Even with a cease fire agreement pending, there is no telling how long what is going in Israel and Gaza will last. On World News Tonight, reports from press on both sides of the conflict complained of how difficult is to get a clear view on what is happening in the Middle East. Israelis and Palestinians, however, have been wasting no time delivering their sides of the story to reporters and press from all of the world. Reports of text message photos of civilian casualties are just the beginning, clearly both sides have realized what we already knew: social media is queen, especially when you’re at war.
The social media play I want to focus on has been through the use of Facebook. Qassam Count is a Facebook application that allows you to “donate your status” and notify your friends numerous times during the day about the number of rockets that have hit Israel. At least 50 of my friends have donated their statuses and every time I check my friend’s profiles I am bombarded with numbers of civilian casualties and rocket notifications.
They also update a Twitter account that has over 1,000 followers and more than 300 updates. Both of the application’s developers live in Israel, but from the looks one of their profiles one of them used to live in America.
Regardless of where their live, they have certainly brought their message loud and clear to American social media users. 17,500 social media users to be exact. Not too bad for a days work.
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