Opinion: Mayor Bloomberg annexes Facebook. Or did he?

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Being mayor of a certain place comes with bragging rights, as New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg well knows.

But when is a mayor not always a mayor?

In social-media terms, mayor often means that a user of location services like Foursquare has ‘checked in’ to, say, a coffee shop or office building. If they’re lucky, and no one is holding that mantle, they become ‘mayor’ of the place (repeat visits can also confer the title of mayor).

After giving a speech on technical innovation at Facebook headquarters in Palo Alto, Calif., Bloomberg posted Friday he’d taken on the lofty title of mayor of the social networking site that boasts more than 500 million users.

‘Was, for a while today, Mayor of Facebook,’ Bloomberg posted to his Facebook page.

But The Ticket did a little bit of digging and found out that although Bloomberg’s Facebook page has more than 27,000 followers, as it’s only a “fan” page the mayor can’t subscribe to Facebook’s location services (which also doesn’t offer the chance to be “mayor” of anything). Bloomberg also doesn’t use a Foursquare account.

Which takes us back to our question: When is a mayor not always a mayor?

Answer: Cyberspace.

-- Craig Howie

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