Social Media
Twitter was invented in 2006, but its surge to popularity began a year later – here in Austin, Texas.
Coincidence? I think not! The technical and creative communities of Austin have enthusiastically embraced the new forms of social media.
Within days of the Google "Fiber for Communities" announcement, Austinites started congregating on social networks to discuss the opportunity. Very quickly, Austinites created multiple Facebook groups and fan pages, and started emailing and tweeting about the fiber opportunity.
The "Big Gig Austin" initiative was launched on February 24. One of the first steps was to create locations in the social media space to consolidate and coordinate the various social media campaigns.
There were four different Facebook groups and fan pages created in the initial aftermath of the Google announcement. The various administrators have been working with the "Big Gig Austin" group to coordinate on public outreach.
The Big Gig Austin - Build the Google Gigabit Fiber Network in Austin Facebook group was created on February 24 to consolidate support. As of Friday, March 26, about a month after its creation, it stood at over 5,400 members.
The @BigGigAustin user was created to connect with the Big Gig Austin supporters on Twitter. As of Friday, March 26, it had over 600 followers.
A #BigGigAustin hashtag was adopted to mark tweets about the local effort.
Over the week prior to the RFI deadline, there were about 220 tweets related to Big Gig Austin.
The widget inset on this page shows some of the tweets people have posted on the Big Gig Austin effort.
Other Networks
In addition, motivated individuals have spontaneously created discussion threads on Digg, Reddit, and Yelp.