Delivering the Crunch in Pakistan Technology
Why I’m not a fan of the Go Green campaign anymore
If you’re from Pakistan and a Twitter user, you probably know by now of the Go Green (Facebook group here) campaign which is an initiative of Farhan Masood to show love and unity for our country. While, the idea behind the campaign is excellent, a lot of publicity is being generated on blogs and even TV, some elements are actually trying to change the outcome.
A lot of Pakistani Twitter users have prepared lots and lots of fake ids for 14th August as well as created many automated Twitter bots to create RT’s of tweets with specific hashtags in them. So, if you’ll tweet about #Pakistan or #GoGreen, those tweets will be automatically RT’d many, many times. Those Twitter users claim this will help in getting Pakistan as a trending topic on Twitter.
While, I’m all up for a green display picture and tweeting about our independence day, but abusing ( read: spamming ) Twitter to get into the trending topics and trying to show the world that we love our country, as one Twitter user said it, through spamming, isn’t my idea of loving the country. If we want to show the world we’re a good nation and that the negative attitude against us in the world isn’t nice or correct, we have to do something good for that, and spamming is NOT good.
As I said on Twitter:
The world doesn’t care about your love for your country, they care about what you do for it.
But if we want the world to know we’re a bunch of collective and united spammers utilizing wrong tactics to get Pakistan in the trending topics on Twitter, than that’ll be really obvious to them. It’s not something that would help our reputation.
There are many more ways to get your country noticed on the world map other than spamming. For me, having a green display picture and simply tweeting about it is enough.
I know really well that a lot of people are narrow minded and have issues on what I think about the spamming being planned for 14th. I won’t name the spammers here as some of them are my own friends. They are actually proud that they’ll be spamming. Really makes me go WTF? in anger.
Please make sure that getting Pakistan in the trending topics is well deserved and a display of unity and positive attitude and not a result of automated bots for spamming and fake Twitter ids. I, for one, don’t want my country to be know for such acts. That won’t make me proud.
Show your love, change your avatars to green. But please do not spam. Getting on the trending topics isn’t the end of the world that anyone should spam to get there.
Flaming in comments will not be tolerated as usual.
| Print article | This entry was posted by Imran Hussain on August 4, 2009 at 10:38 am, and is filed under Other. Follow any responses to this post through RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site. |
Dine Up with Social Media Experts
about 9 months ago - 1 comment
CIO Pakistan is hosting the first Dine Up ever with Social Media Experts in Pakistan on the 9th of December, 2009. This is the third even by CIO Pakistan and Google for bloggers and tweeters in the country. The special thing about this event will be the appearance of Sania Saeed who will share her
Yahoo wants you to reach Females and Adults
about 1 year ago - 11 comments
Did you know Yahoo is the most visited website in Pakistan? Did you know you could reach 1,146,963 Females from Pakistan using Yahoo? Did you know you could reach 1,176,162 Adults from Pakistan using Yahoo? It’s funny how Yahoo chose to make The Generation Next, Females and Adults the highlighted words. Specially, Females being at
PTCL’s fail advertisements at ITCN to convince people to use Smart TV
about 1 year ago - 3 comments
I was at ITCN 2009 today with Umair Khan Jadoon in Karachi, and we couldn’t help but take pictures of these advertisements that PTCL had put around their stall. Each of them had a different ‘witty’ line ( if you may ) to convince people to use Smart TV. Now personally, having seen the demo
No-Piracy time for Pakistan
about 1 year ago - 34 comments
Yesterday, I went to Galaxy Computers (that’s my trusted computer shopping spot) to buy USB headphones. I took my notebook with me to make sure that they work with it. While talking to the Galaxy guy, I told him I want to check those, he said “yes you can”. I pulled out my notebook out
Fishy things to know if you are a PTCL broadband customer
about 1 year ago - 12 comments
I have been using PTCL Broadband from past 3 month, and had several strange experiences like non-transaction of paid bills, holding phone for about 56 minutes to talk to senior technical support, feeling stupid when internet isn’t working, imaginarily beating the beast who is responsible for my internet downtime and dreaming about tooth fairies when
Why Pakistan Needs Cloud Computing
about 1 year ago - 8 comments
Cloud computing is one of the most heard buzz word nowadays in Web 2.0. Many people believe that it is just marketing and nothing technical. It’s not true; Cloud Computing is actually ‘Marketing’ + ‘Big Technical changes’. To understand what actually is cloud computing, watch this video: Suppose that you have an idea for a
Launch Time.
