Youtube Celebreties: A new era in Public Relations

On the 6th of April 2006, some one posted a video on Youtube called the Evolution of Dance, the video has been the most watched clip on youtube since then with over 111,773, 585 views to date. The answer to why this video won so much views is simple: it uses humor and it speaks to all languages and all ages. No matter how old you are or what nation you are from, there is no way you wouldn't love the video.

The guy who did the video became very popular, a company approached him and obviously paid him to make another video (you can see this clearly on this link). The second part of Evolution of Dance was uploaded on youtube on 9th of January and since then it has almost 3 million views! Now there is a whole competition called PopleJam dedicated for this video, with sponsors and all! There is a full Marketing/PR/Advertising campaign utilizing the fame of the video.

(more information on these websites: http://www.ibeatyou.com/eod2 and http://www.peoplejam.com/eod/)

Hats off to whoevever's idea was is to utilize a Youtube or digital media celebrity for marketing purposes. I think it's unprecedented. Are we witnessing here a new age of PR? Who is next? The Obama Girl?

Enjoy the videos!

Twitter, Should I use it?

When I started using Facebook around 2 years ago, I thought I will never be using any other social networking site. 3 days ago, I created a Twitter account, and since then I can't seem to get off it.

For those of you who don't know Twitter , it's a simple service that allows you to tell people what exactly you are doing (watch this video). I'm sure you are familiar with Facebook's status updates; Twitter is simply status updates. Nothing more, nothing less. You would now think why should you use Twitter if you already are happy with Facebook, the answer is in my opinion: You use Facebook to communicate with friends and family but you use Twitter to communicate with the world. With Twitter, you don't "add friends", you "follow" people. With Twitter, people don't "add" you, they "follow you". There are celebrities on Twitter now happily telling the world about what they do. I know Britney Spears has a twitter account although I don't think she is the one updating her status, but again, it's simply her allowing the world to follow her digitally. Al Jazeera, CNN, Cnet and many more are also tweeting, of course they use it to communicate breaking news.

Twitter is really cool. No photo albums, no walls, no games, all you have to do is get on it and answer one question: "what are you doing". You can update your Twitter from your mobile phone without getting online, just by sending an SMS to your account (that's how celebrities are tweeting!).

The service is also full of Apps that you can add to make the experience better, but I don't really think at this stage I'm going to use them.

I would like to note though that the service is not as user friendly as Facebook should you decide to starting adding apps to it, also expect to run into technical problems every now and then when using it.

Here is a list of celebrities using Twitter. Give it a try, it's really cool! I'm using it mostly to communicate to my followers work related thoughts. (I have 50 followers so far, most of them are people from other branches of the company I work for). There is a tool that moves your updates from your Twitter account to your Facebook (as a status update). I now feel that I'm in perfect digital balance: I use Facebook to catch up with friends and people I know, I use blogger to write blogs and hope some one is reading them, and I use twitter to tell the world things I wouldn't mind sharing with people.

STOP IT, I was told ...

Since the Massacre started in Gaza, I with billions of other people around the world have been in excruciating pain watching what the Israeli terrorists have been doing. Unable to control my self, I was trying to do what I can; sharing with the world what's happening, posting news stories and pictures, dedicating Facebook statuses (how great) and forwarding all sort of digital content to friends and family, and people who don't know the truth.

Today I forwarded a story to some one, the story about expelling the Israeli ambassodor from Venzuela and the reply I got was "STOP IT". I was very hurt, why am I being asked to stop? stop what? stop living what's happening? stop feeling for others? stop getting affected by brutality? stop feeling responsible? stop spreading drama to people who really can't be arsed? I really don't know. Some people don't feel it when others get hurt. Some people are just so attached to life, they forget one day they are going to die. Some people forget that just because they are well, it doesn't mean it's going to last. I think my friend doesn't know that while he is sipping on some wine, I'm watching the news and not crying, but weeping, wishing to God I can get into Israel without weapons just to give my life away in exchange for the life of a little kid, a mother or an old man.