Oct 27

If you use Foursquare and plan to vote this year get ready to receive an “I Voted” Foursquare badge. Foursquare is trying to encourage civic participation this year with the introduction of a Foursquare badge that will be given to users that check in to one of the 107,000 recorded polling places. Any user that checks in and includes the hashtag “#ivoted” will receive the badge.  Not only will users receive a badge but people will be able to visualize voting trends throughout the country. Foursquare has set up a website that includes interactive real-time maps that show check-in numbers and locations, data on the total number of check-ins, and even breakdowns of the gender of those who voted.

Foursquare has teamed up with MTV’s Rock the Vote, Pew Center, Google, and the Voting Information Project to continue the growing trend in the number of voters seen in 2008. Similar to Twitter’s #VoteReport, seen in the 2008 election, Foursquare wants to keep real-time data for all to see. The company is also hoping this years results will help them to develop a similar project for 2012. For more information, visit Foursquare’s election site.

Photo Credit – Mashable

Oct 8

When we were kids we were scared of being excluded from the cool circle of friends, not being invited to the party, having nobody to spend the recess with… what if Facebook will bring all these fears back? The new version of Facebook groups is specifically designed for sharing a flow of information only with a specific circle of friends, the group members, leaving all the not wanted ones outside.

This new format has been built to overcome the common fear of being “watched” from people we don’t want to see us. Posting a funny comment, sharing pics from the trip to Vegas with our friends, sharing an explicit link about our politician or religious view can bring us some anxiety: among the all of the friends we have out there, there will probably be someone we don’t really want to have that information about us. New facebook groups is the solution for having fun online without fearing to get into troubles.

Facebook users are allowed to create different groups, inviting selected members. All the content shared inside the group is invisible to people outside the group: one can upload photos, bring on a discussion on a topic, making plans for the weekends…

But Facebook groups is something more: it can be a professional tool to work together. The group chat allows all the members to discuss together and each group can be used as an email list to quickly share things. Someone has even argued that this feature could be a duplicate of Googlewaves… I don’t really think Facebook will ever be used as a qualified exchange platform, but my guess is: will this simple feature radically modify facebook users habits?

I am afraid new Facebook groups will change the dynamics inside the platform, letting it become more social within specific groups of people and less social between the groups. Tomorrow, will people share their stuff with all of their friends or will they rebuild online their specific network offline? I am afraid Facebook might become less interesting the more Facebook groups become popular, since people would focus their activities in the inside, and not on the outside, where the crowd is.

Read more on this topic on “Facebook Groups Is Sort Of Like Google Wave For Human Beings” from TechCrunch