaign and support network to win the election. As noted, he will go down in history at the first "Facebook" president.
But that sort of advantage only works once. My guess is the Republican Party will match the Democrats tweet for tweet in the next election, and will have done everything in their power to bridge the social media gap - despite the fact that young people tend to be a lot more adept at social media, and tend to vote Democrat when they vote at all.
In Whistler's campaign, social media is also playing an active role, from Twitter feeds to lively debates on Facebook. Some candidates are also using LinkedIn, and I wouldn't be surprised to find one or two on Google+ and FourSquare. Candidate websites are also linked to the social network so there's some consistency between every platform; they can also post once and have that post appear on multiple platforms.
The question of whether any of it will have a real impact on this campaign will likely never be answered, unless somebody spends big money on exit interviews at polling stations. Plus, it's safe to say that municipal politics are a lot different than a presidential race where you could follow Obama and McCain and your local two or three-way races for Congress and Senate with relative ease. In the 2008 election, just 2,903 people turned out to vote for a field of four mayors and 17 councillors - a dismal turnout representing about 34.8 per cent of eligible voters. To get a spot on council you needed about 1,321 votes, which is probably around 14 per cent of eligible voters on the rolls.
This election is more complicated, for lack of a better word. Between council, mayor and school board races there will be a record 35 names on the ballot on Nov. 19. It's one thing for two presidential candidates to trade tweets and Facebook posts, it's entirely another to try and follow so many candidates across so many platforms. If every candidate had a blog, Twitter account and Facebook page, and all of those platforms were updated regularly that's 105 things to read every day plus comments, links, etc. It's almost too much information for one voter to process.
While I don't doubt that social media will have an impact on this election, I'm skeptical that the impact could be bigger than other traditional forms of electioneering. Some will make up their minds after the all-candidates debates, others by reading this newspaper and still others by plugging into social media.
That's not to say that candidates can overlook social media. In an election with this many candidates the potential for vote splitting is huge, and candidates have to try and reach every single voter on the roll. And if some candidates are part of the social media conversation then all candidates probably have an obligation to be part of the conversation as well.
But - and this is the question that candidates in future elections should be asking - if everybody is using social media on top of all the other forms of campaigning, then is there really any advantage? How much of the information is just more noise to confuse voters.
My opinion is that it would be easier in the future if candidates agreed between them to use just one social media forum like Facebook and, if candidates feel it's necessary, one social networking tool like Twitter. It's still a lot to follow, but it's at least manageable and limited to one or two forums.
As it currently stands, the information highway is the Lions Gate Bridge at rush hour. Let's aim for a country road.
Google back into hardware
Google's history in hardware has been hit and miss, and mostly miss when it came to their first Nexus-brand smart phones.
But while Google has no problem pulling the plug on a bad idea - see Google Buzz and Google Wave - Nexus wasn't a bad idea. Android is the leading phone operating system in the market after all, so they had the software right; all they needed was the right hardware to go with it.
They appear to achieved that with the announcement of the new Galaxy Nexus smartphone, teaming up with Samsung to build a phone that looks pretty good. Some of the features include facial recognition (instead of a lock system), 4G wireless, voice typing, information sharing through "Android Beam," a fast processor, a full GB of memory, a huge HD video screen running at 720p and the fact it's the first phone to run Android 4.0 (a.k.a. Ice Cream Sandwich). The phone's underpowered at 5.0 megapixels (several phones are now 8.0mp or higher) but does neat things like stitch together photos while you move the camera to create panorama shots.
