Facebook Getting the Vote Out - but is it Good for Developers?
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You’re seeing it here first folks - this morning Facebook announced a new tag on its wiki called <fb:rock-the-vote/>. I imagine an announcement from Facebook will come soon on their purposes for this. From the wiki, <fb:rock-the-vote/>:
Displays a Rock the Vote widget inline in your application. The text inside the tags is formatted as a hyperlink. When the user clicks the link, a Working Assets US Voter Registration dialog appears. When the user is done, they are prompted to share it with their friends. Then they are returned to your page.
This is particularly suitable for political apps or any app that wants to encourage voter registration.
Now, I’m not that familiar with the whole “Rock the Vote” organization, and I’m very for encouraging voter registration, but isn’t this also giving preferential treatment to other big organizations on Facebook? How did “Credo Mobile” get their sponsorship on this? Does this mean apps and organizations like my company’s client, “Takes All Types” will have their own tags for developers to use too? Has FBML been turned into an advertising tool? As a Facebook Developer myself I’m a little concerned about this one.
To implement the tag, you would do something like this (from the wiki):
<fb:rock-the-vote>Register to vote!</rock-the-vote>
The link looks like this:
And produces a form that looks like this:
The second half of the form looks like this:
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