start a business they didn't have the same options of having a transparent government of being able to go to the government and ask for something in fact
my parents didn't join the Communist Party even though they were college educated and they didn't have the same benefits even though you know kind of now everybody does andI feel lucky about that I feel lucky that we have a chance to have equal opportunity and I think you know how I think of social media the business I'm in is that it gives us more equal opportunity in what we do and that it enhances enhances the way we think about things so if I define social media first for you so for me social media isn't about Facebook isn't about Twitter isn't about all these platforms together social media for me is the people on those platform it's you you everyone so it's to think about social media you can think about it as the platforms but it's the people when we're thinking about working with governments when we're thinking about working with companies the way we often feel is that we're the little guys and there are big companies big institutions governments that you have to be working with but what we don't realize as people is that we have a lot more power and the last few years have shown us the examples of that power not the full extent of it but the first examples of that power so we see this from Egypt from Tahrir Square a couple years ago in the Arab Spring that was just the beginning we see this in Turkey turkey band Twitter then they bought band YouTube the u.s. called it the modern-day book-burning and I believe that's exactly what it was it was a political move it got quickly ousted by by the Supreme Court who says this is not constitutional this is against freedom of speech which is great and that's what they did just two days ago thank God but during the ban people totally defied it in the first day of the ban Twitter in Turkey sent more tweets than ever before historically and they kept found finding new and new ways after the government this platform a social platform and one thing to visualize I mean politics today they really feel like they're in power but it's a democracy that we vote these guys into their roles and unless they really listen to what we're saying and unless they do what we kind of want we won't vote them there again and the better better off I mean we have a chance to be social about it discuss opinions change facts exchange information and that information I mean I've heard so many times like what this politician did what this politician did very soon you'll be able to monitor each politician by what he said on social media in the media what he did what he voted for for so perfectly that they will not be able to hide against their votes anymore and this is of course applies to governments this applies to politicians this applies to institution as well as companies in the market so there was a tweet that it was a Twitter hack of The Associated Press and The Associated Press and out this tweet two explosions in the White House and Barack Obama is injured the market immediately responded this tweet costs over a hundred billion dollars that's about a billion per character just if you're counting it and the market quickly recovered but it could have been 10 billion higher during that day if you look at the numbers you'll kind of see that the market could have been five ten billion dollars higher that day so it only cost the market five ten billion dollars still a pretty good hack but that only shows you how powerful social media is and maybe eventually without social media we'd come to the same conclusion but social media works as an amplifier we get there faster we get there easier and it works perfectly for that another great example is Starbucks Starbucks in the UK doesn't pay corporate tax in the UK they funnel their money through different procedures that I'm don't understand but they do that and the UK was very very upset with them there are a bunch of prata protests social media updates kind of people talking about social the the damage was done to them to their identity to their brand and that kind of drives ROI down for that brand
kept blocking him and blocking him and blocking them they kept finding new ways to get on Twitter even though they didn't really have to they could have talked to each other on Facebook it was for the sake of doing it of being able to tweet when it's banned by the government because it was the wrong thing to do and then there are right examples like the White House the White House puts up a petition where everybody that gets over a hundred thousand votes now it was actually lower but can come in and get a response from the White House and of course there are silly things like deport Justin Bieber and revoke his green card there are more serious matters like you know we we would like to build a Death Star and they respond to that that it's not in their budget unfortunately but the would love to and they've got a lot of more exciting projects but there's no budget for the Deathstar no but really there are amazing projects actually there were through this platform there was stop SOPA through this platform was was it had every time it had over a hundred thousand petition votes and that's great that's something that really helps open up the government open up the businesses and have you understand that okay I'm living in a world where the government listens now I don't have a hundred thousand votes yet but there are easier ways through social media to get them today so I consider I mean PR wise it's it's a disaster another case is is British Airways they have quite bad customer service online and through social media I mean try writing them there was even this guy that wrote them says guys I really need your help I lost my luggage I'm gonna be in Portugal for the next two days they responded in three so this guy obviously didn't need any more help another one and an example of that escalating is somebody said don't fly British Airways this customer was in no way motivated it wasn't any motivation in particular their customer services horrendous that would be a normal