about 2002 years ago - 9 comments
PakCrunch, as you know resembles the hugely popular TechCrunch in name, but has a different aim altogether. To cover startups, companies, technology news, websites and innovations coming out from the Pakistani industry as well as students from all over the country. Granted, there’s not lack of talent and skilled people here, but what we lack
about 1 year ago
I totally agree with your opinion. Remember that all spammers are a bunch of narrow minded people who think of achieving a single goal but do not think more openly about this goal, thus they can be classified as Losers!
about 1 year ago
Nice blog :) I am also against the idea of Spamming ~ Even the process we chose to create the DPs is manual, though a lot of tools exist to make it automated. The whole idea of loving our country fails if we are not willing to make an effort ! Pakistan Zindabad !
about 1 year ago
I’m kinda glad you wrote about this. I’ve gone green on twitter myself and I totally support the movement. I believe #pakcricket got into the trending topics on twitter without any spamming. If we did it once, we could do it again, without spamming.
about 1 year ago
We all condemn spammers..And we all did it during T20 #PakCricket by reaching #4 on Twitter while there were no spammers around.. we still can make it and show our unity and love for our country. Staying away from social media will not help Pakistan either. We need to project Pakistan in the best possible manner and positivity projects anything better.
about 1 year ago
Exactly. It’s not about what you say; it’s about what you do.
Sure, we’ll all make #Pakistan a trending topic, but then, who REALLY will care much about our country after August passes? We can say lots of things, but the real deal is to do ‘em
about 1 year ago
Nice to see someone finally fleshing out their tweets :P
I’m graphically green on twitter and Facebook and on my Gravatar.. BUT haven’t tweeted even once with the #Pakistan hashtag.
I mean seriously, it’s still 11 days away! Save your tweets for later! Tweeting now is in my opinion a mild form of spam :P
about 1 year ago
We should be proud…that we can find negative use of every positive thing in the world… twitter is just one damn thing…we can do more than that…. :S
about 1 year ago
There is always a black sheep in things like these. It’s about time some people of Pakistan grow up and learn that having a ‘shortcut’ for everything is going to do no one any good, let alone them. I don’t know where the conscience has gone from our people. It’s sad…
But in all this we must not forget the true effort of the people behind the ‘Go Green’ campaign and it’s success.
about 1 year ago
I agree with you on this. Bring out #Pakistan on top as spam is not the answer, I say we all do something good and tweet about that with #Pakistan, only then will that hash tag will be legit :D
about 1 year ago
agreed jis tarhan agree karnay ka haq hota hai :)
well said friend, well said.
about 1 year ago
I couldn’t agree more. Spamming and also twitter is so overrated. There are better things in life, real life!
about 1 year ago
Who says we endorse the idea of spamming our way to the top of Twitter trends? We’re not a bunch of fanatics man, we’ll do it the right way and not CHEAT out way to the top so to speak. Do you think we’d put in the effort of manually creating thousands of DPs just so we could automate tweets and get to the top of twitter?! Get a life dude
about 1 year ago
I thought no idiot would comment here judging from the prior ones but you proved that wrong. Before telling me or anyone to get a life, reading into the context would help. How about learning English correctly for starters? You might be able to understand what I wrote about then. Maybe..
about 1 year ago
Okie, my comment was a bit hot-headed. Obviously, I agree with you on the point of not spamming. And hopefully we won’t see any of them come August 14th
about 1 year ago
Of course, the solution certainly isn’t spamming…
Then Imran, you have stated the problem.. where is the solution?
about 1 year ago
I would certainly not call this the solution to the Go Green issues lighting up, but it’s a look at the environmental issues that are cropping up in Pakistan: http://is.gd/24BL0
about 1 year ago
I somehow agree with Imran, no matter if we have intentions of spamming or not, but if we are attaching a hashtag with an out of context tweet, we are actually spamming.
And secondly, whats the benefit we are going to get out of it?
about 1 year ago
A point well raised. Getting high in Twitter means nothing and its shortlived too. I am of opinion that you don’t always have to say that you love someone/something, your actions should speak louder than words. What we have done for our country or what we are going to do, counts.
Nice blog. Keep up the good work :)
about 1 year ago
And #Pakistan reaches the trending topics. Big woop.