hashtags

Voices and Northern Girls – Bookreads

Last August I read online the excerpt here below of Let 100 Voices Speak. The title and content focus on how social media flourished and has taken China by storm. Also, the various correlations the writer points out between the past and present e.g. on movement, dissidents, targeting of influential intellectuals.

Coincidentally today’s news in The Telegraph brought these premises to the foreground with the headline: “Chinese human right lawyer stands trial for social media posts in China.” 

Internet censorship in China is extreme, authors and publishers are under pressure appeared as a headline news article in the Guardian just a month ago. Novelist Sheng KeYi had written a best-selling breakthrough novel over a decade ago, but while preparing the third edition she was informed that parts of her texts were not publishable.

In her book “Northern Girls” she writes about the problems of society: the “injustice, the inequality, and the darkness”. The author tells the story of Poor Chinese Women to critical acclaim, review by The New York Times.

Let 100 Voices Speak, on “The Darkness”, Liz Carter answers to a question whether she was active on China’s social media as an outsider looking in and what spiked her interest.

LC: It’s hard to pick just one thing, but I love Chinese Internet humor. It’s so complex, and references a lot of shared knowledge, and it can be very, very dark. Humor is under-appreciated as a form of protest and resistance, especially humor in China. Part of this is because humor is so hard to translate.

Let 100 Voices Speak: How the Internet Is Transforming China and Changing Everything Paperback – August 30, 2015

By author Liz Carter, she is the author and translator of numerous Chinese-language textbooks and the co-author of The Grass-Mud Horse Lexicon.

Article by Natalie Omell originally posted on China Digital times – Highlights excerpt here below or read the full article click here.

Book "Letting 100 Voices Speak"

Live feed on my screen flashing the latest internet headlines blurbs of today. Focusing on China, real life time changes in the face of censorship and the visible pressure clamping down on social media. The information reminded me of having read the book excerpt earlier and seeing the correspondence in real life occurrences.

For me, what comes to mind are keywords as in hashtags; #social media, #China, #transformation, #lifestyle, #femalewriters #newwriting #information not readily available, the more reason to learn more about.

Voices and Northern Girls

Recommend to read both books;

Let 100 Voices Speak by Liz Carter

Let 100 Voices Speak – Liz Carter

  • Northern Girls; Life goes on. Best-selling Chinese novel one of the few translated Chinese fiction books in English. Words are written in raw candour showing a slice of life, the harsh reality where little town village girls are leaving home for the bigger cities to be drawn into the depravity of a seedy cesspool. Hidden dangers nobody wants to see or talk about.
Northern Girls, Live goes on by Sheng Keyi

Northern Girls, Live goes on by Sheng Keyi

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Photo credits “Let 100 Voices Speak” featured image source: www.cityweekend.com.cn

World cup 2014 social media frenzy

The World Cup, which kicked off last Thursday, is expected to be the most social media-intensive event in history. Prior to the world’s soccer event the phrase “World Cup” has outpaced other big sporting events in social media mentions. The term ‘World Cup’ is averaging 500,000 mentions per day.

Worldwide, this year’s World Cup will surpass the Super Bowl and Olympics in total social mentions, according to a study by Adobe Systems. The phrase “World Cup” alone generated 19 million social mentions since June 2013 so far in 196 countries, scoring wider reach than the Super Bowl or Olympics.

Soccer fans, here is a great app Football World Cup Brasil 2014 Center – Brazil Soccer News Schedule Scores and Much More it shows team standings and qualifiers for the World Cup. A free app in order to make use or to be eligible you might have to change your country settings (for both Kindle and Android devices).

Watching FIFA World Cup 2014 soccer games before, during and after tweets @FIFA.com using official hashtags #worldcup #brasil2014 #worldcup2014 #cm2014 #brazil2014 and other popular Instagram, Facebook hashtags #copa2014 #fifaworldcup #wc2014 #fifa2014 #wm2014

Twitter has provided lists of every team’s official Twitter account, for the true die-hard’s here’s a how-to follow guide for World Cup fans and hashflags! 

Twitter-Reintroduces-Hashflags-for-2014-Brazil-World-Cup

Source credit tweet hashflags: http://behrouz.jafarnezhad.com/

Social media it really gets me thirsty for….. just click on the bold link for this thirst quenching recipe.

Pineapple Mojito

 

Pineapple Mojito 4

Preparing for one…..it turned into a whole jug.

