Just how powerful is social networking?

Facebook enabled mass protests all across Canada when our government decided to prorogue our parliament. People organized and spread the word in an amazingly short amount of time. At the same time and one the same day protests broke out in every major city and many smaller cities all thanks to Facebook.

Not necessarily the most practical use, but it does show the power of Twitter: Students from MIT used it to find the red balloons in the DARPA challenge, and found them all in 9 hours. Watch

If you do have a Facebook or Twitter, try not to use the status update for promos – I hate it when my feed is clogged up with what indie artist is playing at an independent coffee house, or what your latest tire rotation special is (I don’t need them rotated every week…). While you can put those on a different page, save your status for something like “Sorry, our phone lines have been knocked out, please bear with us” or “We’ll be closed for the next 3 days for remodeling, so if you need immediate assistance please call blank”.

The power of social networking through the internet is immense. Twitter was heavily used to organize the Iranian protests a while back, and also the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions along with facebook.

On the small business scale, I see it used with great effect in establishing relationships with clientele. For example, a mexican food place around where I live uses it to communicate with their customers and even take suggestions from them. One day they asked about what kind of specials they’d like to see and then a few days later there’s a facebook thursday free drink deal.

Things like this give customers a sense of community and connection to the business, which is of course very good for creating and maintaining customer loyalty and gets them helping you out with high ratings on Yelp and things like that.

Basically any info that you post on your door, permanent or temporary, should be posted on your Facebook. And if you are a Chinese restaurant (which you aren’t, but if you were…) you should definitely put a) if you deliver b) the minimum order for delivery c) any delivery fees and d) the delivery radius.

In truth, social networking empowered the Egyptian revolution.

I went to the site and it Triangle Veterinary Hospital is listed as a choice. Is this not your business or is the Referral Hospital separate?

@Supacase It’s a primary care facility that is unaffiliated with us, and just happens to have a very similar name. We actually function very differently – we see emergencies 24/7, and have specialists available during the day.

That is probably not in your favor – people may think they are voting for you when they are really voting for the other place.

I’ll write you in, though. :)

News about successful revolutions also travel from country to country in milliseconds. The whole Arab youth knows about what their Internet peers accomplished in Egypt.

Compare this to the French Revolution in 1789. It took 59 years until democratic and liberal forces in Germany tried the same thing.

I believe it is not nearly as powerful as some might think. I’m pretty sure Western governments had more to do with the fall of Hosni Mubarak than Twitter.

@bob_ – During his final days perhaps.

But this Facebook page triggered the whole thing:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_are_all_Khaled_Said#Aftermath

More than 100,000 Egyptians connected themselves to Facebook and the whole organization when and where to meet, which placards to draw, which slogans to shout and so forth originated there. Plus Twitter for additional real time coordination.