Social Media
Making a hash of hashtags
There were more than a few distraught Cher fans on Twitter last Monday. Stumbling across the hashtag #nowthatchersdead, they assumed it referred to the popular singer of If I Could Turn Back Time instead of former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher who died that day following a stroke. It's not the first time either that [...]
Put your brain on a healthy diet
In our 21st century, thinness is seen as the ultimate virtue. Every cover of magazines, posters at bus stops, adverts praise for slimness. Thousands of articles describe the latest miracle diet to get rid of unwanted kilos. It also applies to many other things: get rid of unwanted items in your house, toxic people in [...]
I met a social media country manager
To be honest for now we only spoke via Facebook and on the phone. She's a social media country manager in Tallinn both for European Commission Representation and for European Parliament Information Office. It's a pilot project called Share Europe Online. When part of my job is writing news stories for EP's webpage and tweet [...]
“You might want to learn how to tail better if you plan on making a habit of it”
Somewhere in this vast virtual space exists a blog post written by past Caroline, beginning trainee. Here we are, over a year later, and somehow… I'm staying! "Is this your first job-job?" – "Yes." (pauses) "Yes-yes." And what did I learn so far? What I learned from Engagor Statistics are your new best friend. But [...]
Twitter, the new zombieland?
In December 2012, twitter reached 200 million active users (vs. 100 million in September 2011). These numbers show how twitter is becoming more and more relevant as a social media tool. But it's also important to keep in mind another figure: the total number of accounts. In 2012, Semiocast estimated that there were 517 million [...]
Saved by Twitter: How 140 characters can help a stranded flyer
Picture this: 27 hours of flying ahead – starting from Sydney via Singapore and Helsinki back to homey Brussels. You embark a plane in the afternoon and start the journey back after two exciting weeks filled with huggable koalas, scorching sun and wide open gumtree forests in down under. First leg – 8 hours, so [...]
Bye bye Webcom – for a while
After 3,5 years, 1,417 stories written on La Une, 4,200 tweets, about 1,000 Facebook posts , 23 blogs and one Newshub, time has come for me to move on and see what beyond the wonderful, challenging and sexy world of Webcom. Am I going far away? No, not really. But still, it does feel strange to leave, even for a temporary replacement…
And the winner is: #Hermandeschermman
There were quite some surprises during the Dutch election night on September 12 - either positively or negatively – and yes, five parties can claim to have won some or a lot of seats. However, the social media winner, soon renamed the swiping king, was the journalist Herman van der Zandt who announced the results for each community using a huge touch [...]
How I became Giulio’s hero
“Florent is my hero”. This exclamation, published on 2 July by my colleague Giulio on Facebook, went straight to my heart. What a professional and personal achievement for me… You’re jealous? I understand. But I’m not selfish, so here is how I became Giulio’s hero. May it inspire you!
The true story of mister #
In radiography it's the symbol for a fracture. In linguistic it means that a sentence is semantically wrong. In chess note is the symbol for checkmate, and in cartography is the symbol for village. The hash we always use on Twitter has a long story. This week the Italian Twitter account of the EP – @europarl_it – [...]
How to survive a spam attack – alphabet for Facebook page admins
In recent months we learned how to live with spam attacks. We are often a target of Syrian pro-regime spammers. Recently – just last month. Here's some tips and facts for surviving a spam attack: A like “Assad” – Bashar al-Assad, Syrian dictator. His regime is fighting not only on a conventional front, but also [...]
When the chat is AFK, the mice dance on the TBL
Due to my last two posts having been rather lengthy, I'll try to keep this brief. And in light of the subject of the video, I'll make it even briefer by using as many geeky chat acronyms as my limited knowledge – and Google – allows: CTC? FYI: Geek, "CMG", hired by PTB to D [...]
Twitter in Wonderland
We started Tweeting before June 2009 elections. We tweeted information about the election dates, which were not the same in all countries, about the results, during the electoral night. At that time the newborn Europarl_XX accounts (change XX for the 22 language codes) where just learning how to walk, taking the first steps in a [...]
The passivity of a Facebook activist
No longer daydreamers The cold wind coming in from Lake Michigan was the only thing that reminded me about how long I had actually stood there, on that very same spot. There was a Starbucks with comfy seats and hot drinks just around the corner but no caramel macchiato in the world was worth the [...]
The Creation (of a new paradigm for EP communication)
In the beginning was a word, and this word was from our Secretary General, and this word was the Secretary General. And the word was: “let there be light on the political side of the Parliament”.
Killing Smartness… with Smartphones: the disenchantment of memory?
Do you remember the way you used to look at your grandfather? An old man with some leftover white hair, carefully combed to one side in order to disguise the bald spots on his head. Perhaps he would sit in his armchair, smoking an old pipe, blowing grey smoke into the air. Didn't he convey [...]
The War of the Bubbles, or: 1999 Was a Bad Year
I never got her name but I will always think of her as 1999. 1999, the year I went to journalism school and the faculty told us students not to buy a computer, but to invest that money in a driver's license instead. The 15 computers the university had bought and kitted with this new [...]
Go viral or go home
A short summary for the pressed reader: Based upon research and experience, we have concluded that only young, cute, hairy MEPs will allow for successful viral communication campaigns. Besides editing the German website, I worked on two projects last year. One was a comic strip that should explain the Euro crisis in simple terms. The [...]
How to #fail on Twitter
You can be a diva, a politician or a plumber: if you want to say something today, do it on Twitter. Do it fast. Do it live. And do it in 140 signs. But be careful: 500 million people may potentially read you. { A portrait of Arnold Schwarzenegger by Andy Warhol and a self-portrait of [...]
10 things I learnt about our Facebook page last week
I need to confess something. I can't count, I can't do even simple math. I don't like numbers and going through different statistics always gave me a headache. I'm sure people like me inspired Facebook when they're prepared the new Insight section for pages. It's quite easy to read and analyze. And instead of [...]
Recent Comments