Once again, special thanks to Celby Richoux for teaching us how to put the paddles to TTAG’s formerly comatose Facebook page. Before her fateful advice at January’s SHOT Show, we were trundling along at around 5k Likes. “Post your links manually,” she advised. “No capes!” I mean, “No autoposts!” We followed her advice – and not just because we were mesmerized by her eyes. Last night, TTAG’s Facebook page crested 100k Likes. Being competitive folk, we’ve set up the Insights widget to keep track of our competition. Especially Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America. As you know . . .
MDA is an astroturf op. Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America – a wholly owned subsidiary of Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s Mayors Against Illegal Guns – has only slightly more grass-roots support than The Balloon Council. When the obsequious mass media asks former Monsanto PR rep turned anti-gun crusader Shannon Watts for some measure of her org’s popularity – ignoring MDA’s abject inability to rally more than a couple dozen people to an event (see: Illinois lobby even above) – she cites her Facebook Likes.
As you can see above, MDA’s Facebook page has 153.5k Likes vs. TTAG’s 100.1K. I have no idea how many of those Likes are from pro-gun folks trying to get a comment in edgewise – only to have their remarks almost instantaneously deleted and their posting privileges revoked. A fair few, I imagine.
Notice that TTAG’s Likes jumped 16% from last week’s total, while MDA’s Facebook page’s popularity has flatlined. We’re crushing MDA on engagement and posts. And will continue to do so until we beat them on every metric shown here – and then some. Because guns!
And because Facebook is fun. It’s where we put gun stories that aren’t big enough to make the grade at TTAG. And a place to take a sounding from readers who haven’t yet – and perhaps never will – join the discussions launched by members of our Armed Intelligentsia underneath TTAG posts.
So, if you haven’t “Liked” us on Facebook yet, please do. Marginalizing MDA is that important.
Sorry, I don’t do Facebook.
At least TTAG has their own commenting system. I’d love to be able to comment over at Guns.com.
Ditto
Despite all appearance to the contrary, you’re not alone. After doing dial-up BBSs, Usenet, FidoNet, Compuserve, SixDegrees, AOL, Friendster, MySpace, and the first release of Twitter (formerly great business tool) – I’m out. I watched most die and read the autopsies.
FB takes everything bad about all those previous platforms triple-distills it, and then insinuates itself wherever possible. All the childishness, craziness, stalkers, people you no longer want to see for good reason, relatives you can only tolerate at funerals, Springer-esque drama, and best of all, Orwellian data mining of your life. Not to mention a huge time suck – making over communication too easy is not a good thing.
+1
I don’t either so I had my wife do it.
I like your FB page. It often alerts me to stuff going on in the blog and now and then, I come across stuff that’s unique to the FB site. Good stuff. If I could like a few more times, I would.
Yup.
Liked it some time back.
funny part about MDA is….more than half of the likes are from pro gun people just keeping a closer eye on them! this is easily visible, whenever they make a new post just watch the comments nonstop for the first few minutes, nothing but pro gun comments….then MDA gets on and censors them all away and blocks them from commenting and after an hour it looks mostly how they want it to. happens on every single post.
Isn’t it acknowledged that they have a woman whose sole job is to delete comments from the opposition? Thought I read that somewhere.
I don’t do FB either–but “liking” is a different operation from commenting, no? Or is it that only someone who “likes” can comment?
I believe the problem is that “liking” something requires a facebook account. Many of us do not have a facebook account.
Ex-FB. I can’t go for that.
There was just a tragedy at a Jewish community center and you post “look at all our facebook likes”. Unsubscribed.
the story just before this post was about the Jewish center incident, so… subscribe again? why are you subscribed any way? why not just visit the site at will?
Apparently a full day of silence is demanded. I wonder if he’s also yelling at Google News for continuing to cover other things. And CNN. And so on and so forth.
You can’t undo what you haven’t done, so buh-bye tr0ll.
Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.
Likewise, Skeezix.
There was a post about the Jewish community center at 1550 ET this afternoon. An hour and ten minutes before this post went live, and more than two and a half hours before your comment. For someone who claims to be subscribed, you’re remarkably uninformed.
