Flashmobbing, London style Part II

Yesterday we pointed to the Bad Side of using social media for London's looting and rioting. This story is about the Good Side - Londoners using social media to organise ad-hoc Flashmobs to clean up. Grauniad:

Hundreds of people armed with brooms, binbags and rubber gloves turned out across London to help clean up the damage caused by a third night of rioting, looting and arson.

Co-ordinated online on Facebook and Twitter, volunteers mobilised in the worst-hit parts of the capital to sweep streets, help local shopkeepers and show solidarity with communities thrown into turmoil by the violence. Though their efforts were thwarted in many parts by police work, their presence on the streets gave a valuable morale boost to those seeking an end to the disturbances.

The origins appeared to be the Twitter user @sophontrack who suggested a #riotcleanup operation shortly after 6pm on Monday. It was, however, a tweet from @BenDylan which found its way to Dan Thompson that set the trend going.

Thompson, who runs a social initiative encouraging people to use empty shops and open spaces, decided to use social media to co-ordinate those looking to help. By 10am the tag was the top trending topic in the UK and the second worldwide.

"There are now people on the ground all across London," he said. "Even just putting on some gloves, picking up a dustpan and brush and clearing one broken window on the way into work. People are saying, 'We're Londoners, we're resilient and getting on with it.'"

Makes me proud to be a Londoner (though I was in Wales at the time.....)

In other news, it would appear that Blackberry turned off the BBN service overnight to make it more difficult for the looters to organise thier flashmobs. Hard to tell if that, or the well publicised 16000 police on duty, was responsible for the far lower number of outbreaks in London (though predictably, Flashmob looting broke out in the cities the Police sent to London had been drawn from). Police are also using working smarter, listeing in on Twitter now and using social media sites such as Flickr to identify looters

What is also interesting is the emerging evidence of "Flashmob Defenders" - locals organising to defend their areas also using social media.