Censored!

I just read an article on www.socialmediatrader.com that showed a map of the most censored countries in the world. It lists all the social networking sites that are banned in each country. It's pretty interesting, some are obvious. China for instance bans youtube and wikipedia. Information overload! Access denied! Wikipedia is arming people will knowledge and knowledge means danger, disorder, revolution. Obviously.

The first prize goes to Iran. It is the number 1 censored country in the world!!

It makes me glad to be living in one of the most liberal countries in the world.

Here is the list of sites banned by country:

Brazil- YouTube, Wordpress; China- YouTube, Wikipedia; Ethiopia- BloggerIndiaBlogger; ndonesia- YouTube, MySpace; Iran- Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, Wikipedia, Orkut,; Morocco- YouTube; Pakistan- YouTube, Blogger, Wikipedia; Saudi Arabia- Flickr, Orkut; Syria- Facebook; Thailand- YouTube; Turkey- YouTube, Wordpress; United Arab Emirates- Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, Orkut

I did like the fact that google attempted to stand up for freedom from censorship in China at the time when the Chinese government tried to ask google to censor and ban certain searches. In response google ran google China through Hong Kong but this stopped and google have effectively bowed down to the Chinese government and given into their demands. Shame!

I didn't realise Brazil was so tight on censorship but I suppose it is a highly religious country. It's not all extreme body waxing and carnival. They do love any excuse for a dance though, so it's not all bad. My kind of people!

I love(d) Seabrook crisps

I was just thinking back to when I first wanted to get into social media and I just remembered that I was so in love with Seabrook crisps (www.seabrookcrisps.com), which were these awesome crisps that they used to only sell up North, that I actually made a myspace page for them and started to get loads of fans. Actually, not awesome crisps, bloody great crisps! That sounds more Northern. Anyway, people started to add me and write on my wall saying, 'Seabrook rules!' and telling me what their favourite flavours were.

I didn't tell anyone I was doing it as they would have thought that I was a right weirdo, spending time promoting a brand I was not working for, but I thought it was funny. Anyway I did email Seabrook to say that I wanted to market them down South but they ignored me. How rude! Now they are available down South and they have not really made any great waves in the market place. I know if I'd have done the job I would have created a much bigger fuss. Anyway, they did go down hill a bit after they changed the packaging. I think the crisps changed a bit too and didn't seem quite as good as they used to but, hey, they didn't employ me as their marketing manager so that is their problem!

Here is my original site from back in 2006, www.myspace.com/seabrookcrisps,when myspace was rocking it out! It took Seabrook 4 months to catch up. Someone must have told them what I'd been up to. Here is theirs www.myspace.com/officialseabrookcrisps. They even had to put 'official' because I stole the good url. Anyway, I forgot about that little moment in my life.

I still love you Seabrook! I have many a happy childhood memory of eating a nice bag of Beefy crisps!

Yes, the love of a good crisp can make you do crazy things.