Twitter goes green!

Twitter is fast going green with pakistani users changing their display pictures to a green background with a crescent and a star on it in a show of unity for the upcoming independence day. The credit for this inspiring campaign goes to Farhan Masood for coming up with the idea and voluntarily converting people's display pictures to a lovely shade of green. On last count, he had converted 876 singlehandedly! woah!

The stage is set and we are set to take over twitter on August 14th by making #Pakistan the top trending topic that day! Join us and help spread the word. If you're a twitter/facebook user and want your display pic "greened", contact me (razzman), taalz or farhanmasood.

Pakistan Zindabad!

Pakistan - T20 Champions!

Words cannot describe the happiness and joy all of us Pakistanis felt as Afridi scrambled to make the final run to beat Srilanka and, in turn, crown Pakistan T20 Champions! A thoroughly un-Afridi like and un-Pakistan like performance that saw us through in the end despite the SriLankans posting a half-a-decent total with some hitting at the death. It is a day that we will cherish long into the future, a day when everything went right for Pakistan. From an amazing start (SriLanka were 2-2 and 70-6 at one stage) to a thoroughly professional batting performance by Afridi n co. that culminated in this awe-inspiring victory. It was also a truly team effort, Mohammed Aamer, Umar Gul, Abdul Razzaq, Kamran Akmal, Shoaib Malik and of course Shahid Afridi. Every one did their bit and contributed to this massive win.

It is more than a win, it is a morale booster, a sign of hope and that all is not lost. More importantly, it is a slap to the face of all those who seek to destroy us. Try as you may, but you can only keep us down for so long; for we shall rise a stronger and a unified nation. Youtube is filled with videos of people reveling in celebration on the streets of Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad. And rightly so, the country hasn't had anything to feel good about in eternity. It took 17 years coming, but Pakistani cricketers finally delivered some silverware to a nation starved of any sporting success for the longest time.

Younis Khan mentioned in the presentation ceremony that the win is a gift to the nation, and what a fitting gift it is indeed. How else would you collectively raise the spirits of a nation as down as Pakistan has been recently and how else would you bring a smile to the face of every Pakistani, whether they are in the refugee camps in Charsadda or as far away as Melbourne? That is power of Sport, and one which unites a country like nothing else. Not to mention Bob Woolmer, to whom this victory was aptly dedicated to also.

I mentioned in my previous post about an e-rally that sought to make Pakistan and Pakistan cricket as the most talked about topic on Twitter. Although, there were less than 1000 people tweeting about this topic, but it was great to see our hashtag (#PakCricket) made as high as number 5 on trending topics on Sunday! So, kudos to everyone who made this happen. No doubt hundreds of people only got to know about the game (or even twenty20!) by seeing our hashtag in trending topics.

Here's hoping this victory goes a long way towards turning Pakistan's fortunes. Finally, dedicated to Team Pakistan is the song Stand Up For the Champions:

Twitterific!

Facebook may be the social networking service of choice for most people on the web (they recently surpassed the 200 million mark for members!), but it is Twitter that is making the waves these days, and for good reason! I've been a member of Twitter for quite some time now, but only in recent months have I become totally hooked to it. It has galvanized the social media industry with it's awesome concept of real-time updates and bringing people together in a completely different way.

For the uninitiated, Twitter is a service that lets you post real-time updates from your phone or through the web on your own page using applications such as UberTwitter (blackberry), Tweetie (iPhone) and TweetDeck (computer). Other people can choose to follow you depending how interesting your updates are (basically, how interesting you are). Twitter hash tags (for e.g., #Karachi) help keep track of topics being discussed and helps in making new connections and/or finding people with similar interests. It is also meant to bring context to people's tweets. At the time of writing of this post, the most popular hashtags on twitter were #IranElection #Tehran and #FollowFriday. Clicking on these will display updates in real-time! Here's a nice little video I found on youtube that explains the service in plain english:

TIME recently published an article about Twitter entitled 'How Twitter will change the way we live'. One of the excerpts from the article couldn't be any truer ... "If you're looking for interesting articles or sites devoted to Kobe Bryant, you search Google. If you're looking for interesting comments from your extended social network about the three-pointer Kobe just made 30 seconds ago, you go to Twitter." How true!

In Pakistan, Twitter has taken off recently. Online activism using sites like Facebook and Twitter has been the highlight of the last 1-2 years. And with an increasing number of Pakistanis turning to the web to voice their opinions in the form of blogs and tweets, things can only get better. The trending topic among Pakistanis right now is obviously the ongoing Twenty20 world cup. Using hash tags such as #t20, #PakCricket and #Pakistan, several hundred people are tweeting their thoughts on the web in real-time. Teeth Maestro is even gathering support for an e-rally in support of our team for tomorrow's final.

So go ahead, join the tweeting bandwagon and while you're at it ... click on the cute birdie if you wanna follow me :)

Related Links:

Twitter on Wikipedia

HowStuffWorks - How Twitter works