One specific incident involves a T-Mobile ad, featuring people dancing at the Liverpool Street Station in London.
After watching the ad on TV, a Facebook member created the group "Liverpool Street Station Silent Dance” to organize something similar for friends. The group grew virally as friends invited their friends, and so on. An event was made, and when it occured it was enormous and filled with great energy. The amount of people at the station was so large that it closed down the station.
With this incident, it is interesting to compare it to the one mentioned by Niedzviecki's article "Facebook in a Crowd." In both incidents, random people were invited to attend. However, in Niedzviecki's event barely anyone showed up. It brings up the question of why the Londan flashmob event was so much more successful.
1 comment:
hey there. hal niedzviecki here. read your post and thought i'd comment. here's what i wrote on my blog analyzing the whole facebook party incident:
"several people reported that they intended to come but in the end just couldn’t muster up the courage. Writes a “maybe”: “I wanted to go, and had plans to attend with my friend. When she bailed, I didn’t have enough confidence to go on my own. Sad but true. I can and do travel alone, go to movies and restaurants alone, attend literary and gallery events, and do a myriad of other things alone. But going to a bar alone to meet a stranger who obviously already has a terribly fascinating cabal of friends I just didn’t feel I had the social stamina for.” Extrapolate from this kind of comment and you could make the argument that people are, in fact, more likely to attend an “event” they are invited to via Facebook then accept an invitation to a personal encounter. An event is anonymous. You don’t commit, you don’t extend yourself, don’t feel like there’s someone on the other end judging you. An event, like a night at home watching tv or surfing other people’s pages, is far less of a trial than a non-event involving actually having to meet and engage with other people in real life. The more disengaged we are, the more comfortable we feel."
www.peephal.com/blog
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