Newsweek reported that protesters are demanding Twitter's CEO to step down if he is unable to remove US President Donald Trump from Twitter. The protesters have launched a campaign "@Jack is complicit" to highlight the role Twitter has played in promoting Donald Trump.

(See the @realDonaldTrump tweet that sparked off the recent outrage)



All the hype about Twitter doesn't seem to be relevant at all. Twitter has been around for almost 10 years now and is one of the oldest social networking sites. In the last decade the site has been able to add and maintain only 330 million monthly active users when reported last and the company has never revealed the number of daily active users worldwide but is believed to be less than half of it's monthly active users. Compare this to the number of internet users worldwide, which is 3.8 billion, nearly half of the world's population! If we look at the top 3 countries of internet users - China has 750 million, India has 460 million and United States has nearly 300 million connected to the internet. 

What is apparent is that the number of Twitter users among internet users worldwide are minuscule. More than 100 million internet users in India are not on Twitter at all.

If we take a moment to stop and distance ourselves from the social media frenzy, we may notice that Twitter may not be relevant to a vast number of audiences, simply because they are not there (and are not following tweets from Donald Trump).

But Twitter is a big deal! Twitter's merit as a platform for breaking news is well established. It is also the broadcast tool of choice for the high and the mighty. It is also great to establish direct contact with influential people. And, the media loves it. It gives journalists  direct access to sources and their commentaries. Twitter derives its influence precisely from this, the fact that it manages to get media amplification for activities on the platform. The current trend of news media reporting on Twitter reactions, Twitter feeds, is what keeps the platform going. It's unfortunate that precious media space gets used up in such a manner, pushing issues of the day out of the public discourse.


It would be interesting to see if media decides to ignore Twitter updates of important people and what that would do to Twitter's business. The media should also stop obsessing about Donald Trump's tweets as he operates within a highly evolved democratic framework of institutions with robust checks and balances. It should recognize when it gets played.

Email ThisBlogThis!Share to TwitterShare to FacebookShare to Pinterest

 'Social Media Detox' is good. I say this to all those of you who checked on me to figure what happened to my blog and where was I to be found on social media. If you write on a topic that is not necessarily mainstream, the 'noise' in social media and the content blitzkrieg, indeed gets to you.

We tend to lose sense of what's important and what's not, what's relevant and what's not.

TIME ASIA COVER MARCH 10, 2014

Recently,  I got a taste of what I was missing as my reading habits became increasingly 'social'. It was on a long flight back to India where I happened to pick up the TIME magazine as I settled on my seat after dinner. Years ago I was a regular reader of the magazine and was now shocked to see now how much the magazine had shrunk!

It almost seemed like a pamphlet, the last few pages of a news magazine trying to hold its own against social media onslaught.

I don't really know how the magazine is doing in its digital format, but I as read through the stories, news analysis and updates it was the magazine I always knew - solid research, impeccable reporting, depth of analysis but most importantly stellar news judgement and news selection. The role of an editorial team in planning and presenting content was but obvious.

It's not the digital bit that I am wary about, but the social bit.

Social media not only makes us publishers of our content but also offers us more choices in terms of what we read. But our reading habits and information gathering skills again, sometimes, are limited by our awareness or the lack of it, exposure, biases and habits. We may not always make the best choices in what we read and sometimes, as I realized while reading the magazine on my flight back, it's good to have professionals to help keep our focus on topics that are important. We need our editors and reporters back and find a way to keep them at the job they do for us and not let the social media deluge take over completely.

The competitive noise of social media has its own place but is definitely not an answer to everything. I leave you with this editorial from the The Washington Post: The Dumbing of America, by Susan Jacoby that has interesting insights into how the proliferation of video content potentially affects how we make sense of our world.

"(We are)...in danger of losing our hard-won cultural capital to a virulent mixture of anti-intellectualism, anti-rationalism and low expectations."

--

Email ThisBlogThis!Share to TwitterShare to FacebookShare to Pinterest

• Facebook and Twitter are emerging as the top preferred social platforms to connect with bloggers in India. Google+ is the (non-Facebook, non-Twitter) social network bloggers spend the most time on, while Pinterest is fast emerging in popularity
• CSR campaigns are the most recollected digital campaign
• Conventional brand ambassadors like Aamir Khan, Sachin Tendulkar, Amitabh Bachchan and Shah Rukh Khan, still make for the favourite brand ambassadors

Kudos to the team of Karan Bhujbal, Tanay, Nikunj, Radhika, Ragini, Deepti, Anamika  who conducted, compiled and completed this survey!

Email ThisBlogThis!Share to TwitterShare to FacebookShare to Pinterest

Classification of blogs in India by www.indiblogger.in

Email ThisBlogThis!Share to TwitterShare to FacebookShare to Pinterest