THUNDER BAY – Tech Now – As social media continues to grow, communities around the world are finding their way online. One such community is in Switzerland. Reaching out beyond its borders, the community is inviting people on Facebook to “become Swiss”. Already over the past three days, the mountain village of of Obermutten in Graubünden which has eighty residents has over 1600 new cyber-citizens.
Anyone who goes to http://www.facebook.com/obermutten and clicks on “like” can put his/her photo onto the Commune’s official notice board. By doing this, anybody anywhere in the world can “become Swiss”. After only three days, the village already has fifteen times more fans than residents, and this number is growing by the hour.
The identity pictures are printed out by a councillor and pinned up on the noticeboard and the fans thus become part of the village community.
The eighty inhabitants – many still without an internet connection – like to get to know their fans in this way. The village has been simply swamped with fan applications. However, the Commune in the Graubünden holiday region has undertaken to keep its promise. Now that the noticeboard is already practically full, new fans are being posted on the wall of a huge barn and the village council is looking for further alternatives.
“Obermutten is developing a personal relationship with its guests. Here it’s not a question of the total volume, but of each individual one. Why shouldn’t this be the same for us in the internet?” asks Martin Wyss, Mutten’s village president. Already many people from all over the world who would like to “become Swiss” are posted on the noticeboard or barn wall.
The village president communicates with his fans in short video messages in an extremely personal way and every day the fans can also find themselves in a picture of the noticeboard.
It is taking a community that few likely knew about, and putting it on the social media map.