Today the tragic discovery was made that a woman in Utah had given birth ten times, killed the infants, and stored the corpses in cardboard boxes in her garage — and yet today a whole raft of insensitive louts have actually dared to give birth, put things (not babies) in cardboard boxes, and (gasp!) store stuff in garages!
Life sucks. Where’s the sensitivity? I quit.
sal, where are you going to get your news? yahoo or the huff post? Good luck with that.
Only 400 k likes till you beat the mall ninja rag.
Just curious, but what don’t you like about Recoil Magazine?
Of all the gun magazines I’ve read, it’s probably the best in terms of quality of content, editing and layout polish, and objectivity in their reviews. If they test a POS gun, they really actually call it out as a POS gun. Their gear reviews are great, and their lifestyle articles are always pretty interesting too. Not to gush, or anything.
It’s also geared squarely toward the sporting and tactical shooter, with a bare minimum of “fud” content. I realized that’s maybe not what everyone is looking for, but I think it’s great.
Anyhow, you’re certainly entitled to your opinion, but to call it a rag seems a bit harsh.
Do you remember when…. http://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/2012/09/robert-farago/readers-recoil-from-recoil-magazine/
I do. My understanding is that the editor behind that boneheaded series of statements (Jerry Tsai) was fired from Recoil (and rightfully so). I’ve only been reading Recoil since Issue 7, but I’ve yet to encounter any statement in the publication that is anything but Pro-2A. Their most recent edition actually features not one, but two articles on 80% lowers, including a review of popular makes, detailed build instructions, and how the law applies to manufacture, sale, transfers, etc.
Anyhow, I happen to think it’s a great publication with much better than average quality of writing for a gun mag. Anyone who stopped reading it because of Jerry Tsai’s nitwittery was 100% right to do so, but I hope they give it another try.
Don’t tell Shannon that the NRA has 3.2 million likes and NAGR has 3.6 million.
You just made her cry. You big old Gun Bully…
MDA buys FB likes by working through off-shore “click farms.” This is how the Obama administration got so many followers on Twitter and FB, too. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/05/buy-facebook-likes_n_4544800.html
MDA is a very dangerous organization. They are patterning after MADD with a much better social media presence. MADD was incredibly successful even before social media. Watch MDA like a hawk.
MADD was a real grassroots organization, I think–not astroturf.
Still, as once was said, “Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.”
Maybe, but guns and drunk driving are fundamentally different. Name one friend of yours who safely practices drunk driving as a hobby. Which has a rich history of tradition in the US? Which can be beneficial to your family’s safety?
If you really want to compare MDA to MADD, MDA has a long road to haul, because shooting and gun ownership is popular with a significant chunk of the US population. Drunk driving isn’t.
Well, in all fairness, drunk driving must actually be quite popular. There sure are a lot of DUI’s arrested and charged.
(Cue indignant responses about too-low BAC’s in the laws…not my point!)
I lost my ‘faith’ in MADD when I heard on a radio interview some higher-higher bragging about the 70+ DUI related laws they helped to get passed…more that 1 per state.
I wondered, why so many? Isn’t “DUI Illegal, here’s the penalty” not enough?
To compound my discomfort with that thought, she went to talk about all the additional laws they sought to get passed.
I don’t know all that much about MADD’s beginnings, but what they have become is a very statist leaning, law heavy lobby group that is quite arguably way, way past their initial mandate and into “bossy” territory.
I’ll admit, I’m double dipping. I liked MDA F.B. page, keep your friends close but keep your enemies closer.
As stated by a previous poster, but worth re-iterating: you can very literally, very easily, and very legally BUY likes for your Facebook group. My company did it when they got onto Facebook – no one wants their brand to enter social media with 0 likes. Our page STARTED with 10,000 likes.
In the olden days of Facebook you could actually see WHO likes something; you can no longer do this, because it would quickly become apparent that a “like” does not evaluate to an actual person in most situations.
