“15,000 youths came into the streets!"

That was the quote from a Moldovan blogger who, with a handful of friends, harnessed Twitter, Facebook, blogs and text messaging to create quite a powerful protest in this little known, obscure country yesterday.  

In actuality, 10,000 young protestors showed up at a solidarity rally to voice disapproval with the national elections which voted the Communist party into office again. Their anger arose because a serious question remains as to whether these elections were rigged to eliminate the other party from having any chance of being voted in.

It’s sad to see that this protest turned violent as the youths ransacked government offices and clashed with police. But, that’s not the part of this story I want to focus on. What’s truly amazing (instead) is how (when used correctly)  the latest, greatest social media tools can serve to inform, shape perceptions and act as a rallying cry to whip thousands of human beings into a frenzy in only a few short hours. Think about it. These young Moldovans weren’t just offering their support on the Internet. No, instead they were watching, listening and communicating in mass. Once they had built a large enough community (or mob in this case) through Twitter (and other social media tools), their newly formed organization had direction and a mission to take to the streets. A young civil rights leader in the early 60s once had the same effect. But, he needed to influence and create action through many stump speeches at churches and within communities. And, even with the impact that his publicity afforded him, Dr. King’s marches often took weeks and weeks to organize and prepare for. And, hundreds of organizers were needed to plan, direct and lead each initiative.

In this case, by creating their own searchable tag on twitter, a handful of protesters were also able communicate a host of newly popular topics (such as the questionable election process) through this social media tool to people around the world. This in turn has raised the level of concern and suspicion aimed at the governing Communist Party from the European Union, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and many other powerful international interests across the world. Here we see a great example of how a tool like Twitter truly has no geographic borders or limitations.

Young people have used social media tools to organize politically before. Through cell phones and text messages, they were able to energize protests in both Ukraine (2004) and Belarus (2006). And, of course, the Internet played a key role in helping our current president build support among many different voting groups just last year.

But, this latest movement truly feels like a landmark social media success moment in the grand scheme of the Internet’s relatively short history. It will be interesting to watch and see how other savvy people (probably most of them being from our younger generation) will leverage Twitter and whatever comes next to influence even more significant outcomes than what happened yesterday in the tiny country of Moldova.