• Voting For Dummies: The Online Edition

    Tuesday, November 2nd, 2010

    Leena Rao currently works as a writer for TechCrunch. She recently finished graduate school at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, where she studied business journalism and videography. From 2004 to 2007, she helped lead Congresswoman Carloyn Maloney’s community outreach and relations efforts in New York City. She graduated from Columbia University in 2003, where she was... → Learn More

    With Election Day 2010 under way, we thought it would be helpful to compile a brief list of useful resources on the web to find information about the mid-term races, candidates and voting polls. Feel free to add your own recommendations in comments.

    Google Election Center: The search platform allows users to input their address to find the closest polling location, state election office, links to the state election websites, and lists the candidates who are running in the races at the Federal level.

    Facebook Politics: Facebook has developed a dedicated U.S. Politics page where you can find your polling location, and access a livestream of election coverage courtesy of ABC News and Facebook’s Randi Zuckerberg.

    New York Times: The FiveThirtyEight, and the site’s U.S. Politics platform provide a comprehensive view into polling stats on the House, Senate and State Governor seats up for grabs.

    PoliticsDaily, Politico and RealPoliticsDaily all provide similar coverage of breaking news coming from the races on both the federal and state levels.

    Foursquare “I Voted”: Foursquare is tracking check-ins at polling places throughout the day and evening. Foursquare partnered with data visualization startup JESS3 to create a live, interactive map of each check in at polling sites. Twitter is also encouraging users to add the hashtag #ivoted to any Tweets about voting during the day.

    Company: Facebook
    Website: facebook.com
    Launch Date: February 1, 2004
    IPO: NASDAQ:FB

    Facebook is the world’s largest social network, with over 500 million users. Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg in February 2004, initially as an exclusive network for Harvard students. It was a huge hit: in 2 weeks, half of the schools in the Boston area began demanding a Facebook network. Zuckerberg immediately recruited his friends Dustin Moskovitz, Chris Hughes, and Eduardo Saverin to help build Facebook, and within four months, Facebook added 30 more college networks. The original idea for...

    Learn more
    Company: Google
    Website: google.com
    Launch Date: September 7, 1998
    IPO: NASDAQ:GOOG

    Google provides search and advertising services, which together aim to organize and monetize the world’s information. In addition to its dominant search engine, it offers a plethora of online tools and platforms including: Gmail, Maps, YouTube, and Google+, the company’s extension into the social space. Most of its Web-based products are free, funded by Google’s highly integrated online advertising platforms AdWords and AdSense. Google promotes the idea that advertising should be highly targeted and relevant to users thus providing...

    Learn more
    Company: Foursquare
    Website: foursquare.com
    Launch Date: March 11, 2009
    Funding: $71.4M

    Foursquare is a geographical location based social network that incorporates gaming elements. Users share their location with friends by “checking in” via a smartphone app or by text message. Points are awarded for checking in at various venues. Users can connect their Foursquare accounts to their Twitter and Facebook accounts, which can update when a check in is registered. By checking in a certain number of times, or in different locations, users can collect virtual badges. In addition, users...

    Learn more
    Company: Twitter
    Website: twitter.com
    Launch Date: March 21, 2006
    Funding: $1.16B

    Twitter, founded by Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams in March 2006 (launched publicly in July 2006), is a social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to post updates 140 characters long. Twitter “is a real-time information network that connects [users] to the latest stories, ideas, opinions, and news.” The service can be accessed through a variety of methods, including Twitter’s website; text messaging; instant messaging; and third-party desktop, mobile, and web applications. Twitter is currently available in...

    Learn more

    Sponsored Ads

    blog comments powered by Disqus

    Sponsored Ads

    Sponsored Ads

    Upcoming Events

    Disrupt SF 2012

    San Francisco, CA