• Reuters, Wednesday, October 5, 2011 11:55 AM

Leaving politics aside, Reuters reports on the skill with which Occupy Wall Street is marketing itself via social media. "Occupy Wall Street is a movement, but it is also a Twitter hashtag, a Facebook page and a Livestream event, which means the protest (for what it's not entirely clear) does not even need a physical home," Reuters writes.

As a result, physical "Occupy" events have reportedly spread to 147 cities, "and much of that is the result of social media being used to recruit the young and the computer-literate." Blogger Jeff Jarvis calls Occupy Wall Street "a hashtag revolt." As the professor of journalism at the City University of New York and author of BuzzMachine explains: "A hashtag has no owner, no hierarchy, no canon or credo. It is a blank slate onto which anyone may impose his or her frustrations, complaints, demands, wishes or principles."

Still, marketers must wonder, how does Occupy control its message online? Apparently, it doesn't. "It all happens very quickly and every aspect of the media supports every other," Luke Richardson, one protester, tells Reuters. Richardson said he isn't worried about the uncontrolled spread of the message: "I'm not concerned with trying to control it too much."

Read the whole story at Reuters »