Social Networking Today Blog

After a relatively quiet start to the day in Tehran reports are coming through on Twitter of police brutality of epic proportions taking place in the city. Here are a selction of this evenings Tweets to date:

   "there are fights going on in Vanak, Tajrish and Azadi as we speak. In Baharestan    square, they beat the shit out of people"

   "Baharestan Sq. was Tiananmen Sq. today, just vicious violent i dont know what to call them, they're not human"

   " Sea of Green was at every sq, taking on the basij & being beaten until the ground covered in blood."

        http://bit.ly/16NJm8

This weekend, on Saturday 20^th June 2009, the people of Iran rose up in protest against a regime they believed had rigged the recent national election so denying  the people of their right to democracy.  Those on the streets organized and relayed real time videos, images and messages, documenting events in real time to the world, via social networking sites such as Twitter, YouTube and Facebook . However, news reporters were banned from attending unauthorized gatherings and from moving around freely and were therefore unable to report on developments as first hand witnesses.  

As the afternoon progressed  #iranelection activity on Twitter became overwhelming, with supposedly first hand updates of clashes in multiple areas throughout the nation and warnings that hospitals had become police traps and that the injured should be taken to European embassies instead.  Most poignant, though, were the videos being uploaded to YouTube which appeared to provide graphic evidence of widespread unrest and deaths in various locations resulting from police brutality.  The most upsetting of these was a video documenting the fatal shooting of a 16 year old girl who had been standing beside her father. Reported to have been shouting, “freedom,” her name is said to be Neda which means, voice in Farsi. Into the night, as Twitter activity became feverish, Neda became the voice of the cause and the people’s movement symbol.

Unsurprisingly, early on Saturday the CNN and BBC news portals, unable to bear first hand witness to events, seemed to be reporting minor protests with little or no confrontation.  What seemed to be startling to those reading the Twitter feeds and watching the YouTube videos was the enormous gulf between the nature of events as reported by those on the ground via  social networking sites  compared to their nature as reported on the official TV News portals. In fact, on the BBC website developments in Iran had been delegated to the number three news story, signifying it had been rated as of lesser relative importance.

Nevertheless, as afternoon turned to evening CNN began to cover events as posted on Twitter and even to show some of the less graphic videos uploaded to sites such as YouTube. What is highly relevant here is that in all cases they stated and re-stated that the reports were unconfirmed and that their sources were journalistic amateurs uploading or posting to social networking sites.

By Sunday morning the Story rated as number one on CNN and almost all reporting was attributed to information gathered from social networking sites.  However, this was in stark contrast to events, as reported by the BBC, where the story still did not rate as number one and where the main web write up, in it’s opening sentence quoted sources from Iranian TV as reporting that ten people, described as being from terrorist groups, had been killed in Iran.  There was no mention at all of any information uploaded or posted on Twitter or YouTube or any other social networking site.  The article stated that, “Reports of Saturday’s violence cannot be verified as foreign media in Iran are being severely restricted,” and that, “Witness accounts on Saturday suggested police used live rounds, batons, tear gas and water cannon to break up demonstrations which went on late into the night.”

No doubt the BBC will defend it’s blanking of social networking sites by claiming them to be unreliable sources from which information cannot be validated.  Herein, though, lays the double standard. How have the BBC substantiated the validity of information taken from Iranian TV sources? Surely, if this information can be reported as having been gathered from a source other than the BBC, so then can that gathered from social networking portals. Surely news of the video of the dying 16 year old girl Neda, uploaded to YouTube, deserved to be transmitted to the world by its most trusted News portal. Surely the BBC needs to get to grips with new technology and take the public at their word, even if on occasion they get it wrong.  In my opinion, on this occasion, CNN got it right by covering itself, in the eventuality that the stories taken from social network portals could not later be substantiated.

