In Class Writing April 6 - Thomas Raines

ODU student Heather Lynn has convinced Wachovia Bank to change company policy in regards to donations to Haiti. How did she manage to do this? By using the social networking site Facebook, she was able to share her concerns that Wachovia was charging people a service fee to donate to a Haitian relief fund. In doing do, she used the first of Shirky's three stages of group activities; sharing. She let her community know what was wrong and alerted the public that something should be done. Cooperation, the second of Shirky's three stages, happened when the Facebook group she started (Wachovia = Fail) began to garner more and more members and thus attention. The spread of the group shows the acknowledgment, and thus collective action that is the third stage of Shirky's list. With more and more members joining, and showing support for Lynn, Wachovia was forced to publicly announce that they would repeal the $0.30 international service charge for the Haitian relief fund. And that is how Heather Lynn utilized (albeit unwittingly) Shirky's three stages of group activities.