[Social Media]

The world watched in shock as Chile was hit by an earthquake 800 times stronger than the one in Haiti -- and it happened even before the sun went up. But while governments around the world scrambled to get moving, social media was already saving lives.

It's amazing what social media can do where traditional media and emergency methods often fall short. While we commend the Chilean people for building strong buildings and having solid disaster control methods in place, we can't help but notice how social media platforms such as Twitter quickly began putting things together again.

Case in point: Sheryl Breuker, who yesterday shared her personal story with Mashable.com. Her sister-in-law was in Santiago, Chile when the earthquake struck, and there was no way of getting in touch with her. Most communication lines were cut. But a vital line to the Internet stayed on, so they began contacting locals via Twitter.

Sure enough, just a couple of hours later, a number of locals found Sheryl's sister-in-law, safe and sound. And I'm pretty sure she wasn't the only missing person that Twitter helped track down.

Similarly, Facebook users around the Pacific rim stayed up late that night, tracking the resulting tsunami threat and relaying information hours before their respective government agencies did. Google also launched their "Chile Earthquake Finder" service, allowing users to choose between "I'm looking for someone" and "I have information about someone."

There wasn't much damage caused by the tsunami, but seeing how coastal communities all over the Pacific rim responded by evacuating quickly and systematically made me feel like a proud father.

Social media's role doesn't stop there -- now that Chile is picking up the pieces, heroes all over the world are sending money, aid, and manpower. And I have little doubt that social media is going to play yet another big role when the next natural disaster rolls around.

And I'm also pretty sure that the conservatives will be sitting in their sofas bitching at their TV's every time they see their heads of state offer aid to Chile. They'll still be saying, "Why help Chile? Chile will never help us back! Stop sending aid!"

Oh, let them be idiots. In the meantime, the rest of us will continue using today's tools to help make the world a little better than yesterday -- as they were meant to.

Film-making is a business among many other things, and like most other businesses, the more money you invest in it, the more likely it's going to succeed. But right now, there's a film going around that's doing extremely well in the box office -- and it was shot with a mere $20,000 budget.

"Paranormal Activity" is a feature-length movie produced and directed by Oren Peli, a video game programmer who thought it would be cool to shoot a "Blair Witch"-esque movie -- hi kids, "The Blair Witch Project" was a $60,000 film that grossed over $140 million in the box office back in 1999. With a handful of unknown actors, Peli went on to produce "Paranormal Activity" over a span of one week in 2006, shooting and editing all at the same time.

Note:
Oct 16, 2009 - Updates to this story have been added to the following paragraphs.
Oct 17, 2009 - Added limited-release movie trailer

After a series of post-production problems, Peli was finally able to debut "Paranormal Activity" on a few select screens around the United States. Audiences all over the place unanimously agreed the movie was "pretty scary" -- with some people leaving midway through the film simply because they couldn't take any more. Even director Steven Spielberg couldn't watch the entire movie in one go.

Word of mouth and, of course, participatory media was instrumental in bringing the film to mainstream popularity. Obviously when people think it's cool, they're going to Tweet it to death -- another bit of proof that there's more than just the traditional way to get your movie the mileage it receives.

The movie's reception has been so good that it's scheduled to open in cinemas all over the United States today. It's likely a big blow to most Hollywood studios, who only a few years ago turned down Peli's offers to have the film made into a feature. That was until Jason Blum, who also produced "The Reader," came across it -- and was so spooked the night after watching it that he decided not to pass on it.

"Paranormal Activity" is doing so well that it's bound to garner Peli -- and the actors he worked with -- some due recognition. There aren't any details as to when the film will reach Malaysian and Singaporean shores, but when it does, it's bound to show local filmmakers -- both professional and independent -- a thing or two about good storytelling.

If you've been following my site for a while, you probably remember my posts about "Live Music" (the first-ever crowdsourced animated feature) and "Twitterdammerung" (the first-ever crowdsourced opera). "Live Music" has managed to earn its share of fans and enemies -- which was expected -- but very few people, me included, thought a Twitter opera would fall flat on its face.