Social Networking is not going away.  It enables the people to tell the story of what is taking place to the world and it makes that story ever more human.  It’s here to complement and enhance traditional reporting not to replace or threaten it. In times of extreme unrest and danger, when traditional journalism becomes impossible, do not the people have the right to tell the world their story?

Mahatma Gandhi said, “What you cannot do is accept injustice…You must make the injustice visible – be prepared to die like a soldier to do so.”  The brave people of Iran who took the YouTube videos on flimsy cell phones, and then risked their very lives uploading them in internet cafes took that very risk in order to call out to the world for help. Our much beloved BBC let them down.

Update 1 - by 4.30PM Sunday amateur videos being shown on BBC website but not on front page – still no prominent mention of social networking sites- There are now unsubstantiated reports that social networking sites are inaccessible in Tehran.

Update 2- 10PM Sunday 21 June - BBC broadcasts stills from Neda video on 10PM news - Allelujah - and thank you

Sandra Charan

If you rate this article and would like to become a regular reader please subscribe to the site feed (page top right)

PLUS If you like the post, Then appreciate it by submitting it to Delicious, Stumbling or Digging it.

The people of Iran are flouting Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's order not to protest today against the allegedly rigged election results and though the authorities have banned the media from reporting on unauthorized gatherings, reformers are relaying video evidence of the state's attempts to disperse protesters to the world through social networking sites such as YouTube. 

Follow these video links for evidence of real-time activity within the past hours on Tehran's steets and I'm sorry they are pretty upsetting: I show these not to shock but to shame the authorties into stopping this carnage.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmmixxfKggk

http://bit.ly/N3lna

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FFdu_3qAew

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pu2oRuZiE2s

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYYAeqdwFnQ

You can follow events as they occur by searching for Iran on YouTube and then selecting sorting by, "newest," in the top menu

The Twitter hashtag #iranelection brings up a message within the last 10 seconds as I read it STICK TOGETHER! RT From Iran: About 5000 Protesters pushing back Police, Bassij & Hezbollah to Azadi St #IranElection.

Sadly they know as well as we do what the result, for them personally will be. Here, lasty is a post by one of the youth of Tehran who expects he may die today in the name of the fight for freedom.

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/06/before-the-battle.html

To show your support for the protesters change your Twitter icon to green - 

Sandra Charan

If you rate this article and would like to become a regular reader please subscribe to the site feed (page top right)

PLUS If you rate the post, Then appreciate it by submitting it to Delicious, Stumbling or Digging it.

When I placed the final full stop on my last blog post reporting on the blocking of Facebook and Twitter by a Chinese regime intent on silencing dissent, I determined that, considering that this is not foremost a political blog, I would not be penning an article on a similar topic for some considerable length of time. What I failed to anticipate was that China's actions to block free speech would be repeated just days later by another repressive global regime, namely Iran.

In short, following Iranian elections last week and the suspect announcement of a landslide victory for the nuclear power sabre rattling, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, certain events took place which seemed to mirror those occurring in China. Firstly protesters against the validity of the government's announcement of victory for the ruling party were involved in violent clashes with police in the streets of Tehran and many were arrested. Then, it seems that social network portals such as Twitter and Facebook were mysteriously slowed or blocked, no doubt in an attempt to prevent spread of dissident sentiment and centralized organization of protest.

The website of the main political opponent Mir Hossein Mousavi who has claimed that Ahmadinejad's victory is fraudulent and that he is the true victor has also been shut down as have many university websites. I started writing this post at the weekend but decided to wait for further developments before posting. Since then there have been further multiple protests, the largest being of up to 2 million people in the Iranian streets. The media have been told that they cannot attend unauthorized protests and further police brutality with some fatalities has occurred.

