Invisible Children – Social Media Event

OK.  This Invisible Children is by far the biggest international social media *thing* *event* *thread* *dialog* I’ve seen.  I don’t actually have the time or the knowledge to do it justice.  But here’s what I’ve seen.

It is now the evening of March 8, but it all just started yesterday….

I pay attention to a handful of blogs and follow threads that pique my interest.  And so, somehow the Invisible Children/Kony 1012 initiative came on to my radar on the evening of Weds March 7th.  Was probably via twitter, but I can’t recall….

I could not get access to the video for a couple of hours (I assume the video serving site was very busy as this thing went viral), but eventually watched the 30 minute video and thought that it was excellently produced and the message was very clear.

I, like many many many others worldwide propagated the Kony 2012 meme – I posted a supportive message on Facebook.

Then, almost as fast as the #kony2012 meme spread, an anti meme spread – “Invisible Children is a rip off”, “Kony’s not a threat anymore”, “there’s much more important things to focus on”….

The traditional media, newspapers, radio are now covering the story.

And the story continues.  Now it’s up to you and me to figure out where it goes and what effects it will have.  There’s a whole new world of social media now.  Information can spread like wildfire and it is becoming more difficult to tell the real from the unreal.

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