"Twitterdammerung," the Twitter opera, was pieced together over the last several months from contributions from 900 Twitter users. Contributions naturally were only 140 characters or less, and what London's Royal Opera House had come up some time back -- the first act, where the protagonist was kidnapped by a flock of birds and a talking cat makes an appearance -- kind of made me shake my head.

Well, "Twitterdammerung" made its debut in London's Covent Garden -- to a surprisingly positive reception. Reviews have returned that the opera was simply silly from start to finish, and the audience was roaring with laughter throughout most of the show. And while many parts obviously needed some touching up (there's only so much you can do with three days of rehearsals), some parts, particularly the musical ones, were pretty good.

Opera critic Igor Toronyi-Lalic was there when it happened, and like most of us, he expected the entire Twitter opera to be an embarrassment (judging from previews that made him say "Yikes"). He said that, in the end, the Twitter opera was a cheap gimmick, but was a pretty good one as far as cheap gimmicks go.

Then again, maybe it wasn't fair to include the Twitter opera in the normal "old-fashioned" opera stereotype. You can't really expect a Michael Bay experience in the opera house.

I'd love to see the Twitter opera myself, but finding an opera house in the region where I work is harder than getting out of a Malaysian traffic jam, so I'll wait for it to come out on YouTube. :)

Twitter and other social media platforms were the site of countless e-riots and e-demonstrations over the weekend, particularly after the events of the Iranian election. Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won a shocking landslide election over his main rival, Mir Hossein Moussavi.

There was no doubt Ahmadinejad was a contender, but it was clear for most of the election that Moussavi was much more popular with the people. Moussavi had been touted to be Iran's Barack Obama, who, while not really pro-West, isn't exactly happy about how Ahmadinejad antagonized the rest of the world and tarnished Iran's image.

Social media followings of Moussavi on Facebook, Twitter, and other problems showed that he was head and shoulders above Ahmadinejad in online popularity. Moussavi's supporters (and much of the international community) raised eyebrows several days before the elections, when problems hounded the Internet, text messaging, and other media in Iran. These were the volumes where Moussavi's supporters made his campaign extremely successful.

Now that demonstrations in Iran are being quelled (Tweets about soldiers raiding university dorms, beating up students and firing teargas into demonstrations), Moussavi's supporters are turning to Twitter to tell the injustice to the rest of the world. As a result, demonstrations are erupting all over the world in solidarity with Moussavi's supporters and the rest of Iran.

It's clear that Iran's people aren't all fanatical supporters of Ahmadinejad as Iran's state-controlled media propaganda tells us. But as long as a small hole called Twitter exists in Iran's media steel curtain, there's always hope.


In other news, Twitter was also under the spotlight over the weekend -- although it was largely because of Google. The big guys at Google have openly expressed their awe at Twitter's real-time search capability in the past, and are now hinting at a microblogging feature in the near future.

No, they're not coming out with a new Twitter (they've already got Jaiku, remember? Or whatever's left of that "project"), but they're planning to incorporate relevant Tweets into search results soon. Kind of like Twootles, but with better, more relevant results. After all, while Twitter gives the fastest results, they're not always the best ones. Speed isn't worth much without accuracy.


Is Google afraid of Bing? Apparently not as much as some people think, but Microsoft's search share grew 2% last week since Bing came to the fore. Microsoft probably has something up its sleeve, but even those things don't scare Google. Let's wait and see.


I suppose the company that gets the most pressure from this whole thing is Apple. Why Apple? Simply because every time I read an article on the 'Net about Bing or any other Microsoft-related offering, the comments section is 99% always a rage board for those who think Apple is better than Microsoft and those who don't. With the ease with which Apple connects and keeps track with their followers, this furor should be hard to ignore.

Recent developments in the search and collaborative media industry has taken some of the luster from Google's image, especially when Twitter revealed where Google falls short -- real-time search results. And nope, no matter what you hear, Google isn't out to buy Twitter. Apparently it has other, much bigger things in mind.

Enter Google Wave, Google's next ambitious project. It's out to revolutionize the way we do things on the Internet, supposedly merging e-mail, blogging, file sharing, cloud computing, and other common social media activities into one single online application. It made mainstream news last week, and has everyone on the Internet buzzing about the possibilities.

