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Last night I watched a football match with a few thousand mates.  No, I wasn’t at the pub and the living room wasn’t packed to the rafters, I decided to watch the State of Origin match via Twitter, with the TV just quietly going in the background. What a fascinating social experiment it turned out to be!

Twitter generated a similar feeling as going to the stadium – people fell into respective team camps and there was good natured ribbing on each side. The referees came in for the odd blast just like a regular game and there were cheers and boos at all the appropriate places.

What was very different and what made it fascinating, was people quickly organised themselves into conversational groups around the game through the use of hashtags # to identify which conversation they wanted to be part of. No one told them to do it, there was no central place where people copied down the hashtag of the day – someone just started the conversation and then people found out via osmosis and tuned into the conversation.

This simple us of hashtags to designate the conversation demonstrated the power of the internet in creating tribes or communities of interest and how people quickly find their tribe.

Using real time search tools on Twitter applications such as TweetDeck, people could gather these conversations and respond to what other people said. It was like a very noisy party. You could start a conversation with anyone in the tribe, or they could drop into your conversation to share their insights. It was immensely powerful!

So what happened? Well, for me it was like watching football commentated by a swarm of stand up comics. A large proportion of the comments were funny … very funny.

The main hashtag conversations I spotted last night were #origin, #nrl, #qld, #nsw and my personal favourite #origincliches.

#Origincliches had everyone listening to the on-screen commentators and jotting down all of the thousands of cliches that were trotted out. It captured mangled English and the creation of new words such as “outoriginated” by the Channel 9 sports commentators. Seeing all of the cliches listed out was cringe creating – but oh so funny.

But it wasn’t just the football and the commentators that came in for discussion. The ads in the breaks of the game, the most expensive TV real estate of the year, also were up for discussion and debate, as well as what was happening on other TV stations. People who hated football added in their comments and overseas people who spotted the hashtags in trending topics dropped in to work out what it was all about.

So what was the point of watching a match via Twitter? Twitter is certainly the next big thing and like all next big things something else will take over and move it along in years to come. But right now Twitter is huge, so it pays to work out what human needs it is fulfilling and why it is so big.

What Twitter does well is it taps into the intrinsic nature of people. Their need to be part of something bigger. Their need to belong to a group that makes them feel welcome. Their need to share their opinions and ideas and their need to have fun. Twitter fills these human needs with no fanfare, no fuss, at 140 characters at a time.

How can you apply the lessons of Twitter to your business? How can you make people feel welcome and that they belong to a cohesive group? How can you encourage debate and sharing of ideas? How can you make your business a fun place to be? How can you make it quick and simple? These are the true lessons of Twitter.

There are two more State of Origin games in the next few weeks. You may want to get onto Twitter and watch the next few games to get an idea of the sheer power of watching human needs fulfilled, and to have a few laughs along the way.

Join me on Twitter www.twitter.com/ingridcliff. I look forward to connecting with you there.

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff

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Heart Harmony – Freelance copywriters