The state of now | Twitter in Tanzania | Love 2.0
By Ivo Vegter. Filed in sxswsa |Tags: 140conf, real-time internet, sxsw, sxswsa, Twitter
Jeff Pulver: We’re getting to a state of hyper-connectivity. You’ve learnt more about people you don’t care about than about your family and friends. All of the audience active on Twitter as we speak.
It was three years ago, at SxSW, the community discovered Twitter. For a few days this year, something strange happened. Twitter became less relevant to the community that made it happen. Foursquare and Gowalla took over the need to tweet where you are, where you’re not, where you need to be. Being able to see where your friends are changes the game.
It’s not that a connected group of people like cool new toys. Location based services are coming of age. For years, telcos and consumer device makers wanted people to use location-based services, and it’s always been a #fail. But now, when you can layer all this information together, location, mood, commentary, the ability to have real-time information where the gatekeepers are gone… Two earthquakes ago, it took 40 minutes between the first report on Twitter, and it appearing on news.google.com. Guess where you wanted to be if you’re into financial arbitrage? You can be ahead of the market by aggregating information from classified ads, for example. You can take advantage of the real-time web and take advantage of events before they are reported.
We had a conference when the Iran elections took place. It was weird to see people turn up wearing green. Nobody asked the Iranians to tweet their dissidence. It just happened, and connected people, and started conversations. There was real value in that.
What companies need to understand is that behind every tweet, there’s a person. When I was young, I used WA2POT as my social media handle, on amateur radio. That was a platform to reach out, and we were very active during emergencies to pass traffic. Recently in Haiti, ham radio did a great deal to help finding out what was happening, and coordinating early response. There was a Doctors Without Borders plane that had to land, and they needed to get hold of the US Air Force, so I retweeted Ann Curry’s call, and I got a response within a minute. Since when do you get an instance response from a government agency like that? An hour later, that plane was in Haiti. So, since the US Air Force is following me, I invited them to my next conference. Are they here? Yeah? Give them a round of applause. (Glad to help, says US Air Force guy from the back.)
This kind of stuff is game-changing. Forget the business models. It changes lives. I’ve met so many people with unique and amazing stories like that.
Twitter kids of Tanzania
Stacey Monk, Melissa Leon & AJ Leon. Got @mamalucy to tweet from Tanzania to tell her story, and build a school in her area. From eight kids, she now has 400 kids at the school.
@gideon_gidori is one of those kids. He tweets: @StaceyMonk Wow, that is great the whole world this is like a dream!!!!!
Stacey Monk, Melissa Leon, AJ Leon and Jeff Pulver discuss how Twitter is changing the lives of kids in Tanzania
@leah_albert is another one, asking people to share whatever they’re grateful for. If you respond, you can donate. If you donate, you get your Twitter handle added to the Thank You wall at the school. “This classroom was built by gratitude.” Amazing story, helping kids build their own schools.
@carren_martin i lost my mom when I was in 4th grade. ppl can’t make the hurt go away, but it will in time. — sent by someone who shared her experience.
Melissa Leon: We started with this social media curriculum in New York City. We realised they important thing was not to teach the kids to use Twitter, but to really understand what they were doing.
No comment required. Go ahead, tweet @glory_abraham.
The first experience of those kids in Arusha, Tanzania, was to get responses from kids in the United States. It blew them away. It changed their lives. The kids, for them to be able to speak and be heard and tell their story is just magical.
AJ Leon: It changes how they think about themselves and their place in the world. Mama Lucy created an oasis for these rural kids online. They get transported through conversations to the States, Europe — places they couldn’t dream of going physically.
Melissa: You really give kids an opportunity to share, and connect.
AJ Leon: There were kids who were shy, because they stuttered, and they turned to tweeting their questions in class to a live Twitterfall. There are people doing the same in India, the Phillipines. They’re using the technology not just to raise funds, but to amplify their voices. Even in the outskirts of Arusha, there’s internet access through Zain. It’s crappy, by our standards, but it works.
Audience guy: I grew up in Tanzania, and have been looking for a way to get back. This just gave me an idea how I can do that.
Nicole Kelly: Do you think those kids can use this and get opportunities to get out of their poverty?
Stacey: Every point of human connection is such an opportunity.
The kids have 12 laptops, and a local ISP account.
AJ Leon: Get involved. Tweet with them. They’ll do a lot more for you than you can do for them. [Twitter list to follow]
Love 2.0
Marlooz Veldhuizen. Dutch filmmaker and blogger. Here’s her blog. And here are more social media links.
I started tweeting three years ago. I’m @marlooz. I met this guy online, and he was kinda cute. So I asked him out. @gabemac was the lucky guy. We live-streamed our first date. He asked me out with a link on Google Maps. We were both geeks. Two hundred people watched our date. The whole idea was that it was an interactive date. They got to ask questions. I got to ask all these questions that I couldn’t have asked otherwise. One of my followers called the restaurant and told them to get us a drink. Then the restaurant told us we had to stop filming. Now nobody goes to the restaurant anymore. It’s a year later, and we’re not in a relationship, but we are roommates. There’s a sign in our room: anything you say and do can and will be used for entertainment. It was Twitter love. Sharing it with all our followers.
Another Love 2.0 story: I lost my laptop once. It was my baby. I couldn’t afford a new one. So I tweeted that I was freaking out. @idsedepree tweeted that if all my followers gave me a Euro, I could buy a new one. Michiel Berger started the hashtag #dontloozeit. And people all over started donating, and in 8 hours, they’d raised €1800. I cried harder that people thought I should have a new laptop so I could carry on tweeting, than for losing my old laptop.
I’m going to go on another Twitter date. I auctioned myself for a Haiti charity. I am worth $200. I’ll live-stream this one too.
Other #140conf notes
Celebrities on Twitter. One challenge is what Pulver calls “fourstalking”. Location-based services have implications that digital producers have to grapple with. (This doesn’t go only for celebrities, of course. It’s a serious issue.)
Thursday, March 18th 2010 at 05:00 |
Thanks for the shout out, bro!
AJ