Free hugs

Last week, Google bought YouTube.com for 1.65 billion US Dollars. Against a backdrop of many debates that were sparked off by the deal, there lies one very noticeable fact – that the Internet is slowly but surely becoming a multimedia phenomenon in the true sense of the word. Take the story of the ‘Free hugs’ campaign that was started by Juan Mann in the streets of Sydney, Australia and ‘The sick puppies’ - a rock band that barely had a crowd of more than twenty people for their gigs around town. Simon Moore, the band’s lead guitarist and singer saw Juan and his ‘Free hugs’ campaign which he recorded on his video camera, and later dubbed with their song ‘All the same’. Simon posted the video on YouTube last September and in a phenomenon that surprised even YouTube, the video was viewed by hundreds and thousands of people every day, launching the ‘free hugs’ campaign and the little known Sydney rock band into world attention. -Haren