Back in August, Time Magazine wrote about “the extraordinary appeal of Facebook“:

Facebook’s appeal is both obvious and rather subtle. It’s a website, but in a sense, it’s another version of the Internet itself: a Net within the Net, one that’s everything the larger Net is not. Facebook is cleanly designed and has a classy, upmarket feel to it–a whiff of the Ivy League still clings. People tend to use their real names on Facebook. They also declare their sex, age, whereabouts, romantic status and institutional affiliations. Identity is not a performance or a toy on Facebook; it is a fixed and orderly fact. Nobody does anything secretly: a news feed constantly updates your friends on your activities. On Facebook, everybody knows you’re a dog.

Maybe that’s why Facebook’s fastest-growing demographic consists of people 35 or older: they’re refugees from the uncouth wider Web.Every community must negotiate the imperatives of individual freedom and collective social order, and Facebook constitutes a critical rebalancing of the Internet’s founding vision of unfettered electronic liberty. Of course, it is possible to misbehave on Facebook–it’s just self-defeating. Unlike the Internet, Facebook is structured around an opt-in philosophy; people have to consent to have contact with or even see others on the network. If you’re annoying folks, you’ll essentially cease to exist, as those you annoy drop you off the grid.

Emphasis mine and for a reason.  Many view the web as a current generation thing, a way to engage teens and twenty-somethings, while aiming for anything beyond that has proven all but impossible.  Facebook is slowly but surely pulling it off, broadening its market into demographics that matter most to politicos and campaigns focused on using new means to target traditional voters.

The question then becomes how to best utilize Facebook for political purposes.  Does having a group with 300,000 members really lead to more votes or money?  Does someone friending you mean they’re going to do more than simply list you on their profile?  Does it mean that people will learn more about the candidates and become better informed participants in the democratic system?

It’s the answer to these questions that’ll determine whether or not Web 2.0 and social networking can really work as a political tool and force in 2008 and beyond.

And while we’re on the topic of Facebook, have you joined the RedStormPAC Facebook group yet?