Mar 25th 09
Posted by Arnold in Day today
Now this is interesting.
A couple of twit from @guitarchic caught my attention. She mentioned about following and sending a Twitter message to Ashton Kutcher. I was winding down from a tiring coding day, so it kind of got me interested and searched for Ashton @aplusk.
His profile: 500,000++ followers! Now, if you have half a million people following you on Twitter, you can do a lot of things with it. And so I found out that he did.
I’m not a showbiz-type of guy, but I know he and Demi Moore, the “Ghost” girl, are a couple. And so I tried to read back his Twitter page. I found out that he was planning something for Demi with his Twitter friends.
Waiting for my wife to wake up half way across the world so I can tell her good morning. (that tells us that Demi is in another country right now)
can you all help me make her morning? At 7:45am pst that 1hr 25 min from now send @mrskutcher a “good morning, I love U” tweet. (He unveiled the plan. Demi is in Europe. At an exact time, all his twitter buddies will great @mrskutcher — that’s Demi — good morning. Imagine the fllood!)
what if we crashed twitter with love That would be awsome!
the countdown is on 1 hour till the love wave hits. sending love to @mrskutcher at 7:45 pst
45 min until the love wave. Lets make it a love tsunami! send @mrskutcher a little love at 7:45 pst 10:45 est
the anticipation is killing me. she is gonna love this. 7:45 is when she sends the girls 2 school. this will make her day 30 min to go.
help me make wifeys day in 15 min drop a little love note to @mrskutcher it will be best if we have the tweet ready and just hit send
(ok, the people are now waiting for 7:45 to come, ready with their Twits for @mrskutcher)
…8 min just a little “good morning we love you ” or “missed you while you were sleeping” will will be perfect
5 min prepare your tweets for the love wave!!!
I’m calling her now to make sure she is watching
BOOM! The flood of good morning greetings came! 3600 messages in less than 7 minutes according to Ashton. While Demi was talking to him, she’s looking at her Twitter feed.
Demi Moore was speechless — or at least she can tweet about it.
I am feeling the love bomb and think I might explode! At least with a few tears of overwhelming joy. I love and miss you!
Awwww!
* * *
This illustrates how social networking bridges the gap between celebrities and fans, between people across the world, between generations. So, the basic question Twitter answers “What are you doing right now?” can actually produce a wide range of other stuff, eh! From business promotions to vanity to being romantic — oh I love my generation!
Dec 12th 08
Posted by Arnold in All in a days work, Techie
In this short post, I’m going to lead you to answer an unfamiliar question: How authentic can you get on the internet?
As an internet practitioner, I’ve seen how it matured from a business communication tool to a personal, social networking monster. When it started in the Philippines sometime 1997 to about 2003/2004, we knew the internet as email, webpages for companies and doing online commerce (otherwise known as “ecommerce”). With the advent of Friendster, the rules have changed.
The internet has become personal. So personal that these days, as I observed, most people ranging from students to corporate employees cannot end the day without checking their favorite social networking site — blogging, adding friends, posting their pictures and sending messages.
You have, Friendster, of course. Then Multiply.com. Facebook. MySpace. LinkedIn. Then the microblogging tools like Twitter and Plurk. All these have become our own personal space on the internet.
How personal did the internet become these past few years? You’ll see people meeting online and getting married. You’ll see people fighting over ideologies, religion and politics. You’ll see old friends, high school, college classmates and roommates reuniting. One can immediately conclude that everything we now see on the internet can be real, personal and authentic.
Authentic? How authentic? How real?
Here’s my observation. While the internet has become personal, it is still less real. Authenticity isn’t the popular term on the internet. People can post false information about themselves in the guise of reality. People can choose to destroy people through a powerful tool called blogging — who knows how true can it get? People can cover their insecurities and pretend to be somebody else. Over and over, I saw people arguing about something without really understanding each other — only because they judged based on what is written and not necessarily on how it is actually written. I see friendships broken, relationships tainted because of a blog post or a profile information or a status update — only to find out that it could have not happened if they didn’t interpret it as it is.
And it can even become uglier — that is, if we take social networking tools so seriously and judge people’s character and motives based on their online activities.
- if a person knows enough of the subject that he writes about, does that mean he practices it?
- if you post a picture about yourself, does that mean you “only love yourself” and not anybody else?
- if someone frequently visits your profile, does that mean s/he likes you?
- if you post happy thoughts, does that mean you’re happy?
- if you post sad thoughts, does that mean you’re pathetic?
- if your picture rocks, does that mean you’re really beautiful/handsome in person?
- if you post seductive pictures, does that mean you want to have sex with your online visitor?
… the question never ends. It could be longer and deeper than you think.
Here’s my point: use the internet as a tool for communication. Find new friends. Locate old friends. Share your life. Break new deals. Earn, if you can. Share your problems to a group of online friends. Give counsel. Share Jesus. Give announcements. But don’t go beyond that. Don’t assume. Don’t judge. Because the internet isn’t a replacement to face to face, real world communication. If you do, you’ll be mislead and arrive to a wrong conclusion.
Dec 5th 08
Posted by Arnold in Techie
Google has taken social networking on the next level. Imagine your blog (or any website for that matter) becoming a meeting place of (Google) users and interacting through it.
Any website can become a social networking tool because of Google Friend Connect, which was launched recently.
I have applied for beta testing. Just for fun, add yourself to the “Friend Connect” bar on your right –> :D Make some comments on how you liked it just at the bottom of the box.
Oct 24th 07
Posted by Arnold in Techie
I have recently activated 2 blogs at Multiply.com — my second blog called it’s.not.about.me. and Grace Place’s blog (yes, there will be an official announcement regarding this change). Two reasons why I like Multiply.com:
* Unlike popular social networking site Friendster.com, Multiply.com is not about the number of friends you have in your list. It is about the quality of connections. The site has a way to force you to identify your relationship with the new connection request. And in my short experience of being active at Multiply, it does work. You tend to read updates from friends and relatives that you do know.
* The tools are well thought of. I mean, look at the AJAX feel of most part of the site. Right tool and feature at the right place. While nothing beats WordPress as a blogging tool, their own blogging software is good enough. You can upload files, insert files and edit wysywyg.
* You have a whopping 1 GB of space! Yeah! They were not explicit about it, but I read somewhere that their CEO mentioned about this space. That’s a lot, really. And we’re talking about the idea of using it for podcasting purposes.
I just hope that Multiply users will know how to use the tool properly. Here are a couple of suggestions:
- Don’t play the “I have a thousand contact and you have 2″ game. Add only those who you really know. It’s a way to maximize the use of this social networking tool.
- Do read your contacts’ updates. They know it. And they will reciprocate — they will read yours, too.
- Comment on their posts. It’s a way to interact on the web. It’s a way to build relationships through social networking.
Update from its.not.about.me – Why a new blog?
