In the comments of a recent diary, some folks were wondering if there are any good reasons to join facebook.  Here are a few thoughts on the subject…

I personally don’t think there’s any intrinsic feature of facebook that makes it a necessary tool for certain kinds of organizing, but in my opinion it turns out to be invaluable simply because it happens to be the form of communication used most by college students.  Thus, in my opinion, it has clear benefits for anyone whose organizing involves working with students.  And, due to its increasing membership even outside of campuses, it is becoming increasingly useful in non-campus organizing as well.   I would break down its benefits as follows:

Communication: For whatever reason, there are some people who will respond to a facebook message but will not respond to email.  There are also some people who will respond to messages to facebook groups they are a part of (such as “DFHs of Missouri”) though they will not respond to personal messages.  Why?  I have no idea, but I’ve found it to be true.  There are, of course, people who respond better to emails, and people who respond better to phone calls, and definitely people who respond better to text messages.  But facebook gives one more way of trying to reach people with important political information.  

A further note about communication on facebook; there seem to be different etiquette rules that sometimes make facebook organizing more effective.  That is, as a manager of different email lists, I’ve found that I get a lot of complaints from people if I send out too many emails, even if it is just two or three in a week.  However, on facebook, it seems as though people are less likely to complain about getting several messages from groups they are involved in.  This is especially weird considering that facebook messages get sent to people’s email accounts anyway, but again this just seems to be the way it is.

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Tracking:  For certain kinds of organizing, it is really important to know how many people are going to be at an event in advance.  You don’t want to tell the media that you’re having a big rally and then find out that only twenty people show up (unless, of course, you’re the Young Republicans).  Facebook events provide an easy way to keep track of who says they are attending an event, who says they might be, and who says they are not.  I’ve found that facebook RSVPs actually do track fairly decently the number of people at certain events.  Certainly, not all of the people who say they will attend actually do, but often the number of people who RSVP and don’t show up is balanced by a few people who show up but didn’t RSVP.

Research:  Depending on people’s privacy settings, you can find out varying degrees of information about people who are members of certain groups or friends with certain people.  Thus, if you were thinking “I’d really like to get in touch with a group at Saint Louis University that works on public transportation,” you could do a search for that group and then come up with a large list of names of people who are interested in that topic.  Or, if you have a friend who works on a certain issues, you can often find other people who have similar concerns by checking out that person’s “friend list.”  Of course, if you don’t want other people knowing all of this about you, you can change your privacy settings to various degrees including making it the case that no one can even see that you’re on facebook unless you send them a friend request.

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So this is a sort of quick pitch as to why I think facebook is helpful.  I’m sure there are many other reasons why it is helpful for organizing that I’m forgetting or don’t know about, and I know that there are certain privacy and advertising concerns that people have.  But overall, given that it is something that so many people happen to use,  I think it is an important addition to most people’s activism tool belt.