What makes the situation in Cairo so interesting is the number of media outlets that you can use as sources. From 24 hour news channels like France 24, Al Jazeera, BBC World and others to individual people with mobile phones. For France 24 you have three languages to chose from, with Al Jazeera to you have three languages to chose from. With Sky News you have the choice between Standard definition and High definition.
Remember Jaiku? it’s that site that was compared to twitter and behaved like friendfeed before friendfeed existed. Over the last two days activity has increased on that site as at least twenty people go back to communicating on the site. It’s a throw back to a community that had been quite lively. Online communities are funny in the way they cluster back to a place where they used to be. It’s like a migration but of an electronic kind.
We’ve all got smartphones. Some of us are using Nokia, Â others are using blackberries and yet more are using Android and Iphones. As a result when we interact with people we are not interacting with them from a desk somewhere in a building. We’re interacting with them from the middle of the street or on public transport. As the shift from computers to mobile devices gains momentum we will be meeting more and more people this way.
This video filmed with the HDR-SR12 in Geneva Switzerland at La Reserve wine bar. The event was organised via facebook.
I’m sitting on the balcony with a view of the Lac Leman (lake geneva) after a good evening spent with many of the Francofous, French seesmicers. More videos will appear over the length of the day.
Corvida - May 2, 2008
I can definitely sympathize. Even though I’m in the US, the city that I stay in is pretty non-technological, let alone social. Getting people to use social networks is a tough thing. Even though they have their benefits, it’s not for everyone and everyone isn’t particularly fascinated with the web in the same way that we are unfortunately.
As a student it was not unusual for me to spend no more than six hours a day at home. The rest of the time I was out socialising, whether helping post grads with their work or with those from my studies. As a result of this I started to pay attention to many of the social networks. It had shifted from Facebook where all my real life friends could be found to more abstract social networks such as twitter, jaiku and others.
Laura Whitehead - Apr 1, 2008
Nicely summed up Richard!
Twitter is not a social network, rather it’s a way of life. The more you use Twitter the further it gets into your way of life. It allows you to follow current affairs, geek out about social media and keep in touch with friends that uses the social network. What’s more it’s a network that does not require any specific device. At first it’s a confusing place. Look at the public timeline and it’s a torrent of junk and sifting through it will take hours a day.
I found yet another toy to play with in the form of alerthingy and one question springs to mind. Will this one be able to cope with my stream of actions. It’s an adobe air interface that allows you to keep track of friendfeed. I’ve only started playing with it but it looks like a useful tool for when i’m at home after a day’s work.