About two year ago, I participated in a flash mob proposed by a school club called TOM’s. TOM’s club is a charitable club that tries to help the children in poverty by promoting the company TOM’s promise that every pair of shoe you purchase, another pair of shoe will be given to a child who walks barefoot.

The idea of this flash mob event was to raise awareness of our club on campus. We started the club with only 7 officers. Besides having a regular meeting every week to plan for the flash mob, the main way we communicated was through Facebook. By inviting our friends to the Facebook page, our group grew fast. Every Facebook member was updated with the dancing practice time and location, and those who could make it to the practice participated actively.

This reminds me Clay Shirky’s book Here Comes Everybody, when he talks about the ice cream flash mob that was formed by using social tools. It was social tools that enabled the ice cream mob to reach out to the large population without alerting the Lukashenko government (Shirky 168). Indeed, it was also social tools that enabled TOM’s flash mob to take place. With Facebook, we reached out to as many students as possible and kept them updated with all the information without needing to text people one by one. At the end, we had about 50 participants in the flash mob and over a hundred members on Facebook. I can’t imagine how the event would turn out without Facebook.

For reference to the flash mob video, click here.