 

Monday Mail

MondayMail

Finally behind my desk and working my way through electronic Monday mail, social media platforms updates and other reads. In general I like my first mails, articles to be positive affirmation with follow through’s; focused to create where I can give my best and support collaborative networking.

The opposite occurred over the weekend where I supposed to read for relaxation and entertainment, instead totally got annoyed over stupid newspaper front page news. For the umpteenth time the story information was taken out of context and bashed by even more ignorant comments on social media platform.

Normally I wouldn’t give it a second thought, but reading through the comments it suddenly hit me how terrible ignorant people are willingly “not caring”; self-serving egoistical based on a form of entitlement of knowledge as long as it serves and fits their purposes. I don’t want to recall or spill another word, however I did realize in hindsight that it is a slow build-up of annoyance as micro-aggression towards unethical written journalism and Sales Marketing campaigns.

The best selling ad campaigns are all about creating and selling illusions, whether its based on truth, half-truth or fiction all dangerously based on emotions and greed. To entice and seduce consumers buying products they actually do not need or dressing up trying to alter personalities in make believe. Marketing teams, developers and their clients being large enterprises and companies are ruthless when it comes to corrupting the good in worship for money and fame. Manipulations of facts, numbers, colors, emotions, buying of authoritative voices, photo-shopping people and objects everything goes, not a moments thought to preserve innocence. Even if their would be a slight inclination to preserve innocence, no heroes around to protect. A fleeting moment because mankind will try to earn big bucks on that too, corrupt to the core.

The Internet carries an extensive range of information resources and services and when powerful words and/or sources should be interred suddenly internet is holy, but it is a big trap of truth, non-truths and lies. Information carried by renowned authors and scammers galore, as in life you have to sieve and weed through the information to get through the right answer(s), often not correct but with leads to move your search further. Whether your searching on-line or in daily life, we need to have an inquisitive mind and a healthy dose of common sense.

Week in Hashtags, reveries of an inquisitive mind, a poem by Shakespeare for this #mondaymail

“How happy some o’er other some can be!….
Love looks not with the eyes but with the mind.
And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.
Nor hath Love’s mind of any judgment taste—

Wings and no eyes figure unheedy haste.
And therefore is Love said to be a child,
Because in choice he is so oft beguiled.
As waggish boys in game themselves forswear,
So the boy Love is perjured everywhere.”

#hashtag Let’s do it #rightnow

 

What are hashtags?

According to Urban DictionaryIf you have been on Twitter, you may have seen a “hashtag.” To put it simply, a hashtag is simply a way for people to search for tweets that have a common topic and to begin a conversation. For example, if you search on #LOST (or #Lost or #lost because it’s not case-sensitive), you’ll get a list of tweets related to the TV show. What you won’t get are tweets that say “I lost my wallet yesterday” because “lost” isn’t preceded by the hashtag.

hash tag is a word or grouped (an unspaced) phrase prefixed with the hash symbol (“#“). These tagged words, phrases are used on social media platforms (Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Instagram) for social networking and appear in sentences or messages as e.g. @Asianfoodtrail #Live #Travel #Food #andmuchmore).

Using the hashtag

Use this symbol “#” makes it easier to filter out messages with the same topic on one specific medium, it does not interchange with other platforms nor does it links to graphics. It is, however, a fun and effective way to highlight topics of daily events and news, aggregating and creating conversations. On Instagram platform it is an absolute must to use #hashtags with a maximum of 30#tags, believe it on average they receive => 3 times as many likes compared to users who only use a few tags instead. Thus proving a very strong correlation between tags and likes.

As a rule of thumb, always search for the “hashtag” you plan on using before you ever use it. You do NOT want to be confronted with a social media disaster to be made painfully aware that a hashtag is hijacked or harmful. Above all avoid overusing the “#” in all your social media messages as made very clear in the video of Tonight Show “#Hashtag” episode with Jimmy Fallon & Justin Timberlake.

#hashtag correctly

Achieve better results with social media by following hashtag etiquette, Hashtags.org has published an overview titled “Etiquette” with a summary of how-to articles explaining hashtags and use in social networking and platforms. Andrew Harasewych owner of Socialize Me has written a “Hashtag how-to guide with infographics“, how to simply remember this guide, be prepared, and #hashtag with confidence. #HaveFun 🙂

Share the #hashtag love
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