Following in the deep footprints of YouTube-CNN, MySpace-MTV, and 10Questions.com-NY Times Editorial Board, Facebook has partnered with media partner ABC News and have announced a series of debates to take place in January before the New Hampshire primary.

Very few details are known about the debate(s) including format and whether facebook will use its video app to encourage user-generated questions from its massive community for the candidates (if they participate), but here's what we do know:

ABC News and Facebook announced this morning that they will join forces during the presidential campaign -- and that one of their first major ventures will be back-to-back debates three days before the New Hampshire primary.

The partnership will combine the technology of the ubiquitous social networking site with ABC's coverage, which will be directly posted to Facebook, whose 55 million members will soon be able to discuss the campaign through a new Debate Groups tool accessed by putting "U.S. Politics" in the search field.

The collaboration will be in play for the Jan. 5 debates being sponsored by ABC and WMUR at St. Anselm College in Manchester.

"The goal is to extend the debate from being a one-hour session that happens on television to a dialogue that can take place before, after, and now during the debate between voters," Dan Rose, Facebook's vice president of business development, told ABC News.com.

The candidates have pages on Facebook, seeking support among younger voters who typically show up in smaller numbers on election day.

Given CNN's debacle of the GOP's YouTube debate, I doubt any Republican campaign will be jumping up and down to participate (save the lower-tier candidates), unless Facebook and ABC News enforce some sort of content-balance.

We look forward to watching this develop over the next month or so.

(My only hope is that I don't receive a press release announcing a debate being offered by the fictional Friendster-[insert declining media partner here] partnership.)