Inside Facebook

Facebook is getting deeper into politics today with the launch of its Official Voter Registration App on the Facebook Platform.

The app, powered by Credo Mobile, allows users to register to vote within Facebook and encourage friends to register to vote through Facebook’s viral invitation channel.  Since the app launched this morning, Facebook has already registered over 2,500 new voters, and is currently registering voters at a rate of thousands per hour.

Facebook waded into political waters earlier this year by building a US Politics application with ABC News. That application no longer exists, but redirects to a list of official politics Facebook Pages.

It’s been well documented at this point that Sen. Barack Obama is much more popular amongst Facebook users than Sen. John McCain.  As of this morning, Sen. Obama’s official Facebook page had 1.9 million supporters, compared to Sen McCain’s 540,000.

By contrast, however, Gov. Sarah Palin has a much bigger Facebook following than Sen. Joe Biden. Palin’s Page has over 400,000 supporters on Facebook, compared to Biden’s paltry 150,000. Could Palin be helping McCain eat away at Obama’s dominating lead amongst the Facebook generation?

Ultimately, given Obama’s Facebook popularity thus far, Facebook’s voter drive will register many more Obama voters than McCain voters. The app, however, allows users to register with any party – or in states that allow it, “Decline to State.”