Written by Tehneyat Waseem
The need to join groups, become fan of pages that are environment friendly, pro human rights and promote the greater cause on facebook is becoming more popular than ever before. As part of interacting with supporters of causes, organisations and individuals making an effort to find a platform in which they can engage the individual on a global level to join support is increasing. But to what extent does the individual fan benefit, become involved in causes, and what’s the point?
So, the entire idea behind getting people involved in causes on facebook is genius. When I realized two years ago that facebook had groups you could join to support different causes, I wasn’t exactly thrilled, but saw this as a cool way to show my friends and other personal stalkers, what my interests were, and what kind of causes I supported, revealing something about myself. This gave groups the opportunity to send me updates and messages when something new was going on. Then when my friends joined a new cause or group, it would show up on my news feed, and would allow me to reflect and consider whether that was a cause I wanted to join, making the list of my groups and causes larger and larger.
When facebook introduced fanpages, it did the best thing it could for organizations and causes, as it allowed them to become a socially integral part of facebook and its users, as it allowed them a more direct contact and ensured an interaction with their supporters, showing up on news feeds with status updates, allowing people, including me, to ‘like’ and comment on status updates. Pretty cool. So from being a not so involved facebook user when it came to the causes I supported, to suddenly following updates from organizations and causes and interacting with them, agreeing, disagreeing, and sometimes even sharing a link or a status update from them on my own status to promote their cause, allowed causes and organizations to network with people globally.
Recently I was invited to an event, and I have to say in all honesty that a year ago I wouldn’t even have thought of going, but because of the social interaction between causes and organizations on facebook, not going for a protest or to show your support in a rally would seem to be disloyal to what you claim you support. So in all fairness, the entire point with becoming fan of a cause is to show support, and having the privilege of interacting, suggesting, liking and promoting the causes one finds worthy in one way or another. I can only see this as a win-win situation, as the users has a greater awareness about causes they support than before, and the causes, or the promoters get what they are there for: feedback and interaction. It’s soup for the causes. So next time you are on facebook and get a status update from a cause, think about the fact that it actually, even if it is for a split of a second, makes you think.
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