Starting immediately, Democratic and progressive campaigns will be able to tap into the power of Facebook to take political organizing into the social realm.

Democratic campaigns have long had access to the Voter Activation Network (VAN), a digital database of voter information that helps campaigns stay organized. The VAN includes a wealth of data about individuals in a given area, including their voting history, interactions with a particular campaign, phone number and mailing address.

Now, volunteers and staff working for a particular campaign will now be able to match their Facebook friends to individuals already included in the VAN with a new tool called "Social Organizing." Once those two worlds are matched up, campaign staff can perform targeted outreach to friends and family of supporters.

The potential power of Social Organizing is impressive: If a campaign wants to recruit some new volunteers — by cross-referencing the VAN and current volunteers' Facebook friends — it can determine which friends of volunteers are most likely to come onboard as fresh recruits.

"The cool part about this is that supporters have always talked to their friends about the campaign, but they haven't known exactly who to talk to and what to ask of them," Stuart Trevelyan, CEO of NGP VAN, told Mashable. "For example, if 10 of your Facebook friends fall into the category of "likely volunteers" [as determined by VAN], you know that you should ask them to volunteer for the campaign."

If the VAN-Facebook combination sounds a bit like an invasion of privacy, fear not: Social Organizing doesn't put Facebook users' information into VAN, it merely identifies campaign supporters' Facebook friends that are likely to support a particular campaign. And because those friends are more likely to want to get involved, it cuts out the potential awkwardness of bringing politics into a friendship.

"Campaigns are going to be helping [volunteers] identify people that want to be asked," said Trevelyan. "The tool will help avoid awkward conversations. For each task you can skip individual friends and say 'hey, I'm not calling Stu because I'm in a fight with him because he stole my girlfriend.'"

Trevelyan said that Republican campaigns have access to similar software, but it only matches Facebook friends to lists of already-confirmed supporters.

"We think that's a little less helpful because you're matching to a much smaller universe," he said.

How else could Facebook change political organizing? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, Tommydickson