regular tweet every company gets a million of them the difference between this and all the other tweets that they've been getting is that this person paid for promoting it we paid a couple thousand dollars to promote this tweet to a lot of people they now call that complaint vert izing power of the individual amplify this guy had a hundred followers or something like that right I mean hundred followers amplify through paid media their retweets then the media attention and then every piece of media in the world was reporting from BBC to Financial Times promote a tweet to British Airways complaining about customer service a PR campaign worth hundreds of millions of dollars that is the power of one individual of one tweet and that's quite powerful now if we remember the world without social media I mean we imagine it today we feel like okay what was it like but really if you think about it world without having a phone being connected to a network being able to take a picture that's what really makes a difference in Tunisia there was a revolution in during the Arab Spring and they successfully took down the government but before that two years before the burning of this this guy that burned himself I mean there was another kind of spark and it was much stronger but at the time it didn't stick the people didn't go out to the streets and it was for a couple of reasons but primarily Facebook penetration at the time was at fifty thousand there was no way to spread the word for the people they didn't have enough phones connected with data so they could spread the word between each other so there was a problem but two years later with Facebook being at the millions of users with social media being connected with people being connected on their phones they suddenly shed it out to the world and the problem was gone because people were their phones they're connected ten years ago this was not the case and you know like in 2005 we all spoke about citizen journalism it's gonna be you know about citizen journalism mobile citizen journalism people taking pictures reporting crime reporting it to the media citizen journalism is social media today it just got renamed and it we don't call it citizen journalism anymore and coming back to the power of the individual the individuals today have more power than they ever ever had before they have power to talk and change companies to change governments to change institutions and I encourage every one of you to think about how you can influence the world around you because you can influence it more than you ever could for the last several generations you have the power of social media the power of amplifying those thoughts amplifying those actions so today you're standing against one big company and they did something very wrong you're not alone you have a lot of company that helps you and that's a good thing and when I look at companies and when I look at companies and the way they do things these are the values that they should be having they don't all have those values I mean I myself I I have a company of running it for seven years now and before that I've had it for six years I had a company that I ran for seven years and it was a mobile games company and that didn't go so well it bankrupted and that was a very difficult moment and the way I chose to deal with that ending was I chose to keep it to myself work it through and try to find a solution on my own I didn't communicate it to anyone must just to my closest and I kept it in all internal completely internalized at the other hand there's another startup now that had gone bankrupt and they're tweeting about it they're blogging about it they're publishing their PNL and they're saying this is what we still think is valuable about our business this is why we did it and this is why we think it's valuable and actually managing through the process very well investors are very happy with the process but I didn't do it that way and of course I didn't have the options of social media of being able to put it on a platform I'd have to program that blog figure it out by the time I'd be done I'd already be finished so we didn't really have those options a long time ago so I believe in the next next ten years of social and in social media is that individuals voice will be heard so much more us people you have new powers that you never thought you could have before my parents they look at this they're like whoa what's going on they don't understand this but at the end of the day they will be users of this one way or the other they will go and vaguely comment on your Facebook updates at least if nothing else and social media it's about people being connected social media in the next ten years will help solve bigger problems today we share things in social media that are perhaps nothing most important we should of course it's important for us to share how we feel this is a great picture I felt nervous about that but I think social media will be used for bigger and bigger causes to help create a United mind of people to change something to help finally change the world and create a better place and institutions and companies as a result of that institutions and companies will have to be a lot more flexible than we are today we have the power of choice and this is the most beautiful thing in social media so what I'll conclude with is that when I look at the most retweeted tweet of all times is an Oscars selfie with a bunch of celebrities now don't get me wrong they're gorgeous celebrities but at the same time it lacks vision it has over 3 million retweets yet at the same time why don't we retweet something stronger something that'll help change the world we need it and not a selfie hopefully we need picture a message an action that'll help us change the world whether it's a problem of health of hunger of specific issues that we want to solve and address you know we want to raise money on Kickstarter we want toraise a lot of money through charity that's exactly what social media is for and that's what it's great and that's what all everybody sh ld be able to use
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