How much Klout do you have?
Is there a way to measure your influence on social media sites? People have forever been confused about what exactly makes one important online and where they rank. Is it traffic or engagement? What is the actual standard for success online? In September 2009, a small San Francisco-based start up with 40 employees stated that they had the answer to all of this. Their answer was Klout. Klout essentially claims to be the standard of gauging how much influence a person has in the world of social media by aggregating their Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and other footprints to come up with a score for influence. Yes, there are tons of social ...
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Why the Twitter ban is serious
Two years ago, a ban on Facebook was enforced in Pakistan. Yesterday, Twitter was blocked by the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority. Do you see a pattern here? The reason for this ban – which was lifted within a day by Prime Minister Gilani was that it was against the ‘promotion and encouragement to participate in blasphemous contests’ through Twitter. Here’s my first argument: if such contests are being held by some people around the world, how exactly will Pakistan’s suspension of Twitter stop the practice? How does barring people from any site accomplish anything, leave alone the discontinuation of the allegedly ‘offensive’ content? Coming to my ...
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We were always obsessed with Aishwarya’s weight
Ever since Aishwarya Rai-Bachan appeared in public having retained some of her pregnancy weight, the internet has been ablaze with unflattering and intrusive comments for the actress: Fit babe to fat aunty. Hot chick to mother hen. Beti-B flab. Aishwarya shocks us with her double chin. These are just some of the remarks floating around about the former Miss World. The web is inundated with such news about the extra pounds this glamour goddess has put on. For a quick preview of the sort of thing circulating on the web, watch the video below: Amongst all this criticism, ...
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Who tops Pakistan news on social media?
The need to be ‘social’ online is shaping up to be a new rat race for clicks, comments and user engagement among local news media outlets. With an estimated 20 million Pakistanis online and over six million on Facebook, the ability to convert these numbers into tangible, easy-to-measure consumers of news content is, even at this early stage, a new measure of success. Currently media groups are focused on growth and expansion of their user bases (via their sites or social media channels), experimenting with forms of content and content sharing mechanisms and for some, the first phases of trying to ...
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Why announce a bounty on Hafiz Saeed?
Why now? At a critical moment in the US-Pakistan relationship, with parliamentary debate raging in Pakistan about how to realign relations with Washington, and with the United States desperate to forge some level of cooperation with Islamabad to help move toward the elusive endgame in Afghanistan, why announce a bounty for “information leading to the arrest or conviction” of living-openly-in-Lahore Hafiz Saeed? This is, after all, a man Washington and New Delhi regard as a terrorist, yet whom many in Pakistan regard as a heroic symbol of defiance toward the United States, an essential strategic asset, or both. In short, Washington’s ...
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How to live-tweet a wedding
Twitter has enabled news to be transmitted within mere seconds. Now, ordinary people are able to take part in the way information travels and even add their opinion to it. Recently, many have started using this platform to describe an event with a constant flow of tweets. This practice is known as “live-tweeting.“ The phenomenon of live-tweeting was popularised during the Arab Spring. Since then, we have seen many an incident being live-tweeted. Whether it is the Osama bin Laden operation, Whitney Houston’s funeral, or even an abortion, live-tweeting is the new fad. So perfected is this practice that there even exist many guidelines on how ...
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Breaking News: Afridi can slap
The breaking news logo in red flashed across the screen and the news anchor continued to exaggerate the half-baked story for a good 10 minutes in a shrill, breathless manner. Autograph mangnay walay paristaron per chokkon, chakkon, dhakkon aur thapparon ki baarish (Fours, sixes, pushes and slaps raining on autograph-seeking fans) Shahid Afridi ki Karachi airport per maar dhaar se bharpur century. (Shahid Afridi whacks a fan completing a century with a bang) Shahid Afridi jazbaat per qabu na rakh sakay, maddahon ki dhunayi kardi! (Shahid Afridi loses control over emotions, bashes fans) Shahid Afridi kay shaeqeen ko dhakkay aur thappar! (Shahid Afridi’s pushes and slaps for his fans) As usual, all our ...
Read Full PostUse or abuse: How far will social media activism go?
On 26 February 2012, an unarmed African American teenager Trayvon Martin was shot in the chest by George Zimmerman. Minutes before the shooting Zimmerman called 911 and allegedly said – as has been proved by the release of dispatch tapes – that Trayvon “looked suspicious.” He claimed self defense and no charges were filed, however when police arrived on the scene all they found with Trayvon was a can of iced tea and a bag of candy. This incident did not explode on mainstream American media for a while. But the uproar was loud and clear on social media platforms. It became big on Twitter, Facebook ...
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Outlandish Kamran Shahid
I’ll be honest; I don’t like Kamran Shahid one bit. He’s brash, uncouth and thoroughly ungentlemanly; and if I were a woman, I’d make a deal with the devil before allowing myself to be found within a 100 meter radius of the guy who conducts a “serious” journalistic talk-show with his chest hair on display like it’s still the 70s. Seriously. A man who seems to have made it his “purpose” to make women cry on cable television is not the kind of man I was brought up to respect. I’m positively tickled by the fact that of all the people ...
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Who is watching the social media wardens?
The recent issue of Maya Khan vigilantism and the subsequent uproar that ensued in the social media, resulting in the termination of the said anchor and her team, has brought to fore a number of questions. Whereas I wholeheartedly ascribe to the widely held opinion that this is a major victory for the liberal coterie which is otherwise known for keyboard ‘jihad’ alone, I have my contentions. Let’s not put down the entire thing to a liberal win. The impact of the social media’s protest over this issue, in particular, was hugely galvanised because it struck a chord with a vast ...
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