There seems to be no dispute that the much of the dissent is emanating from the youth of this extraordinary nation, where historically human civilization is said to have begun around 4000 BC. It is also commonly accepted that it is social networking sites and other new technologies such as texting which have been instrumental in shaping youth perspective. Repressive, totalitarian regimes rely, for their continued existence, on mindless repetition of the party line which becomes embedded into mass unconsciousness as a form of psychological conditioning. In order to ensure the longevity of such regimes dissent must be crushed, so that those predisposed to free thinking do not upset the applecart and encourage others to begin to question the status quo.

In a world of new technology and social networking, the attempts of despots to isolate the masses from any messaging extraneous to the party line seems to have become, if not impossible, fraught with difficulty. The Youth of Iran have certainly found ways around the blocks and have been communicating avidly on blogs and social network sites, a phenomenon which, it seems, is driving the protests.

Euronews reports that, "More than 150,000 Iranians are members of the social networking site Facebook – and more than two-thirds of Iran’s population is less than 30 years old." It is a statistic that does not bode well for the current administration.

Next week a meeting of the Council of Guardians will take place in Iran, which will finally settle whether the current administration will set out to rule with an iron rod, make some concessions or fully concede (unlikely). Whatever the short term outcome the stage has been set, the people have spoken and the clock is surely ticking for this regime.

The truth is that oppressive regimes, such as the one in Iran are now are being forced to wake up and recognise that the rules of politcs have changed. In short, in recent times a technological phenomenon has emerged that has potential to craft new world order. It seems the establishment can only watch on helplessly as the most powerful social change catalyst of all, emotion, is at lightning speed and like contagion traversing the spider web constructed of hundreds of thousands of miles of fibre optic cable to ignite the mass fervour of youth worldwide. To be sure we are living in extraordinary times.

To support the Iranian protesters and help others gain the freedom we in the free world take for granted please read:-

Quick Guide To Twittering The Iran Revolution

 and change your Twitter icon to green (step 9)

Further reading - Twitter goes green for Iran

Sandra Charan

If you enjoyed this article and would like to become a regular reader please subscribe to the site feed (page top right)

PLUS If you like the post, Then appreciate it by submitting it to Delicious, Stumbling or Digging it.

 

As Google's Christopher Bodeen reports, China, in anticipation of the double decade anniversary of the pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square, where many protesters were killed, took steps to silence any possible further dissent from being expressed on social networking sites. As such, thousands of university associated sites were muzzled and YouTube, Twitter and many blogs were blocked.

Perhaps unexpectedly, China has embraced the internet, dispite its potential as a conduit for spread of dissent. In fact, the numbers of Chinese internet users, who tend to be the most educated members of the population are set to exceed those in the US before long. However, there is a stark difference in the central administration of the internet in China compared to that in other world countries. In China the internet is being used as a tool of police monitoring. John J. Tkacik, Jr of the Heritage foundation reports that, "China is said to have the largest prison population of “cyberd­issidents” in the world."

The impact of this typically chilling and tyrannical approach for Chinese citizens, as China crafts its place as a major player in the modern world seems clear to most Westerners watching on. What many have failed to recognise, however, is the potential danger for the rest of the world, if there fails to be a change in China's political homeguard,  as it emerges, over the next two decades to become the world's number one economic Superpower.

In the modern world, few will argue that money equates to political power on the world stage. Significantly, where this is concerned, whereas, over past decades the West has followed an economic debt accumulating strategy that has bought it economically to it's knees, China has been building up a massive war chest of national reserves. In fact, it is loans of  Chinese money which has, to a large extent, enabled potential recovery from the credit crunch in the West.

The world media, so far, have remained in, "Hush, hush," mode as far as this is concerned. It is an uncomfortable concept but it cannot be denied that aid comes at a price. Over time what will the pay back be and how much influence will the ideals of the current Chinese administration, assuming they remain in power, have on the rest of us, over the years that they begin to gain more and more leverage in the power game?

