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When the Gaza war started last week, both Israeli supporters and Gaza supporters instantly became part of the social media war. Whether it was through Twitter accounts dedicated to complete coverage of the events, blogs set up for non-stop coverage, or people simply updating their Facebook status or profile picture, the social media war was in full swing. Yesterday Dan Peguine (developer of Honesty Box) and Arik Fraimovich, launched QassamCount, an application that automatically updates users’ Facebook statuses with updates about the most recent Qassam rockets that have fallen in Israel.
In the first 24 hours of the application launch it has grown from 0 to over 1,000 users. While it’s still too early to tell how big the application will get, it’s interesting to see the growth taking place. Users of the application can choose to update their status with the latest Qassam rocket updates or they can have a daily report added to their status. It’s a simple idea but one that I’m sure will go viral.
The feed comes from the same feed that is providing updates to the QassamCount Twitter account. It’s incredible to see applications like this launch so quickly. When it comes to the social media war, Israelis are clearly putting forth a lot of effort to avoid a situation similar to that which occurred during the recent Lebanon war. That time around, many state that the media coverage ended up being more critical of Israel than other participants in the war (Hezbollah, etc).
With just 1,000 users, the application now has an effective reach of over 200,000 users when considering the number of friends that each user has. This type of metric shows how powerful Facebook and social media can be in general when you take into consideration the network effect. If you happen to be a supporter of Israel, go check out the QassamCount application.
Thanks for the post, Nick.
My knee-jerk reaction was to add the QassamCount to my FB account but something said to look into it a little further. This morning, while watching CNN, I learned that Israel won’t let western journalists (European, American or otherwise) into Gaza to report on the events. When I was compelled to add the QassamCount, I believed it was a count of the assault coming from both sides but I see it is only a count of the rockets being fired at Israel. This is a two sided war with innocent Palestinians in Gaza who are dying from the Israeli aircraft assaults. There are too many innocent victims to count on both sides in the ugly outcomes of war.
The reason is because Israel learned in the Lebanon war that if it doesn’t control the media (which the US does in Iraq, by the way), the Hamas propaganda machine will be in full gear,giving a very distorted view.
Sadly, the body count is not a distorted view. The “collateral damage” on the Palestinian side far outweighs that among the Israelis.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think that Hamas should be ignored/rewarded just because their technology is less efficient. But I worry that the carnage being wrought by the Israeli response will only strengthen Hamas in the long run, and end up breeding even more militants. It seems like a no-win situation for all concerned.
por que los medios de noticias mundiales no muestran las casi 10.000 bombas,,,, si, asi como leen,, 10.000 bombas que cayeron desde el 2005 cuando israel dejo a la franja gaza asta la actualidad,
si mostrarian la cuarta parte pensarian diferentes, y conste que apoyo la paz y las libertades pero, ellos los palestinos quieren ser libres , pero quieren entrar a israel a trabajar, quieren la luz de israel, el gas de israel y el gobierno israeli les da plata de impuestos que pagan los israelies??
pobrecitos los palestinos no?????