Causes Holds Largest Online Rally Ever To Get You To The Polls

This morning you likely woke up to a flurry of nearly identical messages in your Facebook News Feed prompting you to get out and vote – the result of what may have been largest unified online statement ever as nearly 1 million Facebook members simultaneously changed their status messages. The effort was put together by Causes, the altruistic Facebook and MySpace application, which asked Facebook users to “donate” their status messages in the hopes of getting more of their friends to the polls.

The response to the application has been remarkable: the campaign went live on Thursday night, and had nearly 1 million users by the time last night’s message was sent out at midnight PST. The current tally stands at over 1.5 million users, who have posted over 4.5 million status messages in total (in addition to last night’s midnight rally, users have the choice of issuing more frequent status updates). You can still sign up if you’d like to send out reminders throughout the rest of the evening. Users have the choice of promoting their favorite candidate or proposition, or just sending out a generic message telling friends to get out and vote.

Causes President Joe Green says that while the Online Rally was built solely to prompt users to head to the polls, similar campaigns could also potentially applied to other altruistic missions (like stopping the genocide in Darfur). And while Causes may have purely benevolent motives in mind with putting on the Online Rally, they’re not coming away empty handed: everyone who signed up to donate their status message also installed the Causes Facebook app.

Finally, as if you needed another reminder, GO VOTE. Seriously.