Facebook and the Power of Social Media

In addition to a twitter account, Love, Joy, Feminism now has a facebook page as well. If you have twitter or facebook, I encourage you to “follow” or “like” my blog!

Those of you who have been around for a while remember that I used to post “worthwhile reads” posts but then sort of mysteriously stopped. Well, I have been posting every “worthwhile read” I come upon on twitter, and things are now set up such that each of those will also go to the Love, Joy, Feminism facebook page. So if you’re not into twitter and want to see what I’ve found interesting lately, you can always head over to my facebook page.

I wanted to mention something about last Monday’s post that went viral. One of you asked how it went viral – who linked it. The answer is everybody. There was no one huge site that linked my post. Instead, practically every one of you all shared it on facebook. In fact, one hundred and eleven thousand people, all told, shared my post on facebook. And by that I mean 111,000 individual people. I think this is an amazing example of the power social media grants to each of us as individuals.

I want to say one more thing about that post. The number of page views it has generated is simply unprecedented in the history of my blogging career, but that is not what I am most proud of. What I am most proud of is the amount of conversations I started with that post, conversations between ordinary people from facebook to the dinner table. Whether my post changed any minds or not – and the comments on it indicate that it did change at least a few – what I am most proud of is motivating people think. My goal here on my blog is not and has never been to tell people what to think. In fact, doing that would be antithetical to the values I hold most dear. The way this post started conversations and motivated people to think about the same old things in new or interesting ways? That is my goal.

And what you all did, sharing it on facebook over, and over, and over again? That was crucial. I honestly and truly couldn’t have done it without you. You have more power than you realize.

And don’t forget to follow me on twitter and like my blog on facebook!