Adult and young Americans who wish to become registered voters for the upcoming 2016 Presidential Election can now do so via the voters' list on Facebook Messenger, thanks to an automatic tool launched by a U.S. public service organization.
Ad Council is a nonprofit organization that developed the GoVoteBot program, which aims to pique the interest of qualified voters, especially the young adults who are infamous for being no-shows on Election Day.
In line with Facebook's nationwide drive to urge people to register and vote, the GoVoteBot app within Facebook Messenger intends to make it easier for prospective voters to register and understand electoral logistic information.
GoVoteBot will help simplify and personalize the registration task in a modern and amusing way.
"It has a bit of a cheeky personality. But it's completely nonpartisan - it has no opinion on who you vote for," said Dzu Bui, Ad Council's vice president for campaign development.
Users need to key in a straightforward greeting to GoVoteBot, like "Hi" or "Hello," and it will answer with a drop-down list of options such as registration options, links, absentee options and finding local polling stations.
Registrants can choose which of the options best suit their needs in order to finish the process.
This user data integration was made possible thanks to the data acquired from the U.S. Vote Foundation and Google Civic, the technology conglomerate's storage of electoral information.
Ad Council has a history of creating campaigns for civic engagement and improvement including battling hunger, sexual assault and bullying, as well as promoting education, among other programs. The launch of GoVoteBot marks the organization's first time using automated tools in its campaigns.
"We set out to encourage millennial to vote, but wanted to find a fun and simple way to have a conversation where they are," said Chloe Gottlieb, executive vice president and executive creative director at ad agency R/GA, a partner of Ad Council on this campaign.
The organization believed it was sensible to launch the GoVoteBot campaign through Facebook Messenger. The app was designed to attract data from thousands of users across the 50 states and streamlined everything into one friendly platform that a lot of people can use easily and quickly.
Facebook initially announced its nationwide bot drive at its F8 developer conference last April. Despite the undesirable results from the first batch, the platform grew to 11,000 bots by July.
Meanwhile, Snap (formerly Snapchat), another social media platform, is also encouraging its users to be responsible citizens and vote with its 1-minute registration process within the app.
