How Facebook plans to become one of the most powerful tools in politics

Political campaigns are obsessed with two things: Telling every possible voter exactly what they want to hear in order to get them to the polls and cast the "right" vote, and telling them that message for as close to zero dollars as possible. It's not a surprise, then, that Facebook has focused its social-Sauron eye on the world of politics.

Already a focal point of political activity (of varying quality), the site has shifted its toolset to let campaigns target extremely specific audiences with very specific messages, for prices somewhat north of zero dollars. The end goal for the company seems clear: Replace, as much as possible, expensive, blanketed television advertising with much more immediate, much more specific ads appearing in users' feeds -- and then cash a whole lot of checks. This is not as far in the future as you might think.