Continuing the discussion from World Cup of London Boroughs:
The “World Cup” of London boroughs - a social media contest we are duty-bound to win!
We beat Islington by a decisive 52/48% yesterday:
To take part, sign into Twitter and place your vote in the poll on this tweet
The results will be announced live on BBC Radio London at 8pm tomorrow.
Let’s do battle!
‘World Cup of London Boroughs’?!.. surely it’s more of a ‘London Cup of Boroughs’.
If the Merkuns (and one Canadian city) can have the World Series…
And the US has its World Series baseball - with no team from another country.
Sorry @starman - am I crossing on the same point ?
Major League Baseball has one non-US team… the Toronto Blue Jays. They won the World Series twice. It passed off the Americans.
Wow that’s a big change from late last night. Greenwich was 54-46 for Lambeth.
Could it be … #tactics? 
Truth be told I voted for Lambeth for a similar reason.
That means that Lambeth got more votes in the semi-final than Lewisham got. And more than half of those votes were overnight.
Q. Where is that bot army when you need them?
A. Soviet Republic of Lambeth
Now it is time for everybody in Lewisham to support Greenwich against Islington, and hopefully they will lend us their support in tomorrow’s final against Lambeth.
We will need all the help we can get against a borough that can mobilize thousands of votes in the wee small hours.
They may be less inclined on the back of the Lewisham-led voting block for Lambeth in the semi-final.
Fake News.
Lewishamites love Greenwich. Any suggestion that people in Lewisham should vote for Lambeth came from fake accounts run by the Islington Elite - poor losers - Sad.
Given the dramatic overnight turnaround, I wonder whether some cheeky Lambeth-dweller bought a few votes: http://buytwittervotes.com/
I will never believe an online poll again.
(I never really did anyway)
It was Greenwich 57% Lambeth 43% at 3am, four hours before the poll closed, according to replies to the poll on Twitter. Quite why anyone would bother spending $100+ buying enough votes to swing it, is another matter…!
For Facebook users there is also a dedicated FB page now to support Lewisham’s bid. Join, share and get your FB friends to vote.
Can’t help feeling their spreading the word too soon.
I’m holding fire on the all-out social media offensive until the voting starts.
We need to appeal to everybody across London to vote for Lewisham after dodgy voting for Lambeth in the semi-final. And we need Chris’s secret army of 10,000 twitter bots to get to work in support of Lewisham.
I’ve managed to infiltrate behind enemy lines as I’ve been in deep cover in an office building at the heart of Lambeth (Waterloo) for the last 10 years.
Spot on! Timing is everything. Social media attention spans are measured in seconds not hours.
When 8pm comes, let’s blitz it!
You know it’s the right thing to do.
I’m hoping for the final we can call on the 5.3m Twitter followers of https://twitter.com/LewisHamilton
And get your personal details hijacked, turned around and used to influence elections. All done in the best possible taste.
PS forgot to say - in line with earlier points about “buying” votes - perhaps the adage “vote early vote often” comes into play here.
Ha ha… but If it is helpful, the person who started it is local to Forest Hill and I know her.
Vote now!
Cheers @Michael! 
I have updated the OP on this topic.
All - to vote, click the title of the tweet (the blue text), above, which will take you over to Twitter
Not being funny, but is there an actual point to this?
Where is your pride? 
One vote for Lewisham from the thriving metropolis of Hull.
You can only VOTE once. Unless of course you have ze Twitter Botskies.
We’ve made it through the night without the sudden influx of votes for Lambeth. Sticking at 59% with 6,000 votes counted. For every two votes Lambeth gets, Lewisham gets three. Let’s keep it that way and watch out for sudden surges for Lambeth in the last five minutes.
Absolutely not and all the better for it!
Although there is no point, it is a great exercise in Social Media reach and effectiveness - something that Lewisham (particularly Forest Hill and Brockley) have always been good at.
It also builds connections between different people in the local community in a fun project, that can be beneficial when there are more serious projects to promote - street markets, murals, hustings, community forums, saving libraries & swimming pools & hospitals, etc
Yes, I get why it’s good for networking and building connections. My question was more about why Joe Bloggs would bother voting. If indeed they are.
Agreed, it is mostly just fun but I have been thinking along the same lines. Whether Lewisham wins the final or not it appears that locally we are good at engaging in this sort of thing. Says something interesting about the connections that are already there and how those compare to other areas. And, as @Michael says, it is also helping to build new connections.
I would say it matters not one jot whether any individual votes for this.
It doesn’t matter, no. But me question is: if they are, WHY are they? It’s interesting in terms of what gets people engaged with no tangible benefit.
Cause Joe likes me and does what I tell them.
Don’t know but what about spirit of competition? Just doing something because it is fun. I would also say there is some resonance in bigging up an inner borough that a lot of Londoners would struggle to locate on the map.
Tribalism?
I think that really it is a bit of mindless fun and it only takes a couple of seconds…
The vote was important enough to be mentioned in Parliament… case closed!
Not convinced. Utterly pointless and wont be voting for Lewisham or anywhere else.
I think that’s where the gap comes between why I would participate in something and where others might. I can’t see where the ‘fun’ element comes, apart from enjoying the gaming aspect of it and, as you say, tribalism.
I’m not asking these questions to be negative. I’m genuinely interested in why people would vote on something like this. Not people like @Michael or @anon5422159 or local business owners who see the benefit of raising the profile of our borough and by implication our local area, who can hope to make new social media connections via participating and as Chris said, generate a bit of publicity. But there is no prize, nothing to incentivise the average Twitter user to vote for their borough.
Especially this week of all weeks, I’m aware that while participating in social media survey and polls might be ‘mindless’ it’s certainly never entirely without consequence, even if those consequences are overly benign.
Compared to the rest of twitter it seems to be quite purposeful!
I know this may sound a little child-like - but your outlook may be shaped by several factors.
Did - for example - your parents make you watch the Song for Europe competition, called Eurovision Song Contest (?) now.
Utterly pointless but you felt compelled to watch it.
Bookies current and clear favourite to win in Lisbon on May 12th.
I think this weeks revelations may ultimately prove that outcomes are far less than benign.
Positively (or should that be negatively) proving that there is no free lunch and social media platforms and the data gathered, innocently or otherwise, can be hi-jacked for nefarious and possible purposes that run counter to our sense of democracy.
We may never get an accurate picture of the degrees of manipulation that have occurred in the last few years and probably will have to return to any innate sense that we possess in making decisions in elections.
I voted in the World Cup of Punk Bands so maybe I am just a sucker for this sort of thing!
I guess we are all different and get our jollies in different ways - that is the beauty of life.
Woohoo. With over 11,000 votes already in it would take a take a tremendous push from Lambeth to overcome a 1,350 lead. But it could happen. Apparently it did for Lambeth in the wee hours of the morning against Greenwich.
Cambridge Analytica… I’m keeping my eyes on you!
We won! 
What was the final score?
If anyone’s interested to hear how BBC Radio London handled the outcome of the poll, the following link should take you directly to the right segment of the show. They interviewed the organiser, and then a couple of people who were pushing Lewisham and Lambeth’s candidacies: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p05yrqjk#playt=1h03m20s.