Of relevance, perhaps, is China's new involvement in Africa. For as a result of its voracious appetite for the minerals needed to furnish its massively increased manufacturing output, China appears to be buying up Africa. According to Paul Stothart,  "China is becoming an important catalyst to the growth of Africa a continent that offers untapped raw material supply and market demand potential." There are some advantages to the growing relationship for example, as Stothard states, "China has cancelled $10 billion in bilateral debt from African countries." However, as Sothard also explains, "Chinese teachers and doctors are flowing to Africa, while African civil servants and military personnel are being trained in China." For those with eyes to see, there can be no question that along with the aid and the training, a political and social ideology is also being exported and that this has major implications for world politics.

Last Thursday was the twentieth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacres. It passed quietly with little or no visible dissent from Chinese citizens. Over the days weeks and months ahead let us all do what we can to support those Chinese citizens brave enough to risk their lives and well being to stand up for the ideals of freedom, democracy and free speech that we take for granted in the West. Further, let us hope that one day hopefully in the not too distant future social networking sites become portals of free speech universally for all citizens across the globe.

It seems that all the MultiNationals are now exploiting social network marketing.

Here's a video link to a presentation explaining how Coca Cola is embracing the media

BlogWell New York Social Media Case Study: Coca-Cola, presented by Adam Brown from GasPedal on Vimeo.

Many have monetized their blogs with Adsense but few are aware that Clickbank now offers a similar service. ClickBank HopAd Builder features rotating ads which can be displayed on a website, like Adsense, by simply inserting code into a page.

The ClickBank account homepage prominently features a link to the Ad creator pages (see Figure 1, below)

                                            Figure 1

The main difference between the income stream from  ClickBank HopAd Builder and Adsense is that for the latter the advertiser is paid a fee which is usually a few cents per ad clicked on, whereas with the former the affiliate takes a commisssion which is usually several dollars for product sales which result directly from ad clicks on the affiliates website. In both cases the idea is that the ads and associated products are confined to a narrow niche which targets the site visitor precisely. 

In my opinion, one downside of the ClickBank HopAd Builder system, is that the associated search facility is desperately wanting. The idea is that the affiliate does an initial search for Clckbank products to sell which would appeal to their niche market. The system then automatically selects ads which are meant to represent this niche and displays a handful of rotating ads on the affiliate's blog or website.

The problem lies with the fact that, in my experience, the majority of ads end up being wildly unrelated to the niche in question. In my case, for this business website, in addition to a couple of suitable products, the search brought up ads for products related to social services and social advice and there was no option to exclude these ads from my webpage. However, in the Clickbank marketplace, used for selecting products individually and promoting them via links, when I used identical search terms, I found lots of products that were infinately more closely related to my chosen keywords. 

I searched for a feeedback or suggestions communicaton link on the clickbank website but could only find one for asking mostly set questions about how the system works. I used this to politely register my concerns with Clickbank, with the aim of helping them optimize their returns. I suggested that affiliates might be more predisposed to using the system if there was an option to select rotating ads manually themselves. That was nearly a week ago and, to date, I have received no acknowledgement. Yes, I guess ClickBank have made their millions over the years by selling us the dream of a clickbank super blog. Yet, now, in this age of social networking where the need to actively solicit participation in product development from customers is undisputed, it seems they are still in control and command mode. I'm thinking the time may be ripe for another outfit to clean up and give the publc what they want.

Sandra Charan

If you enjoyed this article and would like to become a regular reader please subscribe to the site feed (page top right)

PLUS If you like the post, Then appreciate it by submitting it to Delicious, Stumbling or Digging it.

I was interested to hear via Mashable that Wikepedia “has banned multiple IP addresses related to the Church of Scientology for extreme, one-sided editing in an attempt to remove Scientology criticism from the Web.”

This follows on from numerous bans by Facebook of both individuals and groups and even of campaigns. Of note here, as reported by TechDigest, was the banning of the Burger King ad campaign where the premise was that, "deleting ten friends would get you a voucher for a free whopper.”

