In an article on Facebook and older users, Salon.com has some insight into the presidential candidates and their use of the growing social network.

An excerpt:

While Barack Obama has adeptly harnessed the power of social networking…John McCain has stumbled. A report released by the Pew Research Center this month indicated that Obama had 1.7 million Facebook supporters and 510,000 MySpace friends; McCain has 309,000 and 88,000 respectively. (The report did not mention that the Facebook group ‘I Have More Foreign Policy Experience than Sarah Palin’ has nearly 122,000 members.) McCain’s highest visibility via Facebook came in July, when he was busted by the New York Times for the GOP’s creation of a fake Facebook page for Obama. (The Internet is, after all, not Ohio — the manipulation of technology isn’t so easily concealed.) The Pew report praised Obama’s early adoption of social networking, and concluded that McCain had been too slow to the table.

While these numbers are compelling, I wonder what, if any, impact the size of each candidate’s Facebook following will have on the election’s outcome.