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March 21st, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda
“Citizen Cosponsor,” a new platform from House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), lets Facebook users show their support of a particular Congressional bill with the click of a mouse.
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Once a user “cosponsors” a bill, they receive periodic updates on its status — if there’s a hearing about it, whether it’s passed committee, or if it’s up for a full vote in Congress. Facebook automatically shows off a user’s support of a bill to all of his or her friends.
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The platform is built on Facebook’s Open Graph, which lets developers create apps that seamlessly integrate into Facebook users’ news feeds and Timelines. Funding for the project came from directly from Rep. Cantor’s office.
Matt Lira, director of new media for Rep. Cantor, says the idea was sparked after Facebook launched Open Graph and the first apps to make use of it were released.
“We saw examples of its usage with The Washington Post’s Social Reader and Spotify and we said, ‘woah, we probably can’t do things as cool as they do, but there’s probably a nugget of an idea there we could use,'” says Lira.
Cantor’s office intends the platform to create more engagement between voters and government.
“We are dedicated to modernizing the way Congress connects with the American people,” said Rep. Cantor in a statement. “Citizen Cosponsor breaks ground by directly connecting people with the work the House is doing every day.”
“We’re looking at ways to connect people specifically to the bills that they care about,” added Lira.
At launch, the platform only allows users to register their support for a bill — users can’t suggest changes or have an conversation about the bill directly on Cantor’s site. And only six bills — five of which sponsored by Republicans — are on the app so far.
Lira says that Citizen CoSponsor is still “in beta,” and they’re looking for ways to add more engagement in the future.
“We have a startup mentality to it,” says Lira. “When Twitter first started, it was just going to be for cell phones, now it is what it is today. It’s evolutionary, so you want to see how users use it and if the engagement justifies it, we’ll expand it out.”
The new media team at Cantor’s office is drawing inspiration from both sides of the aisle. Lira says he’s a fan of Rep. Issa’s (R-Calif.) Madison Project as well as the White House’s “We the People” online petitions. He talked about online bill markups, hearings and expert roundtables as possibilites for ways to expand the Citizen Cosponsor in the future.
“We want the program to give more to users than is asks of them,” says Lira. “The only way this stuff works is if you have a tolerance for experimentation and a certain level of patience. I’ve been impressed with We the People and that’s very experimental — it’s in the spirit of ‘let’s throw something out there and see if it works.’ Otherwise, there’s the alternative: a conference room of ideas that never happen.”
At launch, Citizen CoSponsor only has one Democrat-sponsored bill, from Texas Rep. Al Green. And Democrats might not be a fan of the platform’s reference to “Obamacare,” considered a right-wing term for the Affordable Health Care Act. Lira acknowledged that some people consider “Obamacare” a partisan name, but he says it’s the term most people are familiar with. However, he added that such criticism is “the kind of feedback we’re listening to.” He says he isn’t opposed to finding ways to expand the platform to the other side of the aisle.
“We are looking for ways to work with [the Democrats],” says Lira. “It’s a two-sided coin, but as it grows that’s something that interests me. I’m optimistic that will be the case, but we’ll see.”
Do you see any bills on Rep. Cantor’s site you would want to co-sponsor? Do you want more opportunities for engagement from the platform? Sound off in the comments.
Thumbnail image courtesy of iStockphoto, pagadesign
This story originally published on Mashable here.
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