On 11th March, Japan was shaken by the worst earthquake of its history. The seism, of magnitude 9.0 in the Ritcher's Scale, caused a huge tsunami that devastated the northeast coast of the archipelago. But it wasn't enough with that. It wasn't enough with thousands of deaths and injuries, villages that have completely disappear, and debris everywhere. They are also suffering a nuclear crisis. The shakes lead to great damage in the nuclear power stations, which can involve a radioactive explosion, similar to the one in Chernobil in 1986.
It's impossible to pretend that nothing has happened. Even when we are 10.000 km away from them. I don't know the rest, but I can't.
Watch this videos, impotence is the least you can feel.
That's why people try to do their best, they try to help in what they can, however minimal it is. Se trata de poner nuestro pequeño granito de arena. It was enough with spending 10 minutes on twitter (read it, it's quite interesting: http://www.europapress.es/portaltic/internet/noticia-save-the-children-convoca-10-minutos-twitter-japon-20110317130518.html ) or just using hastags.
Hastags are used to highlight key words or topics in a tweet. They were created originally by the users of Twitter as a way to categorize messages.
If you add a hastag to you tweet and you have a public account, anyone doing a search for that hastag will find your tweet.
Of course the disaster in Japan had one hastag: #Pray4Japan. It was used by thousands of people, even famous. Today we are going to talk about one of its users, David Bisbal.
After being riddled with jokes because of his peculiar tweet about the situation in Egypt (http://www.lavanguardia.es/gente/20110201/54109141123/un-desafortunado-tweet-de-bisbal-sobre-egipto-inspira-una-hilarante-etiqueta-de-chistes.html ), the Spanish singer is again the center of attention: he added the hastag of Japan at the end of his tweets about his concerts and his appearance in the recent released Spanish film Torrente 4.
It may have just be an error because of lack of knowledge of using twitter (why not? Let's give him the benefit of the doubt), but many have interpreted it as a way to be publicized, because this hastag -which is a world wide trending topic- gives much more visibility to the publication of Bisbal than the one that wouldn't be given without it, just because it would only be visible for those who follow him or those who would do a search on the singer.
Because of this, a new hastag has been created: #prayforbisbal. There people refer to the lack of ability of the singer to use Twitter.
Well, it's clearly known that Twitter is getting more and more influence on our society nowadays (I recommend you to visit this blog to read further info about Twitter: http://beatrizcalvo.wordpress.com/ ) and even famous people -who live in their world of Yupi- should be concerned about that; they should know that through their tweets there are really showing who they are, their personality. And things like Bisbal's comments are really bad promo for them. They shouldn't forget they are famous, they are exposed to all kinds of expectation.
140 characters can ruin your reputation!
"Lo bueno que tienen las redes sociales es que nos ponen a todos al mismo nivel, famosos o no" (Castellanos)
Para mis lectores españoles que tienen problemas con el inglés, este vídeo resume más o menos de lo que he hablado: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMAYM8yFjmg (Mamá ya puedes enterarte de algo! :D )
