Rick Astley isn't dead (unofficial)

255762 — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 08:25:00 GMT

Reports circling this morning saying that Rick Asltey, the king of Rickrolling, has died, are apparently fake. Thank the gods of Rickroll. Oh the perils of user generated content.

The reports first appeared on the CNN's user generated content website CNNi, before generating a few news reports. Including this one on the Maylasia Star that claimed he had died in his hotel in Berlin.

1980s pop icon Rick Astley, 43, found dead in Berlin hotel room
Malaysia Star - ‎1 hour ago‎
BERLIN: Known for his 1980s pop hit Never Gonna Give You Up, 43-year-old Rick Astley has been pronounced dead Tuesday. His body was found at the Angleterre Hotel...

The CNNi iReport said an ambulance responded to an emergency and Astley was found unconscious in his hotel bedroom and was unable to be resuscitated. He was pronounced dead on the scene.

There were also reports on this Indian website Ihatky.In, but oddly nowhere else.The Inquisitor and Twitter is emphatic and Twitter is awash with talk of another fake celebrity death. Rick Astley is the number one trending topic on Twitter outstripping even Michael Jackson for which I think people are thankful for.

The Inquistor says that unlike previous fake celebrity deaths, the use of CNN’s iReport gives this a little more legitimacy up front, at least if you don’t know how iReport works.

The site wrote: "iReport is open to all submissions without pre-publication review: I could submit a story saying Rick Astley is dead at the hands of an advanced civilization of alien music lovers and it would be published until such time CNN pulled it it. Rick Astley is not dead, Rick Astley has not died, Rick Astley was not attacked by aliens either."

Rick rolls on. Quite literally. Next.

Follow me on Twitter

Social media and the Iranian election

255762 — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 10:07:00 GMT

On Wired.com, Andrew Exum is wondering all about Iran and the explosive use of social media to organise, agitate and protest in Iran. He's wondering how real it all is? And if it is the technological enabled few rather than the digitally deprived masses.

He wrote: "Are we simply finding common cause with a technologically-assisted minority and confusing it for a popular movement? One observer of the Moldova protests noticed the way in which we Westerners get fascinated by 'Twitter revolutions' because, hey! We use Twitter too!"

The Wired piece quotes others who are not convinced, but from the pictures it looks bigger than the technological few. The few might have Twitter accounts, but they are it seems being used to organise and bring others together in massive protests.

There is so much going on and a lot of summaries are already around, but here's some of the multitude of links and posts that are coming out of the protests.

#IranElection is the top search term on Twitter which is being used by Iranians to co-ordinate protests and post photos and messages in the wake of the presidential election on Friday.

The opposition reformist candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi is using updates via Twitter and is using it to rally his supporters. One message on Mousavi1388 asks: "Confirmed by BBC Persian, please tell everyone to join them: Mousavi, Karoubi & Khatami will be at the protest. #IranElection"

When it appeared that Twitter was about to shut down for 90 minutes downtime tonight for maintenance, Twitter decided to reschedule the maintenance so the protests could go on.

Mousavi's Twitter feed also made a direct appeal to Twitter: "@twitter Twitter is currently our ONLY way to communicate overnight news in Iran, PLEASE do not take it down. #IranElection"

Yesterday @Mousavi1388 had 7,000 followers on that particular Twitter feed and today it has nearer 10,000. Another Twitter feed @StopAhmadi has more than 7,000 followers. A third feed, @Persiankiwi, has more than 18,000 followers.

The Twitter feed is being used as an unofficial media channel and one that is becoming indispensible for journalists covering the post election story. A tweet this morning, says: "URGNT@ ALL jornlsts, Tday 15:30 Prss Conf. in Tehran, Sadr MotrWay, Kave Shomali Blvd, Roshanayi St, Bahar Shomali St. Num. 9 #IranElection".

Mousavi's Facebook page has more than 53,000 supporters and many Facebook members have posted video while others are trying to persuade fellow Facebook users to change their personal icons to the colour green to show support for the Iranian opposition.

Users on Twitter are also trying to persuade fellow tweeters to change their location to Tehran to make it harder for agents of the interior ministry to track down protesting Iranians.

Blogs are also playing a major role. Iran has always had a large community of bloggers, not least because the number of young people in the country, and many are writing about the protests and like photoblog Tehranlive.org are posting photo updates hourly.

Others are posting images to Flickr and Google's Picasa and making the albums freely available on the web with hundreds of videos being uploaded to YouTube.

A real time feed of images being posted from Iran can be found on PicFog and Twitter users are using the likes of Twitpic to upload their images.

The increasing array of Twitter apps are all playing their role in the protests. Twitter search engine Twazzup is tracking all things Iran-related on Twitter.

Saeed Valadbaygi's 'Revolutionary Road' is one that provides a good source for pulling various coverage of the protests together.

As well as Iranian bloggers international news organisations, including the BBC, which with its Persian service has become a focus for Iranians and widely praised although it was being jammed intermittently over the weekend, and blogs like the Huffington Post, The Atlantic's Andrew Sullivan's blog and the New York Times' The Lede blog are covering the aftermath of the elections in detail.

Others such as the National Iranian American Council is live blogging events blog aggregation site Global Voices has a special section and is translating reports from the Iranian blogosphere.

CNN has not had a good protest. It has come in for some heavy criticism for failing to focus on Iran in depth and thousands used the label CNNfail on Twitter to vent their frustrations. Since then CNN has since ramped up its coverage, but it could be too little too late.

Follow me on Twitter

Search results matching tag 'CNNfail'

Rick Astley isn't dead (unofficial)

Social media and the Iranian election