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"On the morning of the third and final presidential debate, Mitt Romney's campaign has launched a new Facebook app which asks users to message friends on behalf of the campaign.\nCalled \"Commit to Mitt,\" the app is designed to figure out which of a user's Facebook friends are most likely to have a big impact on Election Day, based on their location or support of Romney. It then asks users to message those friends about the Romney campaign and encourage them to vote.\nThe app taps into Facebook's Open Graph to determine which of a users' friends live in contentious battleground states or have already interacted with the Romney campaign's Facebook profiles.\u00A0The goal is to use the social networking power of Facebook to bolster the campaign's get out the vote effort in the weeks leading up to Election Day.\n\"All one needs to do is look at their own newsfeed to know that people want to talk about this election on Facebook; the question is, how can we make sure that activity is purposeful and effective at making a difference for the campaign,\" Matt Lira, who works on the Romney campaign's digital team, told TechCrunch.\nThe logic behind the app is based on a recent study, which found Facebook status updates posted on Election Day during the 2010 midterm elections got about one-third of a million people to vote who might have otherwise stayed at home.\n\nSEE ALSO: Can Social Media Really Boost Voter Turnout?The app is a creative use of Facebook's Open Graph for a political campaign, a trend that's just beginning to emerge during this cycle. However, it's also raising the eyebrows of privacy advocates, as it requests a wealth of permissions before allowing a user to install it.\n\n\n\"Romney\u2019s app requests to access all of your and your friends\u2019 activities, content and interactions in the world\u2019s biggest social network, which is a privacy intrusion to you, and even more so to your friends who didn\u2019t choose to use the app,\" writes Marina Ziegler of security firm secure.me. \"It doesn\u2019t matter if you don\u2019t use the app, you just need one of your friends to use it and it will access your data, too.\"\nBarack Obama's campaign introduced a similar app last month, which also raised privacy concerns.\nAre Facebook apps the next step in politics and social media? Is this app too invasive? Share your thoughts in the comments.\n\n\n\nMashable explores the trends changing politics in 2012 and beyond in Politics Transformed: The High Tech Battle for Your Vote, an in-depth look at how digital media is reshaping democracy. Read a few of the top posts from the series:\n\nElection 2040: The First President for Digital Natives\nVoter Data: What the Candidates Know About You\nHow to Market the Next President\nGaffesplosion: The Unrelenting Hype of Modern Politics\nHow Social Media Can Safeguard Your Vote\n\nTake it with you, buy  Politics Transformed: The High Tech Battle for Your Vote on e-book and get access to four exclusive interviews!\nImages courtesy of Flickr, Mitt Romney"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2012/10/22/romney-facebook-app/>