The Facebook News-Feed Phenomenon
Throughout the past week, Facebook, the huge social networking system, underwent some rather extreme changes. The ramifications of this turmoil could affect our movement and thus the state of public education in this country!
On Monday night, Facebook introduced a new feature called "News-Feed" where all of the sudden you could see the second by second activities of anyone on your friend list displayed on your news feed. High school and college students accross the country went into a uproar, evidenced by the immediate growth and proliferation of hundreds of groups titled "Anti News-Feed" "Anti Facebook Makeover" and "I hate the new facebook." The most interesting part of this for our purposes is what happened with one particular group...
The group including the words "Official Petition to Facebook" against the news-feeds grew in only three days to include over 500,000 people! Ironically, it grew so fast because everyone saw in their news feed as soon as one of their friends joined the group and then consequently immediately joined it. Over half a million people rallied in protest in less than 72 hours! As a result, the founder of Facebook introduced new privacy controls to control the news-feeds by Thursday of that week. We can only wish that people would become so angered and active about the state of public education in this country.
However, we need to take full advantage of this new feature of the news feeds and get as many of our friends to join the global group now. As they join, all of their friends will see this new group on their news feeds and join it. This viral advertising could help the OurEd campaign grow exponentially.
Furthermore, I think this situation speaks to the fact that when you appeal to people's personal emotions - people were actually angry about the changes to Facebook and its implications for their privacy - then they act on those emotions. We need to continue to use engaging stories, eye-opening testimonials, and creative ideas to draw people's emotions into this campaign. Public education is not some abstract, unimportant phenomenon, it is an instrument for equality of opportunity, a fundamental American value.