Let's Become Internet Celebrity

The name of Zeddie Little meant nothing to the average American but thanks to the power of the internet, today he appeared to the nation on morning TV as 'Ridiculously Photogenic Guy'. This 25 years old guy was running a 10 kilometer race in his hometown, when he turned to smile and wave at a friend. 

That spontaneous gesture was photographed and unexpectedly transformed him into the latest internet celebrity: "Ridiculously Photogenic Guy". It all started when photographer Will King posted pictures of the Cooper River Bridge Run, held in Charleston, South Carolina, USA, to his Flickr page and shared them on Reddit at the end of March. 

The photograph of Mr. Little eventually went viral, inspired a hugely popular Facebook fan page, Twitter followers, parody photos and more than one million views of the original photograph.

According to Rachel Robbins, who studies face and object recognition at the University of Western Sydney's school of social sciences and psychology, said people were naturally drawn to smiling faces and direct gazes. "He seems like he is quite attractive in having regular symmetrical features, so that probably is why we would say he is photogenic. But the reason that he stands out for us first is probably not that he is photogenic, its probably that he is smiling and looking at us". 

Additionally, Sydney Morning Herald photographer Peter Rae also added hat direct gaze was an important feature of a striking image. "People who are photogenic can get a certain emotion across," He added.

Here i attached an interview video with Zeddie Little. Enjoy! =)

Jakarta Governor Candidates Go Online for Campaign

In the last few weeks there was quite heated election in Jakarta, Indonesia and i came across to an interesting articles about how both candidates (Jokowi vs Foke) tried to attract locals' attention to win the vote. Realizing the power of social media among locals, both campaign team have gone beyond Twitter and Facebook. Both team tried to create virtual games to get into the heart of voters. 

In August, Jokowi's camp launched an online game entitled Selamatkan Jakarta (Save Jakarta) with Jokowi as the hero. It depicts the Surakarta mayor as a hero who throws bombs and rockets at corrupt officials and gang members. Interestingly, the game was adopted from the famous Angry Birds with several modifications. According to the creator, the idea of the game crossed his mind when he and hour colleagues got stuck in Jakarta's traffic. Since it launch, the game has attracted more than 500,000 users. 

Not wanting to be left behind, Foke's team launched an online game shortly. It was a website dedicated to Foke which features the governor's programs like the Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) system, education and health subsidies and the city's East Flood Canal.

According to politicawave.com, a site monitoring political conversation in the social media, ahead of the runoff on Sept. 20 the trend of people's awareness of the two candidates on social media has been increasing. A social media practitioner, Arif Zulkifli, previously said that the use of social media would be beneficial for candidates because social media users were proactive people who usually actively sought information and recommendations from people they trusted in the virtual world.

Social Media Voyeurism: Kate Middleton's case

Recently, the news related to Kate Middleton's personal photos have become a hot issue on the internet.  Apparently, Prince William and Kate Middleton were enjoying some private time and Kate decided to well.. lose some clothes. So, we all know that this is the latest embarrassing news story involving a royal and their nude pictures including Prince Harry!.

The problem is people really like this kind of news. They want to buy magazine or even log on to websites that contain these nude pictures. Publishers pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for these photos in order to get more money from the sales and social media sites. According to one of article that i read, currently the search for "Kate Middleton nude pictures" has over a million searches on Google. People gone crazy over such news!. Social media allows people to read, react, and share juicy information which pushes people into what is called Social Media Voyeurism.

So, what is social media voyeurism? Traditionally, a voyeur can be defined as a person who is watches someone secretly in perverted way. Voyeurism in social media offers our society secretly watch things that they most likely do not want others to know about. We have also become such voyeurs of information. We want to know every detail about celebrities, news stories, and popular culture stories. CNN, MSNBC, FOX News and other media stations provided an over load on information and unhealthy fascination on people's lives.

The social media voyeurism plays out on Facebook, Google+, Twitter, and other platforms and it feeds our need to know everything about everyone. The whole concept of Facebook is based on the idea that we really need to tell everyone what we are thinking but the fact is, no one needs to know that!.

In the end, we need to discount and put boundaries about what we watch and share with others on social media, celebrity news for example. We really need to resist the temptation to be drawn into social media voyeurism.

Social Media Aids Search for Missing Persons

Social media sites are often seen as places to swap gossip, share photos and waste time, but they are increasingly being used in the hunt for missing persons.

One such case is the hunt for 6 years old Andrew Thompson, who was reunited with his father in the Netherlands after a two and half year search.

Mr. Thompson’s desire to track down his son was so great that he quit his job as a deputy fire chief mounted a bicycle and rode 6500 kilometres through Europe to find him. He also regularly used social media sites to help raise awareness for his quest. Australian Missing Persons Register founder Nicole Morris, who helped Mr. Thompson search for his son for more than two years, credits social media with being a major factor in helping find Andrew.

Moreover, Ms. Morris also added that using social media sites like Facebook or MySpace is an effective and immediate way to reach huge number of people in a short space of time. Social media allows “an instant reaction from people” and is a fantastic source of emotional support for families.

But while there are many advantages to the platform, Ms Morris also find some parts concerning. By exposing personal information on social media page, there are groups of people that want to find contact for families of missing people for dishonourable reasons. Additionally, Ms Morris is required to do regular monitor on the page in case other people would post defamatory or rude comments.

