Marketing in the Age of Google: Your Online Strategy IS Your Business Strategy, Revised and Updated

GARNERING SUPPORT

Remember the Occupy movement search interest from Chapter 2? The movement has used social media to keep those searchers informed, rally their troops, and keep people interested.8

“I think the online component was critical—the ability to stream video, to capture the images and create records and narratives of sacrifice and resistance,” said Yochai Benkler, a professor at Harvard Law School and codirector of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard.

The movement started on Twitter in July 2011 with a tweet9 calling for a march in Manhattan in September. (See Figure 9.11.)

Figure 9.11 The Tweet That Started the Occupy Wall Street Movement

Source: Twitter

Videos, such as one showing police pepper spraying students at the University of California, Davis, spread on YouTube and helped keep the movement’s momentum going (see Figure 9.12). As of late November 2011, 1.7 million videos have been tagged on YouTube with “occupy” and collectively have been viewed 73 million times.10 As of early December 2011, the video from the University of California, Davis, alone had been viewed 1.4 million times.

Figure 9.12 Occupy Wall Street Movement Viral Video

Source: YouTube