How to reach a million people
The power of ‘word of mouse' is incredible. Someone sent me a link to this clip on YouTube called Free Hugs. It is so sweet and funny that I couldn't resist forwarding it to a couple of friends. It seems that a few other people did the same thing because in one week, it had been viewed 1,386,486 times! A total by-pass of mainstream media.
There’s an NYU student called Marek Grodzicki who set up a group on Facebook – he promised to give $1 to Darfur for every 1000 people who joined his group and within a week he had 390,678 members. The cynic in me thinks that this is a very cheap and quick way to build up a collosal mailing list. The activist in me thinks – wow – imagine the potential for using online social networking to mobilise people around a good cause :)
None of the political parties have so far cracked online social networking – the only example I've heard of is Howard Dean’s campaign for Democratic nomination in the US, using Meetup.com to catalyse support groups across the country. The Conservative Party has just set up WebCameron, using blogs posts and podcasts to reach a wider audience. I watched the first clip – with Cameron in his kitchen (personally I would have put my laundry away!) It’s an interesting experiment – will it work? It depends on the content – if one of those video clips makes people laugh out loud or catches a genuine ‘behind the scenes’ moment then maybe it will get people clicking.
Re social networking and political parties, the UK parties are slowly catching up. For example, the Lib Dems launched Flock Together (http://www.flocktogether.org.uk ) over a year ago now which encourages people come to meetings (and help at by-elections!). More recently, I've set up Liberal Drinks (http://theliberati.net/drink ), borrowing shamelessly from Meetup and the US's Drinking Liberally (http://www.drinkingliberally.org ), which is slowly growing a network of informal meetings across the country.
Posted by: James Graham | Friday, 13 October 2006 at 05:21 PM