The First Online Social Media Snowball Fight?

Amid the Snowmageddon pandemonium of this weekend, and news of lost power, stalled public transportation, downed trees and Starbucks closings, something spectacular happened at the intersection of online social media and frozen precipitation. Upwards of 3,000 people organized and staged a massive snowball fight in Dupont Circle on Saturday using online social media as the sole organizing strategy. The brawl began as an event on Facebook, established the Thursday before the storm. Word of the event spread to Twitter, and for most of Friday night and Saturday, the website's new local trending topics feature showed that both "Dupont Circle Snowball Fight" and "#dupontcircle" were some of the most typed phrases by Twitter users for nearly 24 hours.

As far as I'm aware of, a flashmob snowball fight of this magnitude has never been organized using Facebook and Twitter before. The success of the event is a testament to the power of online social media to spread information, organize, and mobilize. Even if the event in discussion was not of a particularly noble cause, it's manifestation proved the power of Facebook, and especially Twitter, to motivate people at a grassroots level to act.

Here is a video of the snowball fight that shows the scope of the huge gathering (credit to YouTube user goodboydc).

Twitter as a Promotional Tool for Student Orgs

It was reported late last year by the Washington Post that The George Washington University was among the most active American universities on Twitter. According to the study, 17 GWU administration accounts tweet an average of 57 times per day to more than 7,000 followers. While the study focused on administrative accounts, this made me wonder how active GWU's student organizations were on Twitter, and how they were utilizing the new medium.

Luckily, The GW Hatchet has an extensive list of student organizations on Twitter. A quick scan of the list shows that the most active of GWU organizations on Twitter and those with the most followers seem to be The GW College Democrats, The GW College Republicans, and the Program Board. Each account has in the neighborhood of 500-600 followers, and gains about 5 followers per week, according to Twitter statistics analytics website, Twitter Counter.

As for how the organizations are using Twitter, they all seem to use the site primarily to get the word out about events to their memberships:

The more ideological and political organizations tweet news articles they think their memberships will find interesting:

The other most common use of Twitter is for PR and publicity reasons. The organizations will often re-tweet articles by campus media covering their events:

So far, student organizations aren't fully utilizing the social media tool. Even the three largest organizations only have about 600 followers each. That amounts to a very small fraction of the student body. For Twitter to be a legitimate and proven promotional tool, organizations have to get more followers, tweet more often, and continue to provide content and information their memberships find useful.

Humanitarian Action 2.0

The swift and awesome humanitarian actions taken to support the victims of the murderous earthquake in Haiti, using social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook, are great examples for our class, Politics and the Internet.

"In less than 48 hours, the American red Cross had received more than $35m in donations - including $8m directly from texts," according to BBC News.

I am pleased to hear that GW is also taking part in this movement to reach out their hands to help the hurt, the hungry, and the homeless. Since the earthquake, I have been receiving many news feeds on Facebook from GW students:

If anyone is interested in helping out with the Haiti Relief Efforts on our campus, please come to the MSSC in Room 104, this Sunday, January 17 at 5:30 p.m. TEXT 'YELE' to 501501 to donate $5 to Haiti Relief Fund - Wyclef Jean, CNN or donate to UNICEF.

Social media has also proved itself as a great tool for news reporting amid cut-off land and mobile phone lines:

Throughout the night, we spoke to people through whichever platform they had access to – Skype, Twitter, Facebook- and collated a sound idea of what was happening right now. The necessity of using the internet because the phones were down forced all traditional news gathering to the side, and meant we relied entirely on the web. Sky was first with the information because we turned to the people there and relied on them to tell the story – and for that they are owed huge thanks.

The earthquake was a tragedy of the greatest proportions and our hearts and minds are with those suffering. But amidst the horror, last night was a triumph in web 2.0 journalism and communications; it proved that the internet allows us to share information across the globe, regardless of the scene.There is now no excuse for not being up-to-date, all of the time.

While we could be preoccupied with the downsides and noises of social networks and the internet, or those who intend to exploit people’s good intention, it is certain that these networks are turning into people's lifelines. I hope that a spontaneous order will be intact online. Spread the word.