Prince William visited the town of Flowerdale on his recent visit for a community barbecue, playing a game of cricket with the kids as well as Matthew Hayden, Brett Lee and Brad Hodge from the Australian Cricket Team. There was a lot of media interest in the visit and this photo appeared in some of Australia’s major newspapers.
What you might notice here is the unfortunate gesture from that guy in the background! What happened next was pretty remarkable. Through the connectedness of social media the collective mob was able to identify the man and link it back to our friend @rexster!
Shannon Molloy noticed the photo in the Brisbane Times newspaper and commented on Twitter:
sleemol: Guy giving the finger in background of Prince William photo: http://ow.ly/Ze6D
Edward Harran noticed who it was and tried to confirm:
edwardharran: OMG I think that guy is @rexster -> RT@sleemol Guy giving the finger in background of Prince William photo: http://ow.ly/Ze6D
Kelly Chapman confirmed it:
kcdc: @edwardharran Re OMG I think that guy is @rexster -> http://ow.ly/Ze6D <– I think you’re absolutely right :P
Pete Williams notices the chatter and replies:
rexster: @sleemol i have the bad habit of using my middle finger to adjust my glasses and timing was bad i love the Prince http://ow.ly/i/mdF
rexster: @kcdc @edwardharran this photo is much better http://ow.ly/i/mdF
Then Shannon broadcasts the results, which got retweeted back through the network:
sleemol: Mystery of bloke ‘flipping off’ Prince William solved! Was @rexster adjusting his glasses http://ow.ly/Ze6D
Pete Ridgley then chimed in and tagged the event #royalsalute.
It is pretty amazing to think that a small cricket game in a small country town would be shared so widely, and that the four degrees of separation between Shannon and Pete would be uncovered in 20 minutes time. This is all possible because of the loose tie network that we have formed on Twitter.
This loose tie network of people linking themselves around the world is producing a constant hum of messaging that is watching, giving interesting things our attention, commenting on them, and making them findable and searchable for everyone.
What is amazing is just how connected we are becoming.
We have got people everywhere.
1,427 views, since being posted during January 2010.
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