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.