When storms gather on the Internet there is nowhere to hide. In some ways it's liberating, but maybe in a French Revolution kind of way, rather than a shoeless frolic through a grassy meadow fashion.
Take, for example, the recent storm over an article by a columnist for the British newspaper the Daily Mail. Jan Moir's column, headlined "Why there was nothing *natural' about Stephen Gately's death" quickly attracted the ire of the online world for what was seen as a homophobic attack on a pop star who had recently died of natural causes on holiday.
I'm not going to get into who was right and who was wrong. But sad subject matter aside, the episode is instructive in all sorts of ways, and raises all sorts of questions about how information moves around in this Twitter age, and how we use that information.
The column was posted to the website shortly after midnight on Oct.16. At about 2 a.m. someone from Scotland had added an indignant comment: "His death is just an unexpected tragedy and your article is an ill-disguised attempt to sensationalize and stigmatize the death of a much loved young pop star".
Comments, many of them in a similar vein, came thick and fast. There was one pretty much every minute or so, save for an hour when, presumably, most Brits were commuting.
Once in the office folk posted links to the story on other websites, including bulletin boards. On one bulletin board someone who posted the story suggested phoning companies who advertised on the newspaper's website to complain. The first comments appeared on Twitter shortly after 9 a.m., local time. None were favorable. It was now about 9:30 a.m.
Now one thing about the Internet is that it's quite a different beast to what we knew five years ago.
Five years ago this probably would have been it. Not that companies and individuals didn't feel the wrath of angry consumers, readers or fans.
But social networking services like Facebook, Twitter, have done two things.
They've removed much of the remaining friction that might have slowed the smooth dispersal of information. And they've made it possible for a group of like-minded people to gather together online and unleash a powerful shock to more or less anyone they want.
This is what happened in Jan Moir's case.
Later Jan Moir and the Daily Mail would accuse their detractors of conducting a "heavily orchestrated internet campaign". But that betrays old thinking, and a lack of understanding, about how today's Internet works.
This is what I believe happened.
Twitter, for those of you who haven't used it much, is a way for people to share thoughts, links and news. Most of it is casual, but it has developed its own syntax.
One is the hashtag: A keyword proceeded by the hash or pound sign (*) that is added to a Twitter message to help others follow a particular subject or event.
The more people who include the same keyword, the higher that hashtag rises up the Twitter ladder of popularity, and the more prominent that issue becomes to everyone on Twitter.
A few minutes before 9:30 a.m. some people on Twitter began to add the hashtag janmoir to their messages about the issue. By 9:35 a.m. *janmoir was starting to appear as a trending topic, as more and more people joined in.
By 11 a.m. - 90 minutes later - it had reached its peak. Only 3 tenths of a percent of all Twitter messages included the hashtag, but that was enough to make it the most popular hashtag of the moment.
It was helped along by influential Twitter users like a reporter for the Guardian, who has more than 80,000 people following his messages, and, in the early afternoon, by writer Stephen Fry, who has more than 800,000 followers.
In short, the power of the network sped up to real time.
But Twitter isn't the only rapid network. There's Facebook. At about 11:50 a.m. a woman called Stella Driscoll, who doesn't use Twitter, set up a Facebook group calling for the article to be retracted. It quickly gathered followers, the first comments on it appearing within 15 minutes.
The group presently has more than 20,000 members.
By now the newspaper has gone into damage limitation mode, but still doesn't seem to quite understand the nature of this new technology.
The headline on the website has been quietly changed. The story was moved from the site's front page, and can't be found using the usual search box. But still the storm comes: By 3 p.m. there were more than 500 comments on the story. Stephen Fry forwarded a message suggesting that followers complain to the Press Complaints Commission, a self-regulating body for the British media.
His Twitter message, and many others like it, led to a deluge of traffic to the commission's website, slowing it to a crawl and forcing them to set up a separate page on a different server to handle people's complaints. They eventually received 21,000 complaints - more than on any previous issue, and more than the body has received in the past five years.
But still the storm comes. A piece in the Guardian, hastily published in the face of the storm, attracts more than 1,000 comments. A statement from the Daily Mail fails to stem the winds of anger. By evening even the traditional newspapers showed an interest, although they tended to misunderstand the phenomenon.
A piece in the Daily Telegraph, for example, credited - or blamed - one person for leading the online mob. "Don't laugh - Stephen Fry is giving the orders now," the headline quipped.
That's not how it was. Mr. Fry came late to this particular firestorm, but he helped fan the flames. The truth is that indignation - or any strong feeling - faces little resistance in this social networking world.
The anger directed at one columnist would have existed before. It may even have found a turbulent outlet: newspapers wage campaigns, angry villagers form lynch mobs, disgusted consumers launch class-action suits.
But not at this speed. From the moment when people really started to notice the article to the storm's peak was a matter of an hour or two. Tens of thousands of people expressed themselves - against one person, against a newspaper, against its advertisers - in a morning.
What might have taken days, if not weeks, took 90 minutes or so. What appeared as a single campaign was in fact the organic growth of individuals using a frictionless medium.
It's liberating for those who feel they have lacked a voice.
That may not be much comfort for those on the end of the storms it unleashes.
c 2009 Loose Wire Pte Ltd
This story cannot be reproduced without written permission from the writer. Jeremy Wagstaff is a commentator on technology and appears regularly on the BBC World Service. You can reach him via email at jeremy@loosewire.org
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