Chilean Miners Rescue Goes Viral

Today, many heroic citizens are being honored in Chile. Chilean rescue crews and officials cheered as one by one 30 of the 33 Chilean miners saw sunlight for the first time in two months after being trapped underground--the longest underground entrapment in history. More than 1,000 journalists covered the rescue operation at the remote San Jose mine in the Atacama desert. The news of the Chilean miners rescue went viral immediately.

Celebrities Kim Kardashian, Jordon Sparks, Amanda Holden, Justin Bieber (the list goes on and on), began tweeting about the heroic Chilean miner's rescue. As the miraculous story unfolds across the nation, celebrities have expressed their joy through micro-blogging on twitter. Justin Bieber tweeted early today "just found out the miners of chile are being rescued!!! happy for the families being brought back together. miracles do happen." Kim Kardashian tweeted earlier this morning "Wow seriously in tears watching this Chilean miners getting released on CNN! What a tough struggle they made it through!!!" Jordan Sparks tweeted about the reunion between the miners and their loved ones. "Lost it when the little boy saw his father. So happy these men are finally getting out of that Chilean mine. One Step at a time… :)" It is reassuring that millions of people, including well-known celebrities took the time to voice their feelings on this tremendous rescue effort.

This is an excellent example of how one single event can be made known to everyone in the matter of minutes with the use of micro-blogging and twitter. Twitter results for "Chilean miners" was producing hundreds of tweets per hour from users across the world sharing stories, gratitude, hopefullness and joy for what has happened. Live footage from the rescue sight are on all major news websites such as CNN, and MSNBC and thousands of facebook fans "liked" the stories, video's and pictures shown. The Chilean Miner's resue has become the topic of online discussion in less than 24 hours.

Written by: Erin Miller

A Gap in Judgement

On Oct. 5, one of America’s most iconic clothing brands, Gap, introduced its new logo. Although well-received internally, the logo has generated much negativity among loyal customers and designers alike. Critics of the logo claim that its “basic photoshop” workmanship and lack of creative appeal are to blame. Personally, I think it looks like something that was crafted in Microsoft Word for a school project, rather than a brand defining logo that was in the making for two years.All of the negative attention has put a spotlight on Gap, making it the topic of much publicity. As the saying goes, “There’s no such thing as bad publicity;” but could that really be what Gap was after? There is a possibility that Gap may have issued this poorly designed logo in an attempt to create buzz, so that they could bring back the old logo and look like the hero. If that is what they are after, they are playing the game well. Currently, there is a website called CrapLogo where anyone can enter text to be “Crap logo’d” into the same format as Gap’s logo. Also, someone created a fake Twitter account for the logo, @GapLogo.

To address all of the negative responses, Gap recently posted a message on its Facebook account. “We know this logo created a lot of buzz and we’re thrilled to see passionate debates unfolding!” The post ends with a challenge for fans, “...we're asking you to share your designs. We love our version, but we'd like to see other ideas.” Of course they would.

Written by: Brittany Hall