Facebook Fundraising App?

[LinuxJedi]

I've been poking around these forums thinking on what I can do to most help. I don't have unlimited time or energy to dedicate to the campaign, and I want to make sure that whatever I do has a significant effect.

A common theme has been funding. There have been discussions about how we need to get messages out to people who have "liked" Ron Paul on Facebook (i.e. spamming) for the money bombs. If we truly believe Facebook is the right place to find money for Ron Paul, why not build a special app for this?

People have also mentioned their desire to have a "personal ticker" alongside the money bomb ticker. This can be done pretty easily using data from the FEC (from 2008) that I've already played with... and I think we can also get the quarterly contribution data. Imagine three tickers.... how much you gave in 2008, how much you gave in 2012, and the amount in the campaign. Heck, why not "how much you gave in comparison to your friends"?

Perhaps we can make the Facebook app into one of those stupid Farmville games, where people play "Ron Paul Republican Nomination" or something...

I'm no fan of Facebook, but I do have all the technical abilities required... and I'm sure others here are able to help out with the details (graphics, looks and feel, etc.) I'm willing to put aside my distaste of Facebook "for the greater good" if it would get Ron Paul the nomination.

What does everyone think? I can either concentrate my time and energy on funding apps, or another project which would help people get much more information on Ron Paul and the issues. What is needed most right now?

BTW, I've never written a Facebook app... so I don't know what all is involved, but it looks pretty straight forward from their descriptions and API.

 

[Pheonix]

+rep

I really applaud your contribution to this community! I liked both of your ideas - a lot. For the second one, you may want to contact the campaign prior to working on the project as I'm assuming it will need to be integrated with the official campaign site (if you decide on making it).

 

[dusman]

If you have the technical ability for that.. I assume you'd be capable of doing mobile app stuff? If so, I have a few related ideas that could tie into Facebook.

 

[LinuxJedi]

I do have the technical abilities to do mobile app stuff... (LinuxJedi is experienced with everything from OS design, to database design, to supercomputing). The issue with mobile apps is that I feel like I would be selling my soul to do it... since Google and Apple are both horribly evil things that I just don't want to help (or work for...). However, I do know others who have already sold their souls that I can potentially persuade to help.

What are your ideas?

I'll go through the Facebook API documentation, and maybe try to make something simple today so that I can get a feel for it.

 

[OrigSEOH]

I've looked through it a little...seems limited on what it could do. I personally won't donate to Ron Paul or any other person through any app on Facebook. Secondly, it seems to me we would want to limit sources asking for ticker data from the campaigns servers. So that the campaign servers can concentrate on taking donations.

I'll go through the Facebook API documentation, and maybe try to make something simple today so that I can get a feel for it.

 

[lucky_bg]

I've been poking around these forums thinking on what I can do to most help. I don't have unlimited time or energy to dedicate to the campaign, and I want to make sure that whatever I do has a significant effect.

A common theme has been funding. There have been discussions about how we need to get messages out to people who have "liked" Ron Paul on Facebook (i.e. spamming) for the money bombs. If we truly believe Facebook is the right place to find money for Ron Paul, why not build a special app for this?

People have also mentioned their desire to have a "personal ticker" alongside the money bomb ticker. This can be done pretty easily using data from the FEC (from 2008) that I've already played with... and I think we can also get the quarterly contribution data. Imagine three tickers.... how much you gave in 2008, how much you gave in 2012, and the amount in the campaign. Heck, why not "how much you gave in comparison to your friends"?

Perhaps we can make the Facebook app into one of those stupid Farmville games, where people play "Ron Paul Republican Nomination" or something...

I'm no fan of Facebook, but I do have all the technical abilities required... and I'm sure others here are able to help out with the details (graphics, looks and feel, etc.) I'm willing to put aside my distaste of Facebook "for the greater good" if it would get Ron Paul the nomination.

What does everyone think? I can either concentrate my time and energy on funding apps, or another project which would help people get much more information on Ron Paul and the issues. What is needed most right now?

BTW, I've never written a Facebook app... so I don't know what all is involved, but it looks pretty straight forward from their descriptions and API.

+rep

This is great idea! So people can track their own donations and compare it to donations of their FB firends and other using this aplication. All in the form of game. This idea is so huge. It is game changer. Like Trevoir Lyman's idea to make people to pledge on website dedicated to one day money bomb.

 

[LinuxJedi]

You would never donate through the app, the idea is to rally people together for the event and donate through the official site. Additionally, ticker data from the campaign servers can be load-balanced so that there is no additional load.

The idea also is to potentially show how many of your "friends" are donating, and try to get the herd instinct going on...

 

[JamesButabi]

This would be an absolutely awesome grassroots project. I hope you see it through.

 

[OrigSEOH]

Is this going to be a opensource project

You would never donate through the app, the idea is to rally people together for the event and donate through the official site. Additionally, ticker data from the campaign servers can be load-balanced so that there is no additional load.

The idea also is to potentially show how many of your "friends" are donating, and try to get the herd instinct going on...

 

[WorldonaString]

All sounds like great ideas! I like the farmville-esque app game.

Perhaps a simpler but also useful idea that I mentioned on another forum recently was regarding the donation graph on dailypaul. Instead of just sharing a ron paul moneybomb event page on my facebook wall, I was thinking an image of the live updating graph would be far more effective. I'm sure a lot of friends who see my wall with a RP link may just skip on by...but if they saw a visual graph right away, their curiousity level (and fun factor) would kick in to a greater degree.

Anyway to make that happen for future moneybombs?

 

[LinuxJedi]

Is this going to be a opensource project

I actually spend most of my time working on open source software, I promise to release the code AFTER the 2012 election. I don't want to do this work for Ron Paul, and have it used against us.

 

[LinuxJedi]

Another update... I have arranged to take most of next week off to work full-time on this... I want to see how far I can get

 

[lucky_bg]

I can hardly wait to see what can you come up with. Have huge expectations of this.