But she thinks that the advantages of using social media still outweigh the concerns. In her work for Australian Missing Persons Register, she encourages people to use social media to look for their loved ones which could raise so much awareness that it will result in someone coming forward to provide really good information.

Here, a video showing how social media sites like Twitter and facebook are helping police get  the word out about missing people.

Would you guys prefer to do the same to find missing person? any alternatives?

Y U NO JACK MEMES?

In this day and age, memes are spreading like wildfire all over the internet, and brilliant marketers would take the opportunity to use these viral pieces of content to their advantage. And, who doesn’t love a good meme? They are funny, clever and great for social sharing. As a marketer, ‘memejacking’ (Hijacking popular memes for marketing purposes) appear to be a great way to create some fun, engaging content that shows off your brand’s personality and likeability.

Alright, let’s take a step back for a while for those who are not familiar with the word ‘meme’. According to Wikipedia, a meme is “an idea, behaviour or style that spreads from person to person within a culture”. A meme could act as a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols or practices, which can be transmitted from one mind to another to writing, speech, gestures, rituals or other imitable phenomena. The word meme itself is a shortening of “mimeme” (From Ancient Greek means something imitated). Memes most commonly manifest themselves in a visual such as a picture or a video, but it can also take the form of a link, hashtag, a simple word or phrase, or even an entire website.

So, the biggest question is why memejacking is awesome for marketing? In brief, memejacking for marketing is awesome on many levels. We have talked about a few of these already but shall we elaborate more?

1.   They are already viral

Basically meme is fun, engaging and wildly popular and good as marketing tool. Rather than creating something new from scratch why don't we just leverage the idea that is already successful.

2.   They make great social media fodder

Visual content is practically made for social media sharing and because memes are usually visually oriented, they make great fodder for your social media accounts such as Facebook, Twitter, 9Gag and Pinterest.

3.   They attract traffic, likes, and links

Because memes are so share worthy, they are great for generating traffic and visibility to social media accounts. Memes could attract likes, repins, comments, and shares like crazy, making it more likely that your social content will gain popularity in social media and spread.

4.   They are quick and easy to create

For some marketers, content creation is their common job. There are so many marketing campaigns that depend on fresh content, and having some easy to create types of content is a marketer’s dream come true. Memes offer just that!. They are easy and usually take little time to create =)

Basically, using meme as a marketing tool seems useful but can you think of any problem that could occur from using meme?

Samsung: Defeated, pays Apple in coins of 5-cent carried by 30 trucks

Last week I read an interesting article regarding patent issues between Apple and Samsung. According to the news, Samsung was required to pay substantial amount of money to Apple as they have breached the patent. It seems that anything can sound real online, and 9Gag.com proved just that with their story on Samsung’s payment of 30 trucks of 5-cent coins.

Paperblog.com carried a story originating from 9gag.com, a website described to be “reversed for z-list memes and screenshots of Facebook statuses.” The accompanying slideshow carries a meme with the Samsung coins rumor.

According to paperblog.com, 30 trucks arrived at Apple headquarters in California. The security did not let the trucks in over scheduling and authorization issue, but a CEO to CEO phone call supposedly prompted security to clear the way for the trucks.

It gets even funnier, according to the hoax news: The legal documents signed by Apple and Samsung did not specify a manner of payment by which Samsung could pay apple for patent infringement.

The paperblog story also quoted Lee Kun-Hee, Chairman of Samsung Electronics, as saying: "You can use your coins to buy refreshments at the little machine for life or melt the coins to make a computer, that's not my problem: I already paid them and fulfilled the law."

The delivery of more trucks was supposedly to be completed within a week's time. On Tumblr and other social networks, users posted various reactions on the news and became viral for couple of days. Others rode on the issue by expressing how they felt about Samsung as device maker.

Social Media Is a Strong Addiction

Just by answering these simple questions you could decide whether you are a social media addict or not. What is the first thing you do in the morning? Do you tweet quiet often? Do you find ‘logout’ button is the hardest button to click? If your answer is yes, then you could be an addict.

A new study conducted by the University of Chicago has found that social is more addictive than cigarettes and alcohols. The study also found that although the urges for sleep and sex are stronger, people are willing to sacrifice their cravings in order to check their social profiles.

‘The whole social media concept took interaction to a whole new level and it is definitely addictive. I think part of the addiction comes from the fact that social media is like a giant party ‘out there’ where something is happening all the time. So it is much easier to plug in and feel you are part of something worthwhile going on,’ says Ankush Thakur of Green Smyles, a multi-service agency. Moreover, according to some surveys, it has been revealed that the addiction to social media is so intense that even if they logout at night, some of them will find themselves logging in from inside the quilts via mobile phone.

Experts say that most individuals who are leading busy lives or are introverts by nature and don't prefer socialising in the real sense are twice as likely to be addicted to the social networking site to escape to their virtual world. Making friends, chatting and commenting then become a part of daily schedule. It was easier for such people to open up to strangers and trust them.

"If people don't log on to check their notifications every couple of hours, they feel incomplete, almost like a vital organ missing from their system. This holds true for any addiction where in the habit gets so embedded into one's schedule that it becomes difficult to kick off," explains personality development trainer Faraaz Kazi. Faraaz further adds that as human beings we love to gossip and are always interested in what is happening in others' lives, and social media gives us a perfect platform to keep a tab on other people's relationships, network and popularity.

What do you think about this 'epidemic'? Is this a major problem or eventually will become a culture in the future?