Can social networking affect change? This year, we saw a good example of this play out on Facebook. Someone started a fan page encouraging Betty White to host Saturday Night Live. At 88, Betty White is not the most obvious choice to host the long running sketch comedy show (is she even awake at 11:30 on a Saturday night?). Usually it’s up-and-coming actors or bankable names with a movie to plug.
That being said, Betty White has been a high profile comedic actress with successful television programs (The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Golden Girls) and many film roles (including the recent box office hit The Proposal). So it’s not like Betty White hasn’t earned the right to host the show.
Maybe the group was started as a joke. Maybe it was meant as irony, or an attack on SNL (trying to paint it as out of touch, or just plain old). Whatever the motives were, people responded. Today, the page has well over 500,000 fans. That’s a lot of folks who want to see Betty White hosting Saturday Night Live.
On May 8th, those people will get their wish. NBC has announced that Betty White will in fact be hosting the program. Executive Producer Lorne Michaels acknowledged that the fan campaign was a major factor in the decision.
So there you have it. Social networking can affect change. Should it? That’s a question for another blog post.
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