El Paso “Least Socially Networked City”
It turns out that Men’s Health, a magazine that once ranked El Paso as the 27th most-sex-happy city, has a quite a different opinion of the Sun City when it comes to social networking. Thanks to a reader tip, TSM found out that El Paso was officially given a score of ‘F’ and placed dead last out of 100 cities when it came to finding the most socially-networked cities in America. The magazine notes that the findings were determined through sampling and statistical analysis:
“We started by calculating the number of Facebook and LinkedIn users per capita, followed by overall Twitter usage (NetProspex). Then we looked at traffic generated by the major social networks, including Myspace, Friendster, Reddit, and Digg (analyzed by ad network Chitika). Finally, after factoring in the percentage of households that check out chat rooms and blogs (SimplyMap), we had the results you see below.”
2010 film, "The Social Network" about the founding of the social networking website Facebook.
The news of such a ranking can’t be more heart wrenching than for the El Paso Convention and Visitors Bureau. The city announced today that it is vying to host the Social Media Tourism Symposium this fall. Hopefully the organizers don’t read Men’s Health.
At the end of the day, as a magazine that thrives off of social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, we may have a different perception. After all, over half of you will find this article by clicking on a link you see one a major social networking platform. Many of you will also share the link to this post on your wall or ‘RT’ with some commentary of your own thereby referring even more users via the same avenue. But then again, you are the socially-networked few who have kept us from falling off the list altogether. What about the rest of El Paso. What can our city do to promote social networking? In a world where 1 out of every 7 people on the planet have a Facebook, what’s holding us back?
Perhaps it’s safe to say that El Pasoans are off too busy enjoying the gorgeous outdoors than to bother checking into Foursquare!