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August 4, 2009

Twitter: The Social Influence Tool

Can Twitter be used to trigger spontaneous social change?

That's what I'm trying to find out. Here is a new experiment I just conducted and my "observations from the front" thus far.

(This is a follow up to my earlier experiment outlined in Twitter: the Psychotherapeutic Tool.)

First, a little background ...

It's relatively easy to increase the C-Rate of an information-virus with any of the following methods:

spreading bad news or sniping at people
creating false epidemics or catastrophe
causing undue worry or fear

But is this a good idea? Well, if your only measure of a "good idea" is "does it work" then you bet. If, however, you want to take a bit of responsibility for the impact your words have on people, then maybe not ...

Side note: many marketers not only deliberately weave those elements into their marketing to increase its effectiveness, but advise others to do so as well. How about we stop that?

It's not hard to understand why negativity tends to have a higher C-Rate (rate of viral transmission) than positivity: if something threatens you, it's of more immediate importance than something that "could be useful."

Which story are you going to read first?

Tornado warning.
How to make your kids smarter.

And which one are you more likely to pass on to your friends? Of course the tornado warning because you want your friends to be safe.

"So, all you have to do is give your message the importance of a tornado warning and you're golden!"

OK, but is this the world we want to live in? Where everyone is running around in a constant state of stress and fear?

It would seem that we're all participating in the fear fest. Marketers, politicians, and reporters create false fear to hypnotize us into a receptive and docile state. The recipients of these messages accept them without filter and willingly pass them on.

What if we stopped participating in that process?

What if instead we decided to stop spreading messages that ...

tear people down
rant
complain
hate
gossip
spread rumors

.... and instead spread messages that focused on the things we want?

Why not, instead of complaining about the people who are behaving in a way we don't like, notice and praise the people we admire?

Now, I'm not saying "ignore evil and it will go away." Sometimes that works, but not always. There is a time and place for shining a light on darkness as well. But instead of freaking out and dwelling on it, let's simply present the facts and move on. Then begin giving our attention and support to people who are actively engaged in making the world better.

So, this brings us to my latest experiment ...

Can we trigger this positive temperament in the minds of others?

The "I love you" experiment was great, but this time I wanted to go a little further. Instead of just triggering a sense of euphoria and happiness (which is useful in its own right) I wanted to get people consciously thinking about peace.

It started out with a rather overt attempt that was re-Tweeted 20 times:

Let's see how many people on twitter we can get 2 think about peace at the same time. Go! pls RT (pass it on)

Since I'm using ping.fm to simultaneously broadcast my tweets to my Facebook account, I got a bit of feedback about it on my fan site.

Thom Quinn an entrepreneur who just read The Irresistible Offer handed some of my own advice back to me ...

Try again on Monday, not Follow Friday. I'd re-craft the 140 characters as well to make it an irresistible offer to promote peace on twitter. Perhaps we should start "Twitter Peace Day" and try to generate support so a million people talk about peace on a single day.

I then tried this approach which was re-Tweeted around 30 times ...

Today is tweeting for peace day. Pass it on.

And then this approach which as of today has spread in various forms 200+ times and is still going ...

@reply this to 3 people - it's tweet for peace day - I love you - pass it on #tweet4peaceday

Why was the last approach 10 times more successful? Several things, but here are a few to notice ...

First, asking people to send it as an "@ reply" made it more likely to catch people's attention. The chances of a single tweet being seen at all are quite low. This is especially true for those who are following many people. If you send your tweet as an "@ reply" it will almost certainly be seen by them as they check their replies. (Of course we're more interested in a reply directed to us than in a random tweet in the tweet-stream.)

Next, the #tweet4peaceday hash tag gave it an air of officiality. Is there a "tweet for peace day?" There wasn't before Thom and I made it up. (Heavy truth to ponder: everything "official" and important was once "made up" by someone like you.)

Finally, the trend was championed by two avid Tweeters: Realestatetips8 and Iconic88. (Nice work, guys.)

How far will this one go? No one can know ... What kind of impact will it have? Equally impossible to predict.

While the future of this experiment is uncertain, I like the idea of enrolling people in the task of actively altering people's consciousness for the better. Maybe someone reading this blog will spread the campaign further. Maybe they'll start thinking about the impact of their words on others - on Twitter and in person.