Social Media Bombs

Social Mediaon March 9th, 2009Comments Off on Social Media Bombs

Most social media articles cover the marketing side of social media. How marketshare can be gained, products sold, reputations built on the savvy use of web 2.0 tools. But as with any compelling new technology, this medium can also be used for other purposes. One of these is the social media bomb. Defined as a series of coordinated acts on social media networks, the social media bomb is intended to attract attention through a viral dissemination of a specific message. Recently, Amnesty International asked it’s supporters to send out a message at 1:10 p.m. on Friday, March 6 on Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. The message: “Each year, 1 in 10 women in Britain experience rape or other violence,” was intended to raise public awareness of this issue. The results of this social media bomb are not yet known, but one can see a difference in impact between Twitter, where pages of retweets still appear and MySpace and Facebook, where nary any evidence of the message exists. Nonetheless with the profusion of social networks, and the ability to communicate on them ubiquitously, one can imagine more such awareness raising efforts in the future.