When you stop to think about it the growth of mobile devices in recent years is staggering. The iPhone, not the first smart phone by any means but the one that led adoption by the masses, is just 5 years old. I’m not sure about you but I have a hard time coming to terms with that.
via istrategylabs
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China’s preeminent micro-blogging website Sina Weibo – think Twitter – has released a new EULA that’s a little problematic. The new terms of service require that all users sign a “user contract.” Part of this contract states that users are forbidden from posting anti-government content. As far as Sina Weibo goes this is more a codification of censorship already in place, but that censorship has never been so flagrant or transparent – via The Verge
Earlier this month Kuwait’s Information Minister, Sheikh Mohammad al-Mubarak Al-Sabah, announced plans to regulate social networks in order to “safeguard the cohesiveness of the population and society.” – via EFF
In better news, Twitter has recently filed a motion to stop a court order requesting user information. The District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan is seeking information on Malcolm Harris, who was charged with disorderly conduct during an Occupy Wallstreet event. – via the ACLU
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To say that ‘everything is political’ is to recognize this omnipresence of relations of force and their immanence to a political field; but it is to set oneself the barely sketched task of unraveling this indefinite tangled skein.
- Michel Foucault
Courtesy of: Online Colleges
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Hey! Does anyone else remember Friendster? Yeah, me neither…
Via: CenturyLinkQuote.com
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Yesterday morning Facebook announced that they were adding organ donor preferences to people’s profiles. In their press release they say:
Today, more than 114,000 people in the United States, and millions more around the globe, are waiting for the heart, kidney or liver transplant that will save their lives. Many of those people – an average of 18 people per day – will die waiting, because there simply aren’t enough organ donors to meet the need. Medical experts believe that broader awareness about organ donation could go a long way toward solving this crisis. And we believe that by simply telling people that you’re an organ donor, the power of sharing and connection can play an important role.
Like a lot of people I thought that the hype surrounding this move – which, don’t get me wrong, is welcome – was a tad over the top. That is until I saw this story. Apparently California’s organ donor registry has seen an 800% spike in sign-ups today. Any way you slice it, whether it was caused directly or just by getting organ donation in the news, Facebook is responsible.
Consider me humbled and be sure to check your cynicism at the door.
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Over at Open Democracy, Tony Curzon Price is discussing the use of Clicktivism.
We’ve touched on clicktivism’s underlying foundation of marketing; the principle that both gives it its power and makes traditional left-leaning activists wary. It’s a double edged sword for sure. By examining three European initiatives Curzon feels his way through the topic, likening clicktivism to judo:
”Ju” is the founding concept of Judo – that oddly tumbly martial art. The idea of “Ju” is that one should always try to blend with the energy and force of whatever you are trying to change. You use the force of others to achieve your own goal – when someone lunges at you, you try to turn their energy into something that will ground them. “Ju” is the right metaphor for the clicktivist campaigns that work and those that don’t: to what extent are citizens being invited to engage in an action that takes existing commercial or political energies and transforms them to a particular end?
via Open Democracy
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The RSPCA (Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) are set to launch their biggest digital campaign over the weekend of 28-29 April. RSPCA Live will take place on both Facebook and Twitter and involve celebrity such as Alexa Dixonm TV dog trainer Victoria Stilwell, Graham Norton and Amanda Holden. During the campaign, people will have the opportunity to share messages, videos and stories about animals on the charity’s social media, participate to Q&A sessions and quiz, vote for their favourite movies and much more; all of this with the aim of getting people closer to the NGO and help raise funds online.
As of today, 251 people are planning to attend the online event. We will follow up on this next week and give you our critical opition about the campaign. In the meantime, please let us know if you intend to participate and share your thoughts with us in the comment below (or live on Twitter). All you have to do to attend is like the RSPCA’s Facebook Page and/or follow @RSPCA_Official on Twitter and follow the discussion online.
Stay tuned for more!
Filed under Clicktivism breakdown, Clicktivism News
The Guardian has gone ahead and named their top 20 defenders of the open internet. I’m glad to see both Jacob Appelbaum, of Tor, and Alex MacGillivray, of Twitter, on the list. They might not be as big household names (ha!) as Jimmy Wales, or Anonymous, or Tim Berners-Lee, but both have made some amazing contributions.
Who’s missing? Have your say on this articles comment thread.
via The Guardian
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Here’s another infographic for you infographic lovers, brought to you by Recyclebank. The green company has asked what it would happen if every active user in the world took some minor green actions to help save the planet. Well, turns out that the “network effect” would be huge.
Some examples: if all Twitter users shut down their computers for an hour, every day, it would be like taking 9,128 cars off the road each year. Also, if every iPhone user recycled his/her device at the end of its life, the energy saved would be enough to power almost 200,000 homes for a year.
Read on and tell us your thoughts in the comments below. What could the strategic role of social media be in the promotion of these good deeds?
Infographic by Recyclebank
Found via Mashable
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After the great success of the Facebook Unfriend Coal campaign, it is now the turn of other Internet giants to be named and shamed by Greenpeace. The environmental NGO has just launched a new push against some of the largest IT companies – including Microsoft, Apple and Amazon – asking them to “Clean our Cloud”.
Greenpeace’s annual report How clean is your cloud?, has disclosed the energy choices of the biggest tech companies, ranking them against each other on seven criteria – use of clean energy, coal, nuclear, energy transparency, infrastructure siting, energy efficiency and GHG mitigation, renewables and advocacy. The document shows how the massive expansion of cloud computing data centres is being pursued by the Internet giants with little transparency in regards to their power usage and without taking into consideration greener energy sources, such as renewables.
Even though the tactics employed in this campaign are not particularly cutting-edge – viral videos and online petition, as seen in many other Greenpeace’s pushes - what I find really interesting is the type of goal, the choice of targets and the overall tech-oriented approach Greenpeace has taken, since at least 2010 . The NGO has certainly understood the importance of the web, not just as a means to reach their objectives, but as a battlefield itself. By targeting some of the biggest and most loved Internet brands, and exposing them to their very same audience, the Clean our Cloud campaign has the potential to turn passive users into critical consumers, and have them claim their right to be informed and listened to.
I am no oracle to predict what the outcome of this push will be, but I guess Apple’s immediate response via The New York Times suggests that the big three are, indeed, listening. We will follow up on this shortly; in the meantime, why don’t you take two minutes of your time to sign up the “Clean our Cloud” petition and/or to let us know what you think of this campaign in the comments below?
Click on the image below to sign the “Clean our Cloud” petition
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After the great success of the Facebook Unfriend Coal campaign, it is now the turn of other Internet giants to be named and shamed by Gre...
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Last week Facebook announced that, within the month, fan pages were getting a make-over; adopting the timeline format that has been used ...
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Clicktivist Breakdown is an ongoing series dissecting online campaigns piece by piece to discover the anatomy of successful digital enga...
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An interview with James Sutton, founder of Bloomtrigger. Few weeks ago, I attended one of those online marketing events, in whic...
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