Facebook Joins With ABC To Offer Presidential Race CoverageFacebook Joins With ABC To Offer Presidential Race Coverage

ABC has announced a deal with Facebook to combine news about the 2008 presidential election with interactive forums.

The company said Monday that a U.S. Politics platform will provide Facebook's 56 million users with information about candidates, blogs from the reporters covering them, and photographs from the campaign trail. It also said the partnership will allow the social networking site's users to influence ABC's news reporting.

Debate Groups will allow users to debate candidates' positions on issues before, during, and after formal televised debates have concluded.

Candidates, their staffers, and other users will be able to take advantage of the U.S. Politics platform, which will poll Facebook users and publish the results. The feature also will publish official ABC News polls.

ABC said that discussions among users will help shape news coverage of the campaigns.

Facebook's announcement is the latest move that illustrates the growing role social networking sites are playing in the presidential race. While it's too early to tell what impact the sites will have on voters, candidates aren't taking any chances. Most have set up pages on MySpace and using that network's political features as well.

In March, MySpace announced its Impact Channel, which features candidates for the 2008 presidential election. The channel was designed as a virtual town square, where voters can read about political and social issues, see a lineup of people vying for the White House, and register to vote. Several of the politicians already have created their own pages on MySpace, uploaded videos to YouTube, and begun building their political platforms through blogs and podcasts.