Occupy Wall Street Still Building Steam

In the first week of the Occupy Wall Street protests, many became disenchanted by the lack of a cohesive message. This sentiment, paired with a dramatic slump in # of tweets per hour caused some, including myself, to ask if Occupy Wall Street was running out of steam.

But on Day 8, targeted civil disobedience in the form of marching on Union Square led to 100 arrests and revealed the NYPD's heavy-handed use of violence. This not only increased media attention, but helped to revive the volume of #occupywallstreet on Twitter.

Although Day 9 saw a considerable drop from the day before the rest of the week sustained higher average levels than the week prior.

By the third saturday of the protests, #occupywallstreet reached a new peak height while over 700 people were arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge.

Although Wednesday the 5th saw the largest turnout with over 20,000 labor union members showing up in solidarity, many were not active participants in social media and their presence was not clearly reflected on Twitter.

But given the pattern of ever-growing tweets each Saturday, the coming weekend could quite possibly have the biggest online footprint to date.

In terms of Google search queries for "Occupy Wall Street" thre has been little slow down at all. The massive numbers of arrests made on October 2nd-3rd raised public interest more than double, while the march of the 5th brought searches to even higher levels.

Overall, the movement is growing with each weekend. Even if most people are returning to work each week, many are dedicating their free time to showing their solidarity and support.