Anti-Hillary facebook group

edmondthehun — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 23:18:12 -0400

It is unlikely that the Anti-Hillary facebook group is a "partisan Republican group." Its comparative size to the Obama group, and some of the discussions within the Obama group in support of it, leads me to believe there is a significant overlap between the two groups. Certainly there is a large chunk of Republican voters, but hatred for Hillary is popular for Obama and other Democrat supporters as well.

It should be noted that the group membership numbers alone do not tell the whole story. The Obama group began long ago and peaked at 325,000 members in mid-April. Since then, due partially to the natural turnover rate for Facebook users leaving old groups, the Obama group has lost members for 70 consecutive days, often at triple-digit rates. (It has lost 50 more since this blog posting, down to 309,626)

Meanwhile, the anti-Hillary group is slightly newer and growing at a massive rate, gaining over 1,000 members per day throughout much of May and all of June (it passed the Obama group on June 10), only now "slowing down" to about 700 new members per day. Certainly this group will eventually experience turnover as well, but its peak is already higher than the Obama's group peak and showing no signs of letting up anytime soon.

The comparative numbers will be 400,000 to 300,000 before long.

Daily Digest: 7/9/07

Joshua Levy — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 11:19:49 -0400

The Web on the Candidates

Gaby Wood, in yesterday's Guardian, reviews the details of the "YouTube election" for British readers. Most of the examples -- the "1984" ad, Obama Girl, "I Feel Pretty," and so on -- are familiar to readers of this site, but Wood takes an interesting look at the idea of voter-created campaign ads. "The notion of a 'citizen ad' is an intriguing one, suggesting as it does both a citizen's arrest - the idea of doing something without pay for the public good - and Citizen Kane. You can, from the privacy (and affordability) of your own home, have an effect akin to that of a mogul," Wood writes. "Is YouTube the ultimate form of democracy, then, a means by which voters can have their say and politicians can really listen? Or is it something to be feared, a kind of anarchic 24-hour surveillance?" The answer to this question -- which continues to be asked about the web itself -- isn't as stark as Wood suggests.

An anti-Hillary Clinton Facebook group, "One Million AGAINST Hillary Clinton," now has more supporters than the successful group from which it derives its name, "One Million Strong for Barack." The anti-Clinton group claims an impressive 348,556 members, while the Obama group has a 309,674. When gauging a candidate's popularity on Facebook, how should we factor in this level of unpopularity? Do the negative numbers cancel out the positive numbers? And should we take the group's claim that "whether you are supporting Rudy Giuliani or Mitt Romney, John Edwards or Barack Obama a single goal exists, to ensure that another Clinton is not put into the White House" at face value, or is this a partisan Republican group? (Thanks, Patrick.)

techPresident - Daily Digest: 7/9/07 - Comments

Anti-Hillary facebook group

Daily Digest: 7/9/07