17000 disco dancing Facebookers cause chaos in London

Davey Winder
Tuesday, 10 February 2009 15:35

IT Industry - Market

Brits are used to having to wait for a train home: leaves on the line, the wrong type of snow and drivers being sick are the usual excuses. However, it is not often that thousands of disco dancing Facebookers are the cause of commuter chaos.

There is currently an advert for the T-Mobile phone network doing the rounds on British TV which has been filmed in the style of a flashmob all dancing in sync, in the middle of one of the busiest railway stations in London.

In the TV advert, which you can also see on YouTube, the dancers provoke commuters to film and photograph the event, call each other etc, under the banner of 'Life is for Sharing.'

Neat idea, and it makes for a very funny bit of marketing. Of course, it is not so funny when the same thing happens in real life as it after a Facebook member saw the advert and thought it would be cool to do something similar.

The end result being a flashmob invasion of Liverpool Street station, withe social networking really doing what it promises on the tin and ultimately as many as 17,000 people turning up to disco dance on the station concourse.

Thankfully it was towards the end of the traditional London rush hour, but it was still enough to force the station to close for an hour and a half from 7pm until 8.30pm.

The Facebook group which organised the 'silent dance' promises that more will follow, although it does itself seem to be the victim of a small invasion of German webcam strippers if recent postings are anything to go by.

Perhaps more worrying, a rival group has promised that there will be another disco flashmob at another major London station. We do not have long to wait to find out which one, it is scheduled for tonight.

Kind of puts a new spin on Facebook pests doesn't it? Although if you could direct them all towards the London eco-nightclub which is powered by dancing feet, that would be kind of cool.