Obama and Facebook
Last month, readers of LeaderTalk.Org were asked to respond to a survey to determine how many had Facebook accounts and if they did, for what purpose?
We had 86 readers respond; approximately 25% were Building Administrators, 25% were District Administrators, 25% were Teachers while the remaining 25% were a variety of singletons from School Board Director to Vendor.
90% of those responding did indeed have Facebook accounts and of the 9 respondents that didn't, 7 were administrators and 2 were teachers.
When asked, "Do you use Facebook to follow political campaigns?"; 61% said no, but maybe more of us should. President Obama is a big hit with Facebookers. He had 4,567,015 Facebook supporters when I began writing this post. Obama actually hired Facebook co founder Chris Hughes (born in 1983) to be his coordinator of online organizing during his campaign. In my district, a citizen's group has tried to capture some of that good Facebook karma for our upcoming bond and levy election by creating a Facebook presence. It has helped to disseminate important information and recruit volunteers for phone calling and sign waving. We'll see on March 10th if it helps to pass our election.
When asked how often they checked their Facebook; 39% said several times a day, while 4% check less than once a month. A majority were checking it at least daily. Social networks, even virtual ones, don't work very well if you never or seldom visit.
The survey showed that 65% use the Facebook instant messaging feature to communicate with their "friends". The ability to instant message while on the Facebook website tends to keep Facebookers on longer. Once you open Facebook you can see which of your "friends" are on and text chat with them in real time. It's fun and I find it to be more efficient and economical than a phone call.
Only 51% wanted to add LeaderTalk.Org readers as their Facebook "friend". To help facilitate the connecting of LeaderTalk.Org readers that want to network on Facebook we've created a Facebook Group. Join our group to add "friends" and share ideas with the LeaderTalk.Org online community.
The survey results can be accessed here.
I started this survey to try out the Google Docs Form feature. It was easy to use and fun to watch the data fields populate each time I checked. Thanks to those of you who contributed to the survey.
Glenn Malone
