Le Blogue de Mosaic

The Tragically Hip lyrics “We all held the stick, we all pulled the trigger” succinctly sums up the feeling that every Canadian watching the gold medal mens Olympics hockey game last night felt when Sidney Crosby netted the overtime game winning goal – undoubtedly, as a 20-something, this was the “Hendersonnnn!” moment of our generation. A key difference between my dad celebrating the 1972 Summit Series…

…win and my celebration of the 2010 Olympic gold medal win was the ability and sheer velocity at which people were sharing the experience. With regards to social media, internet economist and expert Clay Shirky says, “The moment our historical generation is living through [represents] the largest increase in the expressive capability in human history.” When an entire nation comes together for an experience that is so emotionally impactful, it’s no surprise that the experience is being shared, extended, and is essentially exploding online.
While I was physically at a pub with several coworkers for the game, I was sharing the experience with friends in Vancouver, my sister in Halifax, my friends out of the country, and everyone else in my online networks via Twitter and Facebook. All of us at our table were furiously Tweeting updates and forwarding “GO CANADA GO WAVE!” texts and BBMs to our networks of friends during commercials. Given how hyper-connected everyone was, the message that an impromptu street party was happening at Yonge and Dundas Square spread nearly instantly via text, Twitter updates, and Facebook statuses. By about 8:30pm, a coworker BBM-ed me letting me know “Crosby’s Goal” fan pages were already springing up on Facebook. I searched the group on my Blackberry at around 9pm and the Crosby’s Olympic Goal fan page already had over 120,000 fans! Unbelievable! The fact that the group was growing so quickly was, in and of itself, a story spreading on Twitter and Facebook, which gave the fan page even more momentum. I logged on this morning, less than 12 hours after the win, and the page has over 181,000 fans (sidenote: when I started writing this blog about an hour ago, the Fan page has 177,000 fans). I think it’s interesting that when we talk about social media, we often talk about the technology (the applications, capabilities, and functions) when in reality, social media is at its core a social phenomenon; it’s real, human, emotionally compelling experiences – like last night’s story tale win – that people want to share that reiterate that it’s not about the technology, it’s about the people and the experience. My Facebook newsfeed has never been more patriotic!