Watercooler Blog

When Jane McGrath, wife of Austalian cricket great Greg McGrath, died in June 2008 after a long battle with breast cancer, the cricket world and an entire nation mourned.  Mrs. McGrath had been battling cancer for over ten years and along the way had used her and her husband’s celebrity to build awareness for the cause in the form of the McGrath Foundation. There have even been some calls for her to be named Australian of the Year.

Earlier this month at the Sydney Cricket Grounds, the Australian cricket team dressed in all pink in honor of Jane McGrath Day.  By all accounts, the event which came on the third day of a match against South Africa, was a huge success as it was able to drive awareness and raise funds for a fantastic cause.

That was January 5.  The very next day on January 6 a member of our Australia Cricket Fans application on Facebook started a fan wave called For Jane McGrath.

It has since been passed on by 86,612 cricket fans enabling that application to show astronomical growth in monthly active users of almost 80,000…that’s 4400% in two weeks!  The graph from AppData is shown below:

This is very similar to something we saw earlier this month with the Team Great Britain app.  That app was originally developed for the Olympics but has since been used to voice all sorts of British pride - most recently in support of British troops.

All of this is nothing new as causes have been a part of sports for decades - whether they be political, social, or charitable.  From our standpoint, we’ve been pleasantly surprised to see our FanSection applications being utilized for for things other than smack talk, trivia, and talk about coaches and game plans.  It makes total sense as our applications do a great job helping users access their social graph for the purposes of supporting their favorite team.  Part of that support comes in the form of fan waves which are usually used to promote a player, coach, or to express some general team-oriented theme.  It’s a short leap for fans to embrace those waves to promote a cause.  I have some plans to see if there are some things we can do to help with this unintended use of our apps.  Speaking of which, if you’re interested in supporting the McGrath Foundation with a donation, please click here.