Following a second experimental run in India, social networking service Facebook is set to launch its ‘I’m a voter’ feature worldwide, after declaring recent elections in the South Asian state a success.
The function lets users announce on their newsfeeds the fact that they have voted in certain elections through the click of a button. However, it is outlined that this message will not reveal the specifics of the users’ votes. The company has now decided to roll this feature out to multiple nations worldwide, following the latest testing phase involving Indian elections.
Earlier this month, more than four million individuals from India showed they had voted in the nation’s parliamentary elections by using this tool. The tests come following trials in the USA for the presidential vote of November 2012, during which time more than nine million people utilised this service.
The social platform has now decided to introduce this feature to a global audience, and it will be available for voters to use in upcoming elections across the EU, Brazil, Colombia, Indonesia, New Zealand and South Korea. As a result of this, the site has suggested that up to a third of its global users – approximately 400 million people – could see these messages in their newsfeeds this year alone.
It has been suggested that this service will also raise awareness of elections and encourage users who would not normally participate to use their vote. The feature was credited with persuading up to 340,000 people to vote in the US elections who would have otherwise stayed at home.
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