#OccupyWallStreet Movement Has Doubled in Size in Last 8 Days
BY Micah L. Sifry | Friday, October 14 2011
Eight days ago, our dataset of "Occupy" Facebook groups tallied 480,000 "likes" of a core group of 200 that we had initially identified at the beginning of October, and nearly 643,000 in all when we include a larger set of another 280 Facebook groups.
Today, those two cohorts have basically doubled in size, to 897,000 and 1,233,000, according to our friends at CollectiveDisorder.com. I am sure the actual total is much higher, as the overall number of Facebook groups associated with the "Occupy Wall Street" movement is certainly much larger.
But just using the nearly 500 Facebook books that we've been tracking as a baseline, it's clear that the movement's growth rate has moderated. Going back over my posts on the topic, what they found was a 25% daily growth rate during the first days of October (when the mass arrests on the Brooklyn Bridge occurred and media coverage jumped), which dropped to about an 18% overnight rate by mid-late last week, and now a 9% average daily growth rate in the last eight days.
Of course, "liking" Occupy X on Facebook is a weak measure of affiliation and undoubtedly does not perfectly mirror the on-the-ground reach of this new movement.
On Meetup.com/OccupyTogether, where the OccupyTogether folks shifted their efforts, the number of communities represented has also doubled in the last 8 days, from 945 to 1,749. The number of "occupiers" listed as having joined one of those Meetups has tripled, from just under 4,000 to about 12,300. So, while the Meetup platform is lagging the Occupy network on Facebook, it appears to be gaining something of a foothold and bears watching.