Twitter and Facebook create crowds like waves in the sea. There’s a constant ebb and flow. From time to time events shape crowds and they become exponentially larger. Well huge, just take a look at what happened with the #prayformuamba tweets and posts.
But you know it’s not Twitter and Facebook that created this. Sure, it amplifies it. But no, the truth is it’s simply human behaviour.
In much the same way we turn to one another and say ‘isn’t it a shame about…’ we now do by tweeting or updating our status. What starts as a simple conversation between a few people can quickly transform into national or even global conversations.
Let’s think about this for a moment, because it has interesting ramifications for charities and good causes…
At the point where you would turn and utter your sympathy for a situation to a friend, if someone shook the relevant charity collection tin in front of you, wouldn’t you drop a quid in? I’d say most of us would, if only to avoid the embarrassment of being shown up as disingenuous.
Now what if we could donate with a tweet? At that point where we expressed, forwarded, retweeted or ‘liked’ our sympathies over social media, how much could a charity raise if everyone single one resulted in a pound donation?
The problem is security. At the moment it is possible to donate via twitter IF you have a prearranged account through which you can make the transaction. So you need a pre-existing desire to give. And let’s face it how many of us actually have put that in place?
At that point when we are all touched by a situation, would any of us say ‘no’ to parting with a quid? But how to strike when we have people’s attentions? Could Twitter set up agreements with charities? Crack that, and charities could really benefit. Well, it would be a shame not to…
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