Online reality buys your debts to own your life

Are you charismatic, jobless, drowning in debt, with only a carrot left for your next lunch? Then you could be next in line to be saved by the debt monkey.

‘We pay off all your debts but then we own you!’, says the official slogan of Debtmonkey.tv, a new internet tv reality starting today.

Ben Foster, a self-styled anti-reality YouTube box-blogger, was the lucky winner of a competition which attracted thousands of applications. But, as this video shows, he’s still not sure whether to endure the experience, though he admits he’s ecastic he was freed of all his debts:

Debtmonkey.tv can also be followed on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

Meanwhile Italian news agency ADNKronos today reports that more Italians have resorted to online micro-lending since the start of the financial crisis with web-sites as www.zopa.it proving to be a massive hit.

Global problems require social solutions

I’ve had problems logging onto the internet all morning but, finally, I managed.

I am still energised by the extremely important role the inernet played yesterday during President Obama’s inaguruation. It was fantastic seeing people comment on Twitter and Facebook and watching the inauguration live on Cnn.com/live. 

However, as soon as I came back to check the market’s reaction following Obama’s inauguration speech, I found that that the outlook on Wall Street was still bleak. Why?

Wall Street thrives on results. But, so far, we have only seen rhetoric coming from Obama. So that might be a reason. However, I think there’s more than what meets the eye.

Let’s assume that financial markets are places where people meet to take decisions. Now, we all know that the best decisions are informed-decisions. So we need informaton in order to take decisions.

Are we sure the kind of information markets are receiving is enough? I don’t think so. The current crisis is proof of wrong decisions taken on wrong information.

This means information needs to change. How? Social media might be the answer.

In fact, the World Economic Forum, which groups more than 2,500 experts from al over the world is this year using MySpace and YouTube to get the reactions of normal people ahead of a summit with a special title: Shaping the Post-Crisis World.

The post-crisis world should be based on greater social itneraction. We are already witnessing the beginning of change. But more needs to be done.

‘Journey to Gaza’ – Welcome to Malta’s first beat-blog

Finally, a media organisation has launched its first beat-blog.

Media and blogs are not yet in love in Malta. The power of blogging, especially beat-blogging, is in fact underestimated by most, if not all, media organisations in Malta. However, MediaToday has launched yesterday its first beatblog – Journey to Gaza.

Journey to Gaza, penned by Karl Schembri, MaltaToday deputy editor, shall follow the journey of  Sanaa el-Nahhal, a Palestinian from Gaza.She has ‘single-handedly collected humanitarian aid from the [Maltese] public last week’, the blog states.

Just a small comment on the title. There’s an epic feel to the blog title, ‘Journey to Gaza’. It reminds me of The Odyssey. And in fact, the story Karl’s following is living up to the title’s expectations as the Maltese embassy in Cairo took  nothing less than 26 hours to issue a document which the convoy needed to go into Gaza.

I shall be closely following this blog in the following days and encourage you to do so as well.