Youngblood5 – 5FM digitises for Youth Day
If you get social media and networking right like Facebook has, you’ve got the most incredible data and research groups at your finger tips. Particularly the opinions of the youth who have flocked to Facebook and share their thoughts, lives, preferences, photos and opinions with the world and their friend. A Marketing exec’s dream database. According to the Uk Guardian, the number of British subscribers of Facebook has ballooned in recent months to 3.5 million registered users. A few weeks ago there were apparently only 40 000 Facebook users from South Africa, today there are nearly 90 000 and counting. Just in time for youth day, 5FM have launched an opinion-based site called Youngblood5, looking for youth-based insights and giving the youth a chance to “stand up and be counted” in cyberspace by bringing their issues to life and building a community around what worries them. We wish them luck and we’ll be interested to see if they have the same potential and growth as Facebook: Now is the time for our youth to spread the word… To share your views on everything and anything, your passions, what you like, what gets your motor running and more with like-minded peeps everywhere! In the spirit of Youth Month, 5FM is launching Youngblood – a revolutionary, interactive cyberspace portal (similar to the FaceBook and MySpace online concepts) developed for listeners to document what social, political, domestic, national, global and other issues of concern they are passionate about. Whether listeners prefer to start a blog, podcast their issue or simply just entering the website’s forum via e-mail, it’s up to each one to decide how they want their thoughts to be headlined. Youngblood 5 gives everyone the opportunity to “stand up & be counted”. Issues & concerns submitted via the website will be discussed on-air during June – leading up to Youth Day (16 June) and beyond. The campaign will culminate in an event after the end of June, where 5FM will try to obtain answers & possible solutions for the youth of SA from the “powers that be”. Go to http://www.youngblood5.co.za/ now, register and have your say! Watch this space for regular...
Twitter – is this the beginning of the TMI end?
So you’re totally hooked on Facebook and keep updating your status so EVERYONE knows you had a fight with your boss. You’re still being nagged to join Bebo, your MySpace has been neglected, your Skype phone keeps ringing, Flixster keeps sending you irritating reminder emails. Now your sms beep is getting really annoying and you leave your phone on silent as much as possible, you haven’t cleaned out your inbox in a month, procrastination is becoming a scary enemy, your rss feed is unread, you haven’t visited your favourite site in ages. Sound Familiar? Still want more? Meet Twitter, the beginning of the end of TMI – too much information. The clutter of the information superhighway looms all around you. It’s really simple, Twitter asks one question only: “What are you doing” and your job is to tell everyone (well your friends and anyone else interested in your woolies take away sandwich lunch) exactly what that is. Now I know at first I was reluctant to update my Facebook status too often for fear of pushing my boring life onto all my poor Facebook friends – however, getting their updates was really comforting and somehow has brought me closer to so many people who I just don’t seem to have time to catch up with in the ‘real world.’ Now I know that A loves cooking, P is a real joker, K and I think similarly and S is as skeptical as ever… I also know that G keeps bunking work 😉 So now I don’t mind letting them know what I’m up to and I keep checking to see what they’re doing. As sick as it sounds, I feel closer to my people than ever. Which leads us to Twitter. It takes that ‘status’ updating notion and formalises it into constant status updating via your computer or cell phone. So you tell people all day exactly what you’re up to. Mhhhm… sounds a bit big brother non? Twitter is sweeping through the States and the UK much like Facebook is sweeping us up right now and people are using it for all kinds of weird reasons. We’ve just signed up so we can see if it works in SA and if it truly is the beginning of our TMI breakdown and information overkill. We’ll let you know. Wonder if we could find a better use for it like a crime-fighting initiative? Anyone else know more about it? The Wall Street journal explains in simple terms: Twitter allows members to use their computers or cellphones to distribute short messages on what they’re doing. Each message is limited to 140 characters, but there are no limits on how many messages...
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