Twitter debate 'trending topic'

The twitter debate of RTL, which I mentioned in my previous blog, was a great success in terms of followers. There were so many retweets on the television broadcast, that the subject was the most talked about in the world for hours, on twitter.

After an half hour after the start of the debat, the hashtag 'rtldebat' was on the top of the so called 'trending topics'.

Thousands of twitterers were discussing the debat and names as Cohen, Rutte, Wilders of Balkenende immediately appeared in the top-10 most talked about twitter subjects.

I wonder why this was such a great success and why people discuss it on twitter. Do they want people to convince to vote for someone specific? Were they complaining about Wilders his populism? Or about Cohen's nuance? Or is it just the new way of our need for social interaction?
I believe everyone has its own motivation for discussing it on twitter and its own needs which need to be satisfied. Despite the fact that I don't discuss political matters on Twitter, I think the so called spin doctors need to be aware of the power of this medium, and get important information about their leaders on this platform.

Twitter political debate

The Dutch 'RTL nieuws' is organizing a twitter debate conducted by their parliamentary reporter Frits Wester. In this web 2.0 debate the Dutch political leaders will debate about the important theme's in the run-up to the Dutch parliamentary elections on June the 9th. Theme's, for example safety, integration, milieu and of course the economical problems, will be presented with propositions. According to RTL Nieuws editor in chief Harm Taselaar : 'Social media capture an important role in our current society. With this debate we offer our viewers a special way of getting in contact with the Dutch politic. Frits Wester is an active user of Twitter with many followers (http://twitter.com/fritswester) and with his knowledge of the Dutch political landscape, he is the right man for the job.'

The RTL nieuws Twitter debate will be on 2th of June, between 20.00 hour and 21.30 hour.

I really like this initiative of RTL, it's innovating and it reaches other target groups than with a 'classical' television debate. But I think it has some downsides either, for example a tweet can be max 140 words so the risk of a shallow debate (Wilders's standard) will be high. Furthermore, I don't like it when political leaders come up with one liners because they talk about the future of our country. Anyhow, I am looking forward to this debate..

Chávez on twitter..

How political leaders use Twitter in their advantage is an interesting phenomenon. Our western political leaders like Barack Obama or our 'own' Jan-Peter Balkenende use Twitter for a while now to communicate with the voters. The president of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, called Twitter some months ago in February, a "terror instrument" and "a canal to stage a coup". Fortunately for his followers, president Chávez has no problem to throw his principles to the winds and since two weeks he is an active user of Twitter with more than 260.000 followers, see http://twitter.com/chavezcandanga. Now he calls Twitter "a weapon that must be used for a revolution". With more than a quarter of a million followers he had problems 'retweeting' all his followers, so he hired 200 people to help him retweeting. The underlying reason for Chávez to use Twitter is to counterweight his opponents, for example the tv-station Globovision. The president also follows five people, among them his good friend Fidel Castro..

These development help me to put our political "problems" in perspective..

Social silence..

Today, on May the fourth, we remember all who have found dead in World War II. On this behalf we have a two minute silence at 8 p.m. The twitter

#twitterstilte

want everyone to have a two-minute twitter silence at 8 p.m. Also Hyves (Dutch social network like Facebook) wants people to remember this and cooperates in the two-minute-silence with showing the poem which will be read on the 'Dam' in Amsterdam .

I like this initiative and I think it is a good way to involve the next generation in this important memorial with the help of social media.

Selective attention..

Our attention is really selective and this has major consequences for our daily lives. Most of the time this is a positive aspect of our brain because with the selective attention we filter the overload information we have to deal with on a daily basis. When I look at the current developments on the internet and more specific the rise of social media on the internet I believe that our selective attention function in our brain has to run at full speed because of the massive junks of information which is send to our brains. For organizations who want to communicate with their target groups this has far-reaching implications. If they want to communicate with their audiences they need to get their attention and hold it. I think this officially means that the time of simply sending your information is over and the users decide with information they want to process..

If you want to test your own selective attention you can watch this movie:

Or this one:

Hitler has been removed..

YouTube is removing several parodies on the Hitler-movie 'Der Untergang' (The Downfall). SInce the release of the movie in 2004, many parodies have been made of the rage-attacks of Hitler against his staff, short before the end of WWII. For the past four years one of the film’s climactic scenes in which Hitler, played by Bruno Ganz, realises that his dream of world domination is over, has been parodied hundreds of times in short video films using fake English subtitles. With the removed Google gives in to the pressure of producer Constantin Films, who submitted a complaint against violation of the copyright.

