Humans of New York
An analysis on the vital role social media platforms play in the success of HONY
Humans of New York
Following
Brandon Stanton started Humans of New York in 2010. He seeked to collect and publish the stories of hundreds of New Yorkers. Since then, he has gained over 20 million followers across social media platforms.
Humans of New York has grown from just Facebook to virtually all social media platforms due to the fandom's loyalty, participation, and desire to share HONY with their own community.
The followers of HONY are responsible for the widespread reach of this project - something Stanton could arguably never achieved on his own. HONY's following leads these efforts with their participation with these platforms.
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The very nature of social media platforms calls for people to participate and create content. Likewise, the mission of HONY inspires its fandom and leads them to re-publish content in a new narrative -- their narrative.
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An interesting aspect to consider about how social media helps fuel the success of HONY is to imagine if there wasn't multiple platforms to re-publish content. For instance, if HONY was only accessible on a website where people had to want visit in order to interact with the posts, the audience would definitely be limited and the following would be small.
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However, since social media easily allows people to see HONY posts in their daily scrolling, the loyalty of fans reproducing HONY posts is directly responsible for the growth of the following.
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Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are the hub of this project, but they function in different but important ways. We argue that the individual functions of each platform that invite fans to share, react to, and participate makes the HONY following so successful.
CLICK THE ICONS BELOW TO SEE HOW FANDOM FUNCTIONS ON EACH PLATFORM