After all, who hasn't thought about how cool it would be to rely on only one online application for everything they need to do on the Internet?

We've all been there -- a few years ago, we all faced the problem of whether to sign up for Yahoo! Messenger, ICQ, MSN Messenger, Skype, or any other chat/voice client to keep in touch with friends, family, and co-workers. Most of us had to sign up for more than one application, which led to frustrating PC slowdowns, forgotten passwords, and basically a hairload of hassles.

Today, we face a similar predicament -- social media. With so many social media platforms out there -- Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, you name it -- we're constantly pressed to sign up for every single one of them.

Apparently, Google's playing Internet god again by changing the way we do things. Google Wave isn't by any means ready for testing, but from what we've heard so far, all the chat clients and all the web-based e-mail providers and all the social media platforms will be in a world of hurt if it ever takes off.

Yup, that includes Twitter -- Google is working on providing near-real-time results for searches made on Wave. As a collaborative platform, that's entirely possible.

There's only one question -- wouldn't Google be cannibalizing itself with Wave? The new application overlaps the functions of Gmail and Google Docs, after all. I suppose it remains to be seen.

For now, it's a cool idea, and I'm not really worried because, well, it's freaking Google. On the other hand, if it were Microsoft...

It's been a while since the search engine Cuil touted itself as the "Google Killer," boasting of a more expansive index than the big G. However, by and large Cuil failed to live up to the hype, and it's pretty much avoided my radar. Later on it soon became clear that the future of search would not be won by the search engine with the largest index, but by the one who can bring real-time results.

And guess what -- Twitter has been leaving all the big search engines in the dust since it flitted into the collaborative media scene.

Twitter has the advantage of providing real-time search results, and with millions of Tweeple tweeting around the clock, events around the world show up on search results (and on Twitter's trending topics) almost instantly.

I'm not much of a Twit, but I did happen to check on my mostly-unused Twitter account a few weeks ago -- and saw the power of Twitter's search function at that moment. I was randomly doing searches on certain Hollywood actors, and the query "Nicolas Cage" immediately came up with Tweets, barely a few minutes old, by New Yorkers tweeting about a Ferrari crash in a set of Cage's new movie.

That was the first of two car crashes that occurred during shooting of Cage's upcoming film "The Sorcerer's Apprentice." I quickly turned to the big search engines to look for more news about the crash, but couldn't find any. I did Google searches every fifteen minutes after that, and finally got the first piece of vague news a little over two hours later.

That's the main problem of the bigger search engines -- it takes considerable time from the moment events happen to the moment reporters write up their articles to the moment when Google indexes the resulting web pages. It's no surprise that people are now turning to Twitter first, and Google second, to get real-time news on the 'Net. [It beats waiting for the news to come out on CNBC, too, unless of course Margaret Brennan is on.]

There have been rumors that the big names are out to buy Twitter soon -- Apple for $700 million and Google for $1 billion, for instance -- but apparently some guys beat them to it. Enter Twootles, a search engine that displays Google and Twitter results side-by-side.

I've tried it this morning and was fairly impressed by the interface, but there's still that common Twitter problem -- most of the results you'll get are Tweets by everyday people tweeting their friends. Twitter is, after all, primarily a social media platform, and people still use it to keep in touch with their network much more than to post and keep up with news.

Twootles is still in its beta stages, and its developers are currently working to include new features soon. What features would be good? For me, I'd like to see some filtering in the Twitter results to remove the "fat" and show only the newsworthy Tweets -- I did a search on "Chris Gomez," and while the Engine Alpha site made it to the Google results, most of what I got on Twitter was about Chris Brown and Rihanna. [I'd tell you about the latest news on that too, but that's another story...]

You can try Twootles out for yourself at www.twootles.com.

A lot of people have been saying that the real winner in Ashton Kutcher's recently-concluded Twitter battle with CNN was Twitter itself, since it no doubt enjoyed a surge of new Tweeple signing up after the story made mainstream. But at the end of things, we all know that the real winners are the beneficiaries of the battle – African families who will be receiving some of the best mosquito nets ever created on the face of the planet.

