The Ice Bucket Challenge - Has it lost its purpose?

By Simon Wright – Follow me on Twitter @Siwri88

It has become the latest internet craze and it is raising money for causes that deserve it. However, the Ice Bucket Challenge, which has seen actors & actresses, musicians, TV personalities and sports stars raise awareness for ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis), is threatening to get out of control.

Questions are starting to be raised about the point of the challenge and has it lost its edge/purpose? I promote more background on the Ice Bucket craze and give my view on the summer sensation online.

The idea

So, the Ice Bucket Challenge does exactly what it says on the tin (excuse the pun). It involves people dumping a bucket of ice over themselves, or being assisted in this way by another member of a team, whether that is a family member, relationship partner or work colleague (group pictured conducting the challenge below).

A group of people in Sunderland undertake the Ice Bucket Challenge

The act has to be filmed and the video is then posted online, usually onto social media channels like Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. The person doing the challenge then usually nominates 3-5 people to do the same and give them a timeframe to do the challenge, often between 24-48 hours.

Of course, this isn’t something that should be done for fun or a pointless laugh. A charitable donation has to be made to complete the challenge. In America, which is where the craze got underway, it is often towards the ALS association, whilst over here in the UK, the regular charity benefiting from this is the Motor Neurone Disease Association.

It all sounds simple, or does it?

Celebrity impact

The challenge starting receiving impact in June this year, when personalities from a breakfast programme in the US did the challenge live on-air.

The craze then started to spread with donations being made and more celebrities being nominated. Even Barack Obama and David Cameron were nominated to do the challenge. Wisely, both declined and made just a donation instead. Whilst it could be seen as a bit of good-humoured fun, could you imagine the amount of flak that Cameron would get if he did this? Ed Miliband would have a field day at PMQ’s!

Many other famous faces or familiar names have done their bit though. They include the likes of Susan Boyle, Mark Zuckerberg, Oprah Winfrey, Lewis Hamilton, Lady Gaga and George W. Bush.

Even TV characters have done it, including Kermit the Frog from the Muppets and Homer Simpson from the Simpsons (video below of Homer’s challenge)

More recently, I’ve seen my News Feed, especially on Facebook plastered with my friends and colleagues doing the challenge and being nominated. The spread of this ‘bug’ has been massive.

Happy and sad endings

The main charity cause IBC has helped on these shores is the Motor Neurone Disease Association.  In my case, I do charity donations anyway, and however small this can be, it makes me feel pleased to be giving something back. Recently, the British Heart Foundation sent me a letter to celebrate the first year anniversary of giving money to their fight against heart disease on a monthly basis.

My donations are helping the British Heart Foundation fund groundbreaking heart medicine to save people lives. A case study of this was received as part of the letter I received last month. 18 months into her life, Lauren Burns was diagnosed with a hole in her heart. She underwent major surgery and when complications occurred from this, Lauren spent three months hooked up to a life support machine, fighting for her life. Doctors gave her little hope of survival, but nine years on, Lauren is walking, talking and behaving like many girls of her age band. My donation is helping the BHF and allows more people like Lauren in the UK to come back from the brink and live the quality of life they are today. It is these stories that can have a happy ending.

More notably, Sky Sports F1 presenter Natalie Pinkham has been on a remarkable journey in the last three years with a cause close to her heart. In 1999, Natalie worked in an orphanage in Romania and developed a close bond with a young child, called Mirela. After a moving visit to find Mirela 12 years later, Natalie, with the help of her Grand Prix connections and the charity Hope & Homes for Children, set out to raise £200,000 to build a home for Mirela and her siblings. The story was followed in two moving documentaries for Channel 5. With Natalie’s determination and the help of others, the target was achieved and Mirela and other children were able to move into their new home at the start of 2014. As the home can provide a decent quality of life, it gave Mirela a proper home she could grow up in. 

Sadly in early March, Mirela passed away from acute cardio-respiratory failure, just four days after A Home for Mirela was screened on Channel 5. It was a sad ending to an emotional and very moving journey.

Has IBC lost its edge?

The more videos of the Ice Bucket Challenge go online, the more the craze continues but it begs the question though, that despite the money being raised – has it lost its edge?

There could be a concern that some are doing the challenge and then not following up with a promised donation. I hope that is not the case. There are no accusations being made, but I’m sure there is the odd person who hasn’t thought too much about why they are doing the IBC.

If you have been nominated, I’d do it and make the donation. There are special cases and like I mentioned earlier, the media would have a field day if the President of the United States or our own PM did it when the world we live in is experiencing plenty of worldwide conflict. There isn’t a law for not doing the challenge, but at least make a donation if nominated.

There are critics out there in regards to the Ice Bucket Challenge. The waste of water has been mentioned. This is a very valid point, but if donations are being made to various charities, not just the ones first benefiting, then I think it cancels out this argument.

Also, some have taken it too far, with reports of a bullying case in the United States recently on a child who suffers from autism. The important thing about IBC is not to take it seriously. It is a bit of light-hearted fun. At the end of the day though, make sure to remember why you are doing it. You are doing it to help other causes, not to make yourself look like a fool on YouTube and bask in the limelight for it.

Like the no make-up selfie in March, the Ice Bucket Challenge has raised awareness and that is a good thing. I’m sure there will be something else of a groundbreaking context that will sweep social media channels next year. It might be the way to go in the future when it comes to regular donations.

However, the power of the internet can also carry a poisonous edge to it. IBC is the internet craze of the summer but it is starting to lose the ‘cool’ effect. Maybe it is time to put this onto the scrapheap and think of something else. As long as various charities are benefiting from these campaigns, it is good, but it does need to remain fresh in the minds and not become a repetitive stunt.