The bans in all cases resulted from the offender crossing certains boundaries of morality, taste, decency or business etiquette, as set and defined by the social media portal concerned. Surely, few would argue that these boundaries should be clearly and textually defined, so that users can be in no doubt what is acceptable.

Ari Herzog suggests that government and Business, alike, follow IBM’s example of setting up, social computing guidelines. In IBM's case, the guidelines were written for employees, to specify how social networking sites might be accessed and used in the workplace, yet the need can also be argued for clear guidelines relating to the nature of blog and forum comments.

This blog is relatively new and I have taken Pro-bloggers advice not to open the comments section till it has matured, somewhat. Yet, already I have received some unsolicited comments, which are far off topic for example, spam links for Viagra and comments in foreign languages which are no doubt spam for similar products.

Free speech is to be encouraged but not when it is totally out of context (in which case it is usually spam) or when it transgresses others' rights. To be encouraged are comments which are on-topic and which question the blog content using intelligent, critical argument while quoting evidence or which add information valuable to readers. In such cases most moderators would welcome signature link-backs to closely related sites. However, when it comes to blog comment etiquette, comments which may be unacceptable may include:

• Those which are undisguised spam
• Those which use offensive language
• Those which contain racist, sexist or otherwise offensive material either textually or by implication
• Those in which the criticism is in the form of a personal attack rather than being a balanced critique of the issue in question based on intelligent argument (i.e.falling into the realms of bullying)
• Those in which copyright is infringed
• Those written in a language which is foreign to the blog or forum, which therefore cannot be moderated
• Those which seek to build their own brand by destroying another (e.g the Burger King/Facebook Campaign)

My moto is free speech with safeguards to avoid a free for all for those who seek to transgress the rights of others. However, moderators can hardly complain if they fail to issue guidelines to site users in the first place. In this regard, I certainly intend to draft guidelines relating to blog comment etiquette on this blog, as soon as the comments section is opened to the public, in the not too distant future.

Stay tuned.

Sandra Charan

If you enjoyed this article and would like to become a regular reader please subscribe to the site feed (page top right)

PLUS If you like the post, Then appreciate it by submitting it to Delicious, Stumbling or Digging it.

No doubt, few remain unaware of the recent, "social networking sites worm," that spread by, " by exploiting a cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability and infecting an unknown number of Twitter profiles." Perhaps, some may not be aware, however,  that, as Elinor Mills of CNET news reported, Facebook and Myspace members have also been victims of a worm, spread when members clicked on a video link in messages sent by friends. On logging onto the associated social network site, following such infection, malicious messages would then be sent to friends, so propogating the bug, chain letter style.

None can argue that the danger from such attacks is on the increase and that the risk is relatively potent. Brian Prince in Network Security and Hardware quotes from the Malware Evolution 2008 report that, "malicious code distributed via social networking sites has a success rate of 10 per cent in terms of infections, making it 10 times more potent than malware distributed via email. Here are 6 steps you can take to protect yourself, insuring that you do not become a victim of any new social networking sites worm that may arise.

1. Limit the JavaScript code executed from online sites or downloads to trusted sources only (in plain English don't install or download anything not from a trusted site)

2. Make sure that your anti-virus/security software e.g Norton is up to date and is scheduled to run frequently

3. Make sure that you keep up to date with Microsoft security patches

4. Turn off JavaScript in your browser temporarily if you suspect you may have an infection

5. Do not click on untrusted links from social networking sites

6. Reset your password immediately if spam has been sent from your account (Facebook security advice) but would apply to all social networking sites

Above all, don't let cyber-criminals spoil your experience of social networking. Just be appropriately vigilant and take the precaustions listed above. Happily, if we all do likewise, then those who presume to spoil it for the rest of us will not succeed.

Sandra Charan

If you enjoyed this article and would like to become a regular reader please subscribe to the site feed (page top right)

PLUS If you like the post, Then appreciate it by submitting it to Delicious, Stumbling or Digging it.