In my opinion, Google should never have given in to the pressure of producer Constantin Films. Parodies is something which has been with us for centuries, even before the existence of YouTube, or even the internet. YouTube just provides a platform for the parodies, with the removal the parodies will move to another videosite like YouTube. My advice for Google: Don't fight against violation of the copyright, but fight for freedom of internet use..

Funny downside is that many of the parodies have been removed from YouTube, but other parodies arise with Hitler pissed off about the removal of his movies..

No.1 hit single with the help of Twitter!

Jeroen van Koningsbrugge and Dennis van de Ven, which most of you might know from TV-show Draadstaal, have scored a number one hit with their band JURK! The single 'Zou zo graag', which I think is really awful , was within 48 hours the Dutch number one download on iTunes. Not much later it was the number 1 hit in the Dutch Top40. So I wondered.. How is it possible that such a horrible song can be such a great success!? The reason might be: Twitter. At twitter the duo did an appeal: "Everyone who is going to buy the single, will receive free concert tickets for a special Twitter concert, if the single will be number one in the Dutch Top40." The single became number one and the followers are looking forward to a free concert. This shows how Twitter can be used by artists or other organisations in their advance. With Twitter you can create support for your activities and with Twitter you can reach important target groups.

The people who don't believe me when I say that it is a horrible single, please have a look yourself...

Stuck at the airport?!?!? Twitter to the rescue..

Due to the eruption of the Eyjafjallajoekull volcano in Iceland many people are stranded in local Airfields.

Social media users help each other on Twitter and Facebook to get home asap. For news about the #AshTag twitter is used. Travellers looking for a way to get home are using the twitter of #stranded, #GetMeHome or #RideShare. People looking for a place to sleep use the twitter #Putmeup. According to the dutch newspaper 'De Volkskrant' people on Facebook have special groups for carpool through Europe, for example Carpool Europe. More than 2200 people are member of this carpool group and trying to get a ride throughout Europe.

Also companies use the social media, but for less altruistic reasoning. They offer rooms for the night or a rental car to get you through Europe. Also some people look for travelers to share costs of the car they rent in order to get home without making exceptionel costs.

These problems show us the great advantages of the use of social media. Never in the history of mankind, communication which specific groups was so easy and purposeful. Despite the disadvantages of the social media we must all try to use their advantages in order to enrich our lives...

You Have 0 Friends

"You Have 0 Friends" is the fourth episode of the fourteenth season of the animated television series South Park and I think it is a great sarcastic and cynical way to this discuss the use of social network sites.

The plot of this episode is concerning Kyle, Cartman and Kenny making Stan a Facebook profile against his will and he becomes embroiled and frustrated with everyone asking him for friend requests. After he gets fed up with Facebook, Stan tries to delete his profile but is sucked into a virtual Facebook world. Meanwhile, Kyle starts trying to find ways to get more friends on Facebook after he drastically starts losing them due to his befriending of a third-grade friendless Facebook user, who everyone thinks is a loser. The episode prominently features several aspects of the online website Facebook, including the Facebook games Farmville, Café World and a digital version of the Milton Bradley game Yahtzee (Wikipedia). The episode received generally positive reviews from critics.

One of the typical scenes is the one were Stan and his girlfriend argue about Stan having a Facebook profile...

In this scene Stan gets sucked into the facebook mania...

Philips and social media...

Philips is doing good business in China despite the intensity of the competition in the market. Social networking is one of the major marktingtools this company from Eindhoven is using, check it out on http://www.mylife.philips.com.cn/index.aspx. According to the Dutch magazine 'Tijdschrift voor de Marketing' this success started with the 300 thousand fans the company had on the site Ren-Ren. In line with this success Philips decided to take the matters into their own hands and they build their own social network site in 2008. The MyLife website is controlled by Philips and categorized in different product categories with accompanying webshop articles for their profit.
I find it interesting that big companies try to use social media in their advantage and connecting they to their own webshop articles. I hope Philips is smart enough to limit their control of this social network by not deleting messages negative about their products...

Social information processing theory

Before blogging about the use social media in organizations it's important for the one's interested to have a closer look at an important theory in this perspective, the theory of social information processing (Walther, 1992). This is an interpersonal communication theory that suggests that online interpersonal relationship development might require more time to develop than traditional face-to-face relationships.

The theory has been further developed over the years and it might be interesting to learn more about. You can search for related articles on google scholar.