All of the presidential contenders have tapped into the online social networking craze. Obama has 174,285 friends on My-Space. Clinton has just 56,090, and Giuliani is the candidate equivalent of the nerdy freshman with a mere 3,085 friends. What does this have to do with business? Nothing. That was the problem. Sites such as MySpace are largely populated by people either too young to vote or 18-24 year-olds, an age group which has notoriously low turn-out when election time comes around (though, the participation of these voters did increase 11% in 2004).
But now one candidate has reached out to the business community using the career oriented networking site Linked-In. With an average income of $140,000, the site’s 14 million members are not skipping off to biology class when they log off. They’re professionals and Barack Obama recently asked for their input. His question:
“How can the next president better help small business and entrepreneurs thrive?”
It’s a good question and it received nearly one thousand responses within hours of being posted on Wednesday. With a response like that, we’re likely to see other candidates taking advantage of the site to court professionals in the near future. If you have an answer to this question you’d like to share with the presidential hopefuls, log on to Linked-In and have your say. And report back to us here at BNET. What CAN the next president do to support small business?
(Image of Barack Obama by Allison Harger, CC 2.0)
