On the last day of SXSW Interactive 2007 I was having lunch with a bunch of people at Jo’s, including Mike Hudack of blip.tv. We knew that the closing party would probably be crowed and have loud music, making it hard for people to socialize, so Mike and I decided to organize our own little Drinkup at Ginger Man, hosted blip.tv and Laughing Squid. So at 1:30pm I sent out a single Twitter post and let it grow from there. Word spread via Twitter and offline and by the end of the night, our last minute event was packed with our friends. We had our own little Twittermob going on.
So as the sponsors of the Drinkup, blip.tv and Laughing Squid took turns buying pitchers of beer for everyone who showed up. When it came time for Laughing Squid’s third round, Mike’s friend from Eyespot offered to buy the next round. So I thought great, we have a new sponsor and I announced it via Twitter. Alex Williams of Podcast Hotel heard about it and he wanted to buy a round as well. And so it went.
On the spot we came up with a spontaneous microsponsorship model that ended up providing more than enough beer to make it to closing time. Other sponsors included Citizen Agency, Mag.nolia, Carson Systems and Emurse/We Know HTML, all announced via Twitter. In fact we had a backlog of sponsors that we couldn’t even get to, including individuals.
Violet Blue has an excellent write-up on our Twittermob.
I had retired my camera for the night, but luckily Eric Skiff shot a bunch of great photos of the Drinkup.
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Spread this TwitterMob: June 16th we’re doing a beach party in Half Moon Bay! Save the day.
Uh, I think an organized twittermob is an oxymoron.
While it must be exciting for SXSW attendees to believe that there’s something revolutionary about sending out mass text messages to announce when you’re leaving a party, this ‘twittermob’ nomenclature is silly: why should you care about the medium you used to tell people ‘I’m buying the next round’? Unless you have some investment in the social cachet of the medium itself. Which is, after all, the point of Twitter and SXSW to a degree…
Wow :) I just came over to read your post about the party, and thought “that photo looks familiar”…
Scott, you know what a ridiculous fan I am of your photos, so to see some of mine up here just blew my mind a little. It was amazing to finally get to meet you and hang out :)
Max, to respond to your “nothing revolutionary about twittermob” comment, here’s my take. What’s revolutionary is that most people on twitter are self-assembled into groups around people we like and admire, but also with lots of cross-connection between.
Instead of a “one to many” mass sms broadcast (something which is still rare here in the states) messages flow in many ways along the twitternet. Since the MO of twitter is to tell people what you’re up to, information radiates out from the central sources and is repeated by others. By the time of the party at gingerman, I’d heard from dozens of my twitter connections that they were planning on attending. If you weren’t convinced to come by the first message about the party, the third or fourth mention probably helped persuade you. It allows groups of people to reach a quorum quickly, and ideas (like Scott’s microsponsorship idea) to spread like wildfire.
It’s a very interesting phenomenon to watch happen, and it certainly made SXSW more enjoyable this year, if only because I knew what my friends were up to :)
us geeks know how to party.
Fantastic idea! I heard about the party but never made it over. Too bad, as I would have definitely bought a round.
What an awesome story. I wonder if it would work without the huge consolidation of geeks in Austin at the time? Does anyone have stories like this on a more local basis not focused around a conference?