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Adult Social Media: Rallying for Japan

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Stand for Japan

Friday Feature Photo: Ela Darling

Friday Feature Photo: The beautiful Ela Darling, a talented, sexy model and adult actress.

Today is the start for Stand for Japan an effort spearheaded by Sabrina from Deepsabrina.com. Sabrina is encouraging all models, webmasters, affiliates, producers, distributors, media and everyone in the adult industry to encourage their web traffic to go to the Stand for Japan Red Cross site and make a donation.

Sabrina added, “I would simply like to thank all those who adhered to Stand for Japan, showing an unselfish and unprecedented sensibility in this industry. It’s really refreshing to see that there are still people choosing solidarity over traffic and personal gain. Again, thank you very much!”

The devastation in Japan is beyond comprehension. While electricity and phone service have been hugely affected, leaving many survivors without either, the Internet has remained virtually unaffected. This makes social media not just an effective means of communication, but one of the only means.

The wreckage in the aftermath of this tragedy is horrendous – and the use of social media has been incredible. It is becoming the go-to technology for emergency and disaster relief, management, communication and recovery.

One of the most amazing features of social media is the ability for swift response. Whether it is communication about real-time events, sharing news or raising disaster relief funds, social media has immediate and worldwide impact on all aspects of emergency and disaster management.

Japanese porn stars Maria Ozawa, Sola Aoi, and Ai Sayama have been using their social media and their influence to drum up support for Japan and sharing how the devastation has effected them personally.

The social media effort is not limited to individuals and non-profits.  There have been a lot of tweets, updates and encouragement by adult industry folks to go and donate, spread awareness and build community. The adult industry has a lot of influence, and this tragic situation enables it to use that influence for a greater good.

Twitter

Twitter was the number 1 social network used for anything about the earthquake and tsunami. The Tweet-o-Meter, a website that tracks twitter usage per minute, has pretty much remained pegged at 1200 tweets per minute for usage in Tokyo since the disaster began.

Hashtags

Hashtags are a way to keyword-identify a tweet, so people who are following a topic can use that keyword to track the topic. According to Mashable, the most popular hashtags are #Japan, #JPQuake, #JapanQuake, #PrayForJapan, #Tsunami and #TsunamiCharity; real-time Tweet map; Save Japan (updates in Japanese); and the UN’s Must-Follow Twitterers

Twitter posted a blog, in Japanese and English, that details how you can help by using Twitter.

Facebook

Relief and resources pages popped up almost immediately on Facebook. Nearly every major relief non-profit is using their Facebook Fan Page to help raise money for Japan.

Japan Earthquake reports news and information about the disaster.

Solidarity with the victims of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan 2011 is a Belgian page created to show support and communicate news about Japan.

Dog Bless You is a non-profit that assists with rescue operations. They are sending a team to Japan to use dogs in the human rescue effort. Explore.org is donating $1 for every Like the Dog Bless You page receives.

American Red-Cross has a page on Causes, a Facebook app that lets people donate to charities on Facebook.

Save the Children also has a page on Causes.

FarmVille, CityVille and FrontierVille, games on Facebook created by the company Zynga, have partnered with Save the Children’s Japan Earthquake Tsunami Emergency Fund to get their users to purchase virtual goods for the games as a way to donate to the fund. 100% of the proceeds from the purchase of sweet potatoes in CityVille, radishes in FarmVille or Kobe cows in FrontierVille will go towards Save the Children’s efforts to provide relief in the Pacific.

YouTube

Some of the most poignant imagery from Japan has come from videos posted on YouTube. Personal video accounts of the disaster are giving all of us an experience that communicates the immense impact of what has happened.

If you search YouTube for Japan Tsunami the video results will be overwhelming, from news to personal videos from around the world.

Maps

Tweet Map

Map enthusiast Virender Ajmani (@mibazaar) created a tweet map. This is a map that displays a new tweet every 5 seconds from Japan. The tweets are from within a 600 km radius of Tokyo, Japan and are tagged with either earthquake or japan or tsunami.

YouTube Map

Virender Ajmani also created a YouTube map that shows Geotagged videos from within an 800 km radius of Tokyo, Japan that are tagged “Earthquake/Tsunami”. Geotagged videos means that the video has been tagged, or identified, as being from a certain location.

Seismic Activity

Maplarge.com created a map that shows you the seismic activity and the size of the earthquakes that hit Japan.

Flickr

Photos from journalists and photographers to camera phones are streaming into Flickr tagged with Japan Earthquake, Japan Tsunami

Live Video

Live video has streamed from myriad sources around the world. Here are a few:

Google

Google has created Crisis Response and Japan Person Finder to help with the disaster. Crisis Response gives emergency information, including numbers for missing persons, and information for relief donations.

The Japan Person Finder is a page that lets you put in a report for a missing person or share information you might have on a missing person.

Text

The American Red Cross is taking text donations, like they did with Haiti. If you would like to donate to their Japan Earthquake Relief, just text REDCROSS to 90999. Each text provides $10 towards the Red Cross’ humanitarian efforts.

Other Resources

  • Blog RSS feed: Japan Earthquake is a blog feed that is streaming blog posts from major news sources, reporters and bloggers.
  • Internet Browser Toolbar: Tsunami news in your toolbar is a tool bar that normally streams internet radio, but now has a feature allowing your to stream news about the disaster in the toolbar of your internet browser.
  • Hellobar: The hello bar is a tool that allows you to add a bar to the top of your web page that displays a message. Look at the top of this page and you will see my Hellobar. The company is allowing people to sign-up (which has been previously limited) in order to have a support Japan Hellobar.
  • iTunes: Created a donation page making it easy to use your iTunes account to donate to the Red Cross.

There are resources and networks all over the Internet sharing information, connecting people, streaming news and images and bringing all of us closer to the realities of what happened in Japan. The ones I listed are just examples of what is available. The call to action from the social media community has been tremendous. Where we were just starting to get an idea of the effects of the earthquakes and tsunami, we were also just starting to get an idea of the effects of social media in relation to the disaster. It makes me proud to be a part of the community that is mobilizing rescue, communication, fundraising, information and a worldwide community effort to help our international neighbors.

Make sure you are getting out there and spreading the word, and please click the banner at the top of this post to make a donation to the Red Cross and give Japan some much-needed help.


Friday Feature Photo: Ela Darling This week’s Friday Feature Photo is the beautiful Ela Darling.  We met at the Adult Expo, and I was immediately captivated. Not only is she beautiful, but she is a lot of fun to talk to. We immediately started to tweet and I have been a fan ever since. Her website is great. She has an amazing photo gallery ranging from classic sexy, to period pieces, fetish and bondage. Her photos are creative and captivating. On her blog she shares pics, videos and radio interviews.

Make sure you visit her website: darlingela.com

and talk to her on Twitter @eladarling