Everyone knows that the benefiting charity is Malaria No More, but not many people know who makes the mosquito nets themselves – Olyset Nets. Their nets are capable of killing mosquitoes on contact, and lasts for 5 years. The company is based in Tanzania, which is in turn creating jobs and stimulating the sluggish African economy.

Many other celebrities and big names have jumped into the same boat as Kutcher and CNN. Oprah Winfrey, Bono, Dave Chappelle, Ryan Seacrest, and the American Idols are all pitching in, and some estimates peg the total at over $1 million in mosquito nets to be donated very, very soon – and the number keeps going up the more people sign on to the story.

Of course, this is a good thing. Don't listen to those goats in the blogosphere who criticize how the money is going to benefit people in Africa instead of benefiting people back home in the United States. (Yep, most of these people are Americans. Most probably Republicans who'd sell their kids to prove Barack Obama wrong.)

It's always great to hear news like this – in the midst of all the nonsense and violence going around, more and more simple civilians are doing small things that make big differences in other parts of the world. We may never understand why Republicans never want other people to be happy, but then again, who cares what idiots think?

As if I haven't written enough about social media this week...

If you haven't kept up with the news, Ashton Kutcher earlier this week challenged CNN to reach the coveted 1,000,000 follower mark on Twitter first. No single Twitter account has ever reached that many followers, but it would seem that both Ashton Kutcher and CNN will be reaching that mark in less than 24 hours from this writing. (It's about noon Hong Kong Time as I'm writing this.)

Ashton (@aplusk) has pledged to give his 1,000,000th follower a copy of the popular video game Guitar Hero, plus donate 10,000 mosquito bed nets to the Malaria No More charity. He's also promised to ring the bell on Ted Turner's home if he wins the race.

Soon after Ashton threw the gauntlet, CNN's Larry King gamely issued a video statement accepting Ashton's challenge, even going as far as saying “We will crush you,” and letting the young actor (and the rest of the oblivious world, apparently) that Ted Turner no longer runs CNN.

What's funny is that CNN wasn't even running the CNN Breaking News Twitter account (@cnnbrk) when Ashton issued the challenge. It was being run by San Francisco-based James Cox, who very recently sold the account to CNN for an undisclosed sum. I'm sure he's very happy.

To make things a bit more interesting, EA Sports just upped the ante by offering to include Ashton's 1,000,000th follower in their upcoming Sims 3 game, as well as giving them a copy of every game it makes in 2009. This should give Ashton a boost in the race, probably leaving Britney Spears – who also jumped in – in the dust.

Oh, this just in. Ashton Kutcher's account just passed CNN in the follower race. As of this writing, he has 990,051 followers, a wafer-thin lead over CNN Breaking News's 989,991. That's 60 followers. Dude!

Now, I'm not a compulsive Twitter user and I have to admit I don't have a compelling need to recruit Twitter followers for myself. Nope. I didn't invent the wheel, and I have not discovered the cure for male pattern baldness. Really. I don't have any secret formula here. Those who follow me on Twitter, I follow in return.

Anyway, for now, I'm probably going to sit back and watch this race as it grinds to the finish. Who am I rooting for? I think I'll go with CNN (shows you my age). I like Ashton, though I am secretly hoping CNN punks him for taking Demi away from all of us.

OK, I'm kidding. This is Chris Gomez wishing you all a good weekend.

UPDATE:
Apr 16, 2009, 9:32 AM (GMT +0800)

Damn!

So much for supporting CNN. Anyway, congrats to the winning side. I'm gonna stop watching Larry King for a month! ;)

Reference Twitter message links from CNN Breaking News:

• Congrats @aplusk. Ashton Kutcher is the first twitter account to reach 1MM followers.    - Twitter link -

• Ashton Kutcher is first to reach 1 million followers in Twitter contest with CNN.    - Twitter link -

Reference Twitter message links from Ashton Kutcher:

• Victory is ours!!!!!!!!    - Twitter link -

• for anyone who missed it here's the vid on the victory  http://bit.ly/3UpiEF    - Twitter link -

Yesterday I wrote about how some studies suggested a negative impact Facebook had on students' academic performances. While mothers of struggling students may be thrilled at the news (after all, how often can mothers be right and have studies back them up these days), but I think I may have bordered on being unfair. While I can speak volumes about why I have no plans of creating a Facebook account, it and other social media platforms have also done several good things for society.

