In June, techPresident ran a story Note to Candidates: There's This Thing Called "Facebook." In it, TP associate editor Josh Levy pointed out that while a few supporters had rolled Facebook apps for candidates (Edwards*, Romney), only one campaign (Obama) had taken the initiative to roll its own application. Fast forward almost four months to today, and you might be surprised to find that pretty much almost nothing has changed.

This morning, I surveyed candidate Facebook applications and found that Obama is still the only candidate to roll his or her own app. (Updated: the Giuliani campaign points out an official application, updating the count to two campaigns) Edwards, Romney, Giuliani and Ron Paul have supporter-created applications (Ron Paul leads the pack with 3), and a number of generic apps, including Politicker, Facebook's US Politics and Newsvine's (now MSNBC's) Election '08 pull other support.

So why are candidates ignoring the Facebook Platform? I've developed a few Facebook applications, and I can attest that the technical bar is quite low. Therefore, if the problem isn't technical in nature, why are candidates purposefully staying away from the Platform?

The first argument might be that Facebook isn't providing enough carrot with the stick; while they sit in a dominant place in the social network space, the ROI of repurposing contributions towards development cost isn't enough. First and foremost, Facebook excludes the storing of all profile data of application users - meaning that campaigns may not store or use FB applications for list-building, nor can they mass-message supporters through the application. Application messaging is pull or peer-spread in nature, which certainly isn't a bankable strategy in modern politics. On the wider web there's growing sentiment that Facebook Apps fail to live up to their potential.

Another argument is that Facebook isn't doing enough to attract candidates; we see evidence of an outreach effort as Facebook yesterday convened meetings and offered a number of concessions to candidates. There have been strategic gaffes: by creating a Facebook Politics application, the company has competed directly into the market they are trying to serve. And of course one can't fail to mention the company's preference towards Obama - are we seeing a blackballing due to this preferential alignment?

Perhaps what we're really seeing is the bar candidates set towards Web 2.0 outreach. If a service offers easy sign up, guaranteed messaging and outreach, and effortless maintenance, (YouTube, etc) candidates will embrace a service. But if there's a gamble, which is clearly the case with a Facebook application, candidates will hold off. And while pundits and bloggers will bemoan the conservative stance towards trendy technology, one can't help but wonder if candidates are actually leading here. As we've watched Facebook apps degenerate over the past few months, politicians may have made the right choice by not trying to join the fray.

* Disclosure: I built the Edwards app on spec; not as a statement of support.