By Michelle Hagopian/For CU-CitizenAccess — CU organizations, groups and businesses are increasingly using Facebook to share or promote their purpose.
Here are five of the most popular Facebook pages in the area (popular meaning the most “likes”):
1. The Champaign-Urbana music scene (past and present) – 3,105 likes
2. Mix 94.5 – Champaign/Urbana, IL – 2,857 likes
3. Latina/Latino Studies @ University of Illinois Urbana Champaign – 1,311
4. Occupy CU – 1,177 likes
5. Champaign Urbana Theatre Company – 1,052 likes
*Numbers as of Tues., Nov. 8.
With the hype surrounding the Occupy Wall Street protests, Occupy CU is becoming a rapidly growing group both in reality and on Facebook. The group’s “About” section says, “We are a peaceful, nonviolent, non-partisan movement,” which you can see by catching them in action on the University’s quad.
Occupy CU’s Twitter presence, however, is lacking. They tweet fairly often, but their 90 followers are on the low end of the Twitter spectrum. Regardless, the group’s Facebook page receives more “likes” by the hour.
Want to find other CU groups on Facebook? Type “Champaign Urbana” in the search box at the top of the page and click on “See more results” at the bottom of the search. You’ll see a list of pages come up, from Papa Johns Champaign Urbana to Champaign Urbana Schools Foundation. Interested in learning more about the Miss Champaign-Urbana Scholarship Pageant? There’s a page for that. Want to try yoga? Check out the Iyengar Yoga page.
Whether you’re looking for people or postings, Facebook proves to be an excellent tool to find news you can use.
About our Tweet Beat:
Michelle Hagopian is a journalism graduate student in the College of Media working with the CU-CitizenAccess.org team this semester and follows the social media scene in Champaign-Urbana.
She reports on how the community is using social media, specifically Twitter and Facebook, so that users can get an idea of what different groups are talking about.
She also looks at different software to collect and analyze tweets and ask for advice and ideas from the community.
Contact her at hagopian.michelle@gmail.com.