Saturated by Facebook – from politics to getting fired
Our politicians are reaching out via Facebook and people are now even being fired over the medium as some 940 million around the world log on at least twice a day.
As the site becomes more popular than Google, many are using social media’s darling, Facebook, as their main information portal.
There are currently 940 million social media users in the world, according to a new study from InSites Consulting. Of that, 28,280,000 Brits (77% of the online population) use social media websites.
And now the politicians want in on the action
The 2010 UK general election arrived on Facebook today to tap into the mass market of social media. It has launched Democracy UK, a fan page established for UK users to engage with the hot political topics in the build up to the election.
It worked for President Obama so why not for our UK pollies?
Democracy UK will be the centerpiece of Facebook’s campaign during the general election, using the site’s unique scale and reach to aggregate opinion-sharing and debate under one single named portal and drive online public engagement with election milestones.
The site will also play host to the myriad of creative election-related applications in circulation from political parties, campaigns and the public.
There’ll also be live debates, apps, partner campaigns and local insight.
Richard Allan, Facebook’s director of European public policy says: “With 23m users in the UK, Facebook has as many users as voted for the all of the three main parties in the last election. Our Democracy UK page will bring together the thousands of people who are already using Facebook to connect with one another on political issues.
“Social media is a fundamentally changing the way we communicate and as a result, social networks will prove to be as central to political debate and the general election as the post, the phone and television have been in the past. It will engage more people in the political process, leading to a better more authentic politics, with online debate changing the offline world. It’s the new era in politics that people have been crying out for.”
Also today, the Conservative Party launched a Twitter-based campaign against Prime Minister Gordon Brown using the hashtag #Cashgordon.
However, within just two hours, the site was taken down. Why? Because politicians must treat social media with care. Just because people gather in these spaces does not mean that they want or need to be debating politics there. Users may feel harassed.
Brits mostly surf to Facebook (50%), followed by Twitter (42%) so it’s no wonder that opur politicians are turning to the sites in a bid for attention.
Globally, Facebook remains the most popular online platform (51% use Facebook), followed by MySpace (20%) and Twitter (17%). But not everyone is being so ‘social’ when logging in. More than 14% of users log in and rarely write or post anything at all.
The average British social media user has 173 friends, but the global average is 195, in which South America is highest with an average of 360 friends, followed by Portugal with 236 friends and the United States with 200 friends. (Australia must have a high average because I have 304 friends)!
Yet, 58% of social media users have ‘unfriended’ a friend. Today, we’re even being fired by Fcaebook. A Manchester schoolgirl was fired from her part-time job at a cafe via Facebook this week.
The 16 year old was stunned when she logged on to the social networking site and found a letter of dismissal waiting for her. Her boss used the medium in an attempt to talk to the school girl on her level, the dismissal letter read: “hiya Chelsea its Elaine from work. Sorry to send u a message like this but bin tryin to ring u but gettin no joy.”
Is there nothing we won’t use these sites for in the future?