While I was in the shower this morning I decided to run off, right off the top of my head, the bad and good sides of social media in today's article. Here's what I came up with (it's not the whole list).

The Bad:
#1 – As I'd written before, it can drive grades down for 'careless' students. Studies have found that while non-users of social media spend an average of 11-15 hours a week studying, users only spend 1-5. Missing ten hours of studying time a week can add up to two hundred hours a semester – think of all the knowledge you could miss out on simply by clicking through some stranger's baby photos.

#2 – Maintaining a social media profile carelessly can expose you to scams, identity thieves, and other malcontent. I keep hearing horror stories about people who post their phone numbers on their profiles and in return get contacted by bogus salespeople and such. I get the feeling that social media shouldn't just be a post-graduate degree – it should be taught much earlier in a child's school life, perhaps around the same time sex education rolls around.

#3 - Privacy and The Internet never forgets. If for some reason you'd posted information about yourself, and you suddenly want to take the information down, don't be surprised it being archived or stored in a publicly accessible database which you have no idea about.


The Good:
#1 – Social media has helped police forces in some parts of the world nab criminals. The police basically have a Facebook profile and crowdsource for leads and tips regarding wanted criminals, whose photos and security videos are posted online for their contacts to see.

#2 – It has also helped the youth have a more active voice in the political situation of their respective countries. Before last year's Mumbai attacks (which Indians now know as India's 9/11), most of India's youths were disillusioned with their incredibly inefficient and corrupt government. When a mere 10 gunmen managed to bring one of the country's largest cities to a virtual standstill, Indian youths immediately knew something was horribly wrong, and are now currently using Facebook, blogs, and other social media platforms to bring about some real change.

#3 - Consumer-driven/comunity websites, that have existed way before the so-called phenomenon of social media, have enabled internet citizens share opinions about the products they use and problems with customers service. And through the use of Twitter, YouTube, etc., have managed to get quick attention for their grievances. This in turn has somewhat let to companies paying serious attention to what their customers are talking about.

#4 – It helped bring Obama to the world stage. Woo-hoo.


I guess social media's impact on society has both its ups and downs, and it's really up to users – you and me – to decide how to use it. While we can't really do anything about the lazy bastards who have nothing to do besides enjoy life at the expense of other people, that doesn't give us the excuse not to do anything about it at all.

One of my biggest gripes about social media is perhaps the most obvious – it takes too much of my time. I see no point in putting up a Facebook profile to connect with friends, only to find myself clicking through some stranger's obscure vacation photos from 1993. Unfortunately, for many students around the world, mindlessly surfing through their social media network has become a pastime – and it's hurting their grades.

Recent studies have come back with mixed findings, but there are a good number of polls that show 2 out of every 3 students who use Facebook and other social media platforms several hours a week have been getting significantly lower grades than their peers who didn't. This largely confirms a fear that parents and teachers have had for a long, long time.

There have been a number of studies that show otherwise, though, and many critics claim that every generation of students has at least one major distraction. I imagine the grades of students suffering back when the Beatles were together, or when TV first made its way to homes, or when texting suddenly became mainstream.

But I the rise of social media is a unique kind of distraction, because social networks often grow much faster than any one person can keep up. With so many kids laying out their lives on the Internet for the world to see, looking through social media profiles can be quite addicting for students looking for an excuse to procrastinate on the day's homework.

Whatever the critics say, it's still pretty clear – students who spend hours using Facebook and other social media platforms spend much less time studying. Just how bad is it? According to some experts, students' academic performance drop at the equivalent of one letter grade. What could've been an “A” becomes a “B,” and what could've been a barely-passing “D” falls into “F.”

More studies are being done on the issue, but let's face it – how much more evidence do we need? The failure rates in today's schools and universities are rising uncontrollably, and steps undoubtedly need to be taken to make sure kids spend more time studying.

I'm beginning to think that time management is a skillset that shouldn't be reserved for managers and such, and should instead be taught to students at a very young age. Chris Comez's two cents.