When Americans voted to renew US President Barack Obama’s lease on the White House in November 2012, more than 9 million citizens took to Facebook to click the “I’m a Voter” button, showing their online friends that they had cast a ballot.
The social media site plans to offer versions of the feature around the world for a slew of national elections this year, the company said on Monday.
The feature was available for voters in India as the world’s largest democracy chose a new prime minister, Narendra Modi, in voting over recent weeks.
More than 4 million Indian voters used the “I’m a Voter” button during the country’s parliamentary elections, Facebook said.
For Facebook, this is another effort to integrate its services into the everyday life of people around the globe as it seeks to increase its number of users, particularly in emerging markets.
The button will appear for voters in next week’s European Parliament and Colombian elections, and for citizens in South Korea, Indonesia, Sweden, Scotland, New Zealand and Brazil later this year.
It is also to appear again for Americans, during November’s midterm congressional elections.
By clicking the button, users broadcast their status as a voter to their network of friends, but do not reveal how their vote was cast.
Previewing the feature’s worldwide rollout, Facebook said it estimates nearly 400 million people will see the message in their news feeds this year — more than one third of its roughly 1.1 billion active users.
A 2012 study in scientific journal Nature found that in the US’ 2010 midterm elections, 340,000 additional citizens voted after seeing that their friends had clicked the button to indicate they had cast a ballot.
That election heralded the rise of the conservative Tea Party movement for smaller government, as Republicans swept into office and claimed the US House of Representatives from the Democrats.
“There is a real social multiplier effect,” said Andy Stone, a spokesman in Facebook’s Washington office. “When people see on Facebook that their friends have voted, they themselves are motivated to vote.”
Facebook shares were at US$59.28, up 2 percent, in late US trading on Monday.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day