'American Idol' Introduces Online Voting for Top 24

If you feel like your thumbs are about to fall off from all that texting in to vote for reality shows, then you're in luck: "American Idol" has introduced an online voting system!

The system operates through Facebook, which apparently one of the reasons it exists at all: "Facebook has offered us a secure solution," said creator Simon Fuller. He also mentioned that "American Idol" had been wanting to use an online voting system "for years." It looks like they were just waiting for a way to do it securely. After all, it's a lot easier to spam votes to a website than to spam votes from someone's cell phone.

Viewers can access the online voting from the "American Idol" website, which will require a Facebook login to continue the voting process. Users will then be able to choose which of the 24 contestants they want to vote for, all of whom will be listed on the site with accompanying pictures to avoid any confusion.

No word yet on how AT&T feels about this, as the company has been partnered up with "American Idol" for years now, allowing viewers unlimited votes via text message.

The big question, though, is how this will affect voting. It seems that there is likely to be more participation with online voting available than with text messaging, as some don't have unlimited texting plans or are wary of texting commercial numbers. This could bring in a whole new demographic of voters, which could start swaying results in ways that we wouldn't normally see.

Or, maybe things won't change at all. Will you be more likely to vote now that it's online?