Categories: America, Charity, Ice, Ice Bucket Challenge, Internet, Money, Social Media, TV, UK, Water

Facebook - Can it survive another 10 years?

By Simon Wright – Follow me on Twitter @Siwri88

A decade ago, the word social media was almost non-existent. It certainly wasn’t a very common word. If you wanted to interact with friends online, it used to be through sites like Friends Reunited or through internet forums/chatrooms.

Nowadays, without social media – the majority of us would struggle to live without it in some form of capacity. There are so many things we can do with this power. We can upload videos in seconds and hope they become the next worldwide sensation. We can express our feelings in 140 characters and use the popular hashtag to see if it trends. We can keep in touch with friends and family, play addicting games and still have the ability to poke one another #notcoolanymore.

Facebook has reached 10 - but is under pressure to keep its audience

The facts are that without this communication, you would be lost in today’s technological planet. Recently, Facebook celebrated its 10^th anniversary. The question is, can it survive another decade?

Facebook’s early power

When Marc Zuckerberg launched Facebook in February 2004, it happened fairly quietly. In fact I don't even remember it. The background to it was documented in the lengthy and slightly tedious movie The Social Network.

It came at a time when Facebook could take supreme control of the social media audience. Its main rival at the time was MySpace and they simply couldn’t compete on the same level as what Zuckerberg could produce with his network. MySpace has since faded into complete obscurity and similar sites like Friends Reunited and Bebo have gone the same way.

I was invited and joined Facebook in July 2007, so that was three years after it was launched. The only use for it in its early days was to organise events and post the occasional status update. In fact when I went to Milton Keynes College after sixth form for two years, I was one of only three students on my media production course to have Facebook. Everyone before that connected and communicated on MySpace. I did have a MySpace profile shortly afterwards but it was so limited. While it wasn’t my ultimate mission to convert everyone, I knew Facebook was the social media channel to have and by the time I left in 2009 for University, all but two had switched platforms.

You could see Facebook’s persuasive power. Certain games have got people occasionally hooked. Others would rather just poke people. Seriously, one of the most annoying e-mail messages you can receive is ‘You have been poked’ on Facebook. I find that really irritating!

Facebook does have its downsides and I expressed some of my own personal problems with the site in a piece I did on social media in general last year.

However it did create a lot of early power and could get really addictive to use at the same time.

New threats

Zuckerberg might have made his money and has continued to evolve Facebook over the years. The simple early days of a News Feed and your Homepage have been replaced with expansive graphics. That sometimes hasn’t always worked and I know the current ‘Timeline’ concept wasn’t greeted with that much enthusiasm to begin with.

As it went through its own trough, the new threats began to arrive. Video calling technology from Skype started to develop. Facebook’s power though was soon about to be targeted by its biggest threat to date. The introduction of Twitter into our world in 2006 was again met with little in terms of immediate impact.

Slowly but surely, Twitter started to take on a vast audience as celebrities/famous people started to use it and get followed by fans or slightly obsessive normal members of the general public. If a famous face doesn’t have Twitter, it is quite surprising. I know the current motorsport king Sebastian Vettel doesn’t have Twitter, nor does the UK’s former PM Tony Blair but you would be hard pressed to find people who don’t have official feeds now.

Popstars, sports professionals, the leading journalists, club associations, actors and actresses; the list goes on. Twitter’s audience continues to grow and that has caused a serious threat and dent to Facebook’s popularity.

The days where Zuckerberg could control the social media audience reach are gone and he has had to adapt to the competition.

Personally, I prefer Twitter and made it into a professional account, moving Facebook into the personal spectrum. I joined Twitter in my first year at University in October 2009 – initially only as it was required for a journalism assignment. Over 3,300 tweets later and I use it now as a source to find out links to news stories as well as to comment on some of the main worldwide topics, especially in sport, television and occasionally political issues – despite not showing huge interest in this field.

Facebook’s power has been hurt also by the rise in private and free messaging tools on smartphones. Whilst the UK riots in the summer of 2011 brought BlackBerry virtually to its knees, the BBM service became a free and useful way to have a private conversation. It was just a shame that it soon became a tool to organise violence and hooliganism. Since then, other services such as WhatsApp Messenger and SnapChat (I only have the former) have taken over from BBM to provide stiff competition in the Instant Messaging market. Not forgetting Instagram, another application that has done very well in recent years to attract a global following.

With all that in mind, Facebook has done well to continue appealing to its market. It has had to adapt because if it hadn’t, it would have gone the way MySpace did - into oblivion.

The future

While Facebook has to be congratulated on reaching the 10^th anniversary of its launch, does it need to do more to keep its audience?

In my view, it does. New emotions and buttons for status updates can be added; security certainly could do with tightened reviews. The ‘Poke’ button needs to be removed and the News Feed could do with another revamp, perhaps in splitting it between your friends and family communication and the likes you have of hobbies/people/interests. For example if I want to see how my friends are doing, I don’t want my newsfeed clustered with updates from Walkers Crisps, The Chemical Brothers and UEFA.com.

While it is important to come up with radical and new ideas to keep the network afresh, Zuckerberg might need to incorporate some of Twitter’s successes to keep him active in a sector that continues to evolve.

I think Facebook will be around for another decade and probably longer than that. However it will need to continue to embrace change to stay fresh and different from its competition. A lack of change in this environment will see it start to struggle to stay near the forefront of social media interaction. 

Categories: BBM, Facebook, February, Internet, Marc Zuckerberg, MySpace, Skype, Social Media, Technology, Twitter