Twitter Flash Mob: A Social Experiment

My colleagues and twitter nation had a little mischievous fun this week. Over the last few years most large technology events have some sort of Twitter board that streams the event member tweets using a particular hashtag. So as a colleague of mine was watching the twitter monitor he decided to send a tweet and watch it appear. Then he thought began thinking how many tweets would it take to dominate the twitter board for a short period of time. And so the Twitter Flash Mob concept was born. Given the relationship of the event sponsors and the demographic of the attendees an inside joke tweet was created based on a poorly translated arcade game phrase (#AYBABTU) that became and internet phenomenon. Clearly as I collaborate toward a holistic localization strategy for communities this is a good example of how important it is to get translations correct.

So, the concept of a Twitter Flash Mob came to light and several of us in the network decided to send the same tweet all at the same time to see what would happen to the twitter display. I can only say it was a tremendous success and those that were familiar with AYBABTU had a good laugh and even those who didn’t, still found it amusing to watch. There is a great write-up and video of the event from the creative genius who had the original idea here Social Media Experiment 1 TbaaS.  Check it out it is pretty cool.

However, I now know what consequences we might expect from our friends at our next event which could get interesting.