How does your social network affect your voting? I had dinner with some friends at Sherpas this weekend, and conversation turned to the upcoming election. “My sister’s a teacher and she says to vote no on that amendment” explained my friend. And based on that comment, I’ll probably vote no. Yeah, I should do my own private research but let’s be honest about this. I simply don’t have the time or expertise. I suspect this is the way many people make their voting decisions.
It’s another case of the long tail of authority.
What are the implications for web social networking apps? Can networks identify these topical influencers? My friend’s sister was probably influenced in turn by a someone from her school. If you’re running a campaign, these are the people you want to reach.
And if I can dream for a bit, I would love to see a Lijit-like service on the voting machines. I want a system that knows who I trust and what I trust them about, and knows this information about everyone else in the system, and can give me voting recommendations right there when I’m in the ballot box.
In other words, I want to optimize the process of what happened this weekend. What if I hadn’t run into my friend? What if another friend of mine has three teacher friends who think I should vote yes and have even blogged about it…only I don’t know about it because the topic hasn’t come up in conversation. I want a system that can scour my network for opinions, sort them, and display them to me right there when I make the decision.
Social networks are great sources of trusted information, but the current distribution methods are slow, unoptimized, and incomplete.
On a side note: The new spell checker feature of Firefox 2.0 is fantastic! How did I ever write in a browser before?