A group like MDA, with nearly unlimited resources, would have no problem purchasing 100k likes; RF says they’ve flatlined – they most likely STARTED that way – not gaining anyone new, only keeping the ones the bought.
@ -Peter. I have nothing against Recoil currently. I was making a joke because all the tacticool articles and the 500 pound fat kids that get it at Walmart believing it will tactically enhance their Operational abilities.
If I had Facebook, I would like TTAG all the way.
I predict you will hit 200K in the next 4-6 months. Once you have as many likes as you do it all snowballs.
JasonM claims that “many of us” do not have a Facebook account.
Really?
He must mean aside from the 1.23 BILLION people who do?
LOL
Most of those 1B+ users are rather irrelevant. There might be 180MM users in the US. Might. Even in FB’s very optimistic estimates in it’s 10Qs, 7%+ are duplicate, fake, or miscategorized.
http://allfacebook.com/form-10q-invalid-accounts_b122538
That’s what they say anyway. My personal experience with tekkies who still use the platform is that they all have 10 through 100+ accounts each (for a variety of reasons). In no way scientific, but selling north of 150MM US users is a stretch if you drill down at all even using FB’s own numbers.
Does it have a lot of users. Sure. Have dynasties this size been abandoned in droves before? Yup. Which is why Zuckersatan is trying to insinuate that turd into everything he can – so it becomes hard to avoid, and inconvenient not to have. It certainly isn’t all that popular with da yoots anymore, so we shall see how long this run lasts.
http://business.time.com/2014/01/15/more-than-11-million-young-people-have-fled-facebook-since-2011/
I’m amused by the Facebook Luddites around here.
Meanwhile, dramatically missing the point, they fail to realize that the TTAG FB site is reaching WAY more people who are younger and less, um, FUDDISH/OWG types like most of us around here are.
Blogs have basically gone the way of the dinos, except those with a very strong, consistent niche presence, precisely like TTAG.
BUT…expanding TTAG into FB opens up the whole TTAG universe to people who don’t like blogs, don’t bother with them, hate the commenting system and even how they look.
All this, “I don’t do Facebook” muttering is just kind of really, really silly, if you just stop and think about it.
As far as I’m concerned, TTAG should be on EVERY single social media venue possible: Instagram, Twitter, you name it.
It’s all about getting the message out.
I’m amused by those who think some iteration of ‘social media’ is the be all end all. Because history indicates that it never is. Perhaps this time it’s different. Or not.
Just like there’s no one “best” jarred pasta sauce, neither is their one form of e-communication that is optimal for all groups. According to the science, younger folks aren’t readily accepting FB’s nonsense, exactly because it’s becoming over-run with OFWGs and their wives. The kids are moving to other platforms to avoid people like you.
Not sure how to integrate TTAG into the teenage-tit-dick-cooch-pic world of Snapchat, or the sub-retard-level faux-70s-horrid-picture look of InstaHipster? That’s where the yoots have moved to. I take it you have a brilliant marketing plan?
Seriously, once you get grown-up enough to understand certain philosophical concepts, you generally inherently abandon certain behaviors. FB would be one of those abandoned. Just like once you get some education you quit having more than one or two kids.
i liked TTAG on FB. but MDA, i will not, its just too cheasy and campy. baking goods and sewing quilts for their cause is just too funny. they are stereotyping housewives of the 1950s. or the stereotype of the minivan driving soccer mom. its so laughable to look at their fb page. they really do not have a goal or anything. they support any anti-gun legislation and not just a fixed set of things, just anything that will further restrict. and keep calling the NRA a evil empire. to me they are just another lobby group trying to get the attention of politicians they are just the oposite side of the NRA. just like children they keep calling the NRA names and yet they have no idea what ideals the NRA support, just like they have no idea what they support. the fact they do not allow pro gun posts further discredits them to me like they do not fight or take part of battles they cant win
As of today, April 17, TTAG is up to 109,000.
10,000 new likes in only four days?
Do the math.
2,500 per day.
You’ll easily crest 200K in a few months.
Because somehow that metric ‘means something’?