Niv Calderon

This article is part of the Propaganda Portal project of Spinwatch.

Niv Calderon is an Israeli social media consultant.

Calderon's Linkedin resumé highlights his role in HelpUsWin.org, which he describes as follows:

social media presence and crisis management for the Israeli For[e]ign Ministry during operation Cast Lead in Dec '08 and Jan '09.

According to PBS.org, Calderon was hired for the project by StandWithUs in the opening days of the conflict:

Niv Calderon, 29, commanded an Israeli social media war room. The day before the war broke out, he was worried about his high-tech start up and moving apartments. But once bombs began falling, he dropped his daily activities and connected himself with Stand With Us, a U.S.-based Israel advocacy group. They hired him to organize an ad-hoc social media "command center" to promote a pro-Israel viewpoint.

"It wasn't about the money at all. I would have done it for free. It was all from the heart," Calderon told me in an interview. Calderon's first step was to organize a group of about 20 media-savvy internationals who spoke French, German, Dutch, Russian, English and Spanish and were willing to go AWOL from their day jobs for a few weeks.

Calderon issued the following appeal on Facebook and on his website on 29 December 2008:

Things we need right now:

1- We're building our personnel lists now so we need a list of people you know who are willing to donate their time and passion for this cause. we need the list with these columns filled up: full name, phone, email, twitter, facebook, blog, field of specialty, languages.

He provided a further update on HelpUsWin's activities on 1 January 2009:

So what have we been doing so far?

Fighting the "First Social War" made us realize we are fighting a multi-platform, multi-language, cross-cultural, cross-technology battle. Two days ago(Tuesday) I took part in building the Jerusalem Social Media Situation Room for the recent Israel Hamas conflict. Yesterday I've joined forces (along with other friends) with the second situation room in the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya which generously hosts us and let us use its facilities, personnel and connections.

The post highlighted the following activities:

This is what we've got so far:

1- A blog: Help Us Win. The center of attention.

2- A multi language Status Report center that can show you (currently in English and French) what's going on all over the social web, divided to tabs for the different subjects and languages.

3- A Recruiting System - please register if you wanna help.

4- a Twitter account.

5- Two Facebook groups, in English and French.

6- A Press Releases Blog for government and IDF press releases. They should be more available anyway.

According to Calderon, the tools used by HelpUsWin up to this point included: Gmail, Google Docs, Wordpress, Tumblr, Picasa Web, Netvibes, Twitter, Facebook, Youtube and Wufoo Forms.

Calderon issued a further appeal on 3 January.

I'm now working on a paper to produce new goals, new destinations, new ideas on how to stand in our online multi-lingual, multi-cultural battle.

This is where I need you.

1- I'm looking for social thinkers from across the globe to produce breakthrough ideas and that can get them done for us.

2- I'm looking for SEO and SEM experts for advice and implementation.

3- I'm looking for cartoon artists for a project we want to create.

Affiliations

• StandWithUs International
• HelpUsWin.org

Contact

• Twitter: twitter.com/nivcalderon
• Website: http://www.nivcalderon.com/