Interview to @sgenfurecida

Everyone wants to participate in Twitter’s boom; and each person does it in his/her own way. 

Some publish every detail of their daily life; others use it to promote their works and careers; there are also some who give public interest information in a journalistic mood...etc. There is an amazing amount of forms of leaving your trace using just 140 characters!

Today, @sgenfurecida shares with us (by a phone call) their particular usage of this well-known social network.   

     Alba: What made you to create a Twitter account as Segovia Enfurecida is?

Segovia Enfurecida: The truth is that I took time thinking about doing something like this…Other cities had already done it and it has been successful. One afternoon I dared to do it, I wrote some tweets and got impressed on the impact they had!

Alba: How many people are involved on it?

Segovia Enfurecida: We are four to five people. I was the first and only one working on it at the beginning. Later I told to some of my closest friends and they felt happy to work on this idea. They are really interesting people, they think of tweets I would have never imagined if I were working alone.

Alba: So you do brainstorming, don’t you?

Segovia Enfurecida: Yeah, in fact we have a whatsapp group, although it was originally created to speak about our Fridays and Saturdays nights!

Alba: Are all of you young people?

Segovia Enfurecida: Yes, we are. We are the generation that has grown with the chachilibreta, with the camigol  balls, with the Maristas B against Eresma C matches... However, this Twitter account is not only for people who were born in the eighties; it is addressed to much more segovians.  

Alba: Why Twitter?

Segovia Enfurecida: Twitter represents the freedom to send messages like ours; it’s the best option to do what we do.

Alba: You have 2637 followers! When did you create the account?

Segovia Enfurecida: We created it a month ago, on a Friday afternoon…and here we are!

Alba: That’s incredible! It’s clear that you have been well accepted among young segovians. Sure you even know some of your followers, isn’t it hard for you to remain anonymous?

Segovia Enfurecida: Yeah, we know many of them personally, some of them even wonder if we are Segovia Enfurecida…But anonymity is the magic of writing these tweets, and of course, with much more freedom to do it.

Alba: Have you ever been threatened?

Segovia Enfurecida: No, absolutely not. People have treated us kindly and they understand this is a satirical account. We are not afraid, but if we come to a worrying situation we will all agree in finishing with this initiative. Anyway, I believe we won’t never be taken to that extreme!

Alba: Why writing tweets always in capital letters?

Segovia Enfurecida: Because we are really furious!

Alba: Segovian pride is in fashion nowadays. I would like to know what Segovia is for you.

Segovia Enfurecida: For us Segovia is the origin and the destination. Some of us had to move to Madrid or to other cities, but what is clear is that Segovia is our street and we always return. People are really attached to it. There are lots of things that make us different from people of other cities; we believe that in general, we have the characteristics of a small country.

Alba: Could you describe it in a word?

Segovia Enfurecida: Uff..that is so difficult! Yes, as I said before, Segovia is the origin.

Alba: You write about several different topics taking them always with humor. You wrote even about independence, are you trying to be like a segovian Artur Mas or something similar?

Segovia Enfurecida: (Laughs) It is just irony, we make jokes with him, we have even said he is our new autonomous community president! But we are just joking… 

Supposing we get independent in the future, I’m sure it will be different to what the Vasque Country or Cataluña claim for; what we want is to remain inside Spain not out!

Alba: What it’s true is that independence issue became more important when Arahuetes, Segovia’s major, declared that it was not worthy staying in Castilla y León, and that the best thing to do was to become independent. What do you think of his declarations?

Segovia Enfurecida: We respect what he said, in fact, it is true that Castilla y León does not think too much of Segovia; anyway we believe he was just being ironic, as we have also been regarding this issue.

Alba: The #diadasegoviana hastag was one of your most important actions through Twitter. Was it successful? Can you explain to us what was it about?

Segovia Enfurecida: Yes, I think it was really successful. It was a movement that started as a joke, and consisted on wearing a blue scarf to San Frutos’ celebration just as a sign of ‘we are segovians and we are here’, it did not have a vindicative tone at all. We believe this will be bigger as time passes.

Alba: You even appeared in the press! El Norte de Castilla, Acueducto.com…you must be really proud of giving voice to segovians!

Segovia Enfurecida: We speak about things most segovians have lived or thought at least once, and which in many cases feel ashamed to tell! 

For us it was a surprise to appear in local newspapers, it was amazing. We hope that this keeps on, that we get more followers and that we continue making jokes. It is a good thing not only for Segovia, but also for us.

Misunderstanding the use of hastags.

On 11^th 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.

http://vimeo.com/20922401

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=5zJrRGpLkg8

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 )