Facebook, the social networking giant, has just announced that it is setting up its first office in Asia,
in the southern city of Hyderabad. At the last count, over 8.5 million Indians were Facebook users and another 3 million were on Twitter.
Just what is it that makes these sites such an indispensable part of our lives?
if you heard the name jack dorsey, you’d probably shrug and not pay the least attention. But if you knew him to be the man who invented the finger tapping exercise that helps you keep abreast of the world every minute, your attention might get piqued. Dorsey is the man who gave twitter to you and the world, the newest and the fastest growing means of social networking that has literally shrunk the world to the size of a mobile phone screen.
There seem to be very few in urban India, who aren’t on Facebook or Twitter. On the last count, out of Facebook’s 400 million users, over 8.5 million came from India. Compare this to early 2008, when there were 1.6 million users or 3.5 million in early 2009. While India ranks fourth on Facebook’s worldwide traffic rank, it stands 11th on Twitter rankings. Facebook is so impressed by the growth that its only office in Asia will now be located in Hyderabad. It is also now available in six Indian languages — Hindi, Punjabi, Bengali, Telugu, Tamil, and Malayalam, which means it has penetrated deep within the country where very little English is spoken. It helps that the site is now concentrating on mobile device applications, a shrewd move some would say because of India’s growing mobile users.
How it all started: The harbinger of social networking in India is undoubtedly Orkut, which exploded on the Indian scene in 2003 and went on a popularity high spree. The opportunity to meet new people online, make friends or know more about your existing list of pals is an irresistible aphrodisiac and Indians could not escape the lure. For the first time, it provided a platform for many users to voice their opinions on various issues that would be noticed by others too, via the various communities and groups the site offered. But what it changed the most was the outlook of the traditional shy Indian youth, who could shed her/his inhibitions, chat up with a member of the opposite sex and break the bounds of conservatism within the protective layer of the computer screen.
Then Facebook entered the scene. Though it was already gaining ground in the US, Orkut maintained its perch at the top for a long time in India. But eventually, it has had to give ground to Facebook in the country because of the latter’s seemingly inexhaustible storehouse of applications, features and stricter privacy settings. At one point, over 7.1 million Indians were hooked on to Orkut, according to a survey done by TechCrunch. Today, it is down to about 1 million. So much ground has Google’s social network lost to Facebook and now Twitter worldwide, that its number of users had fallen to 51 million in September last year, down from 54.5 million in July, according to comScore, a US-based body that tracks popularity of sites. Facebook is about six times larger than Orkut worldwide, and even Twitter recently surpassed it with 58.4 million global visitors. It didn’t help that Orkut was overrun by porn and the police, thanks to the base intents of its users, and the hate groups and stalkers drawn to it.
Facebook, on the other hand, had a whiff of pedigree, privilege and exclusivity about it, since it was founded by Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg and was originally restricted to students of Harvard and other Ivy League colleges; an impression strongly reinforced when an Ivy League study last year concluded that Facebook users tended to be better-educated and wealthier than those on other networking sites.
As Facebook gained in popularity, there occurred a paradigm shift in how and who uses these networking sites. Mukund Awasthi, a blogger and one of the first Indians to get on Orkut when the phenomenon began, analysing the shift writes, “A couple of years ago, having an Orkut profile was cool, hep and well, sort of, useless for me because I was never online. Now, on the other hand I am online almost whenever I am awake and I somehow still find it really difficult to manage time for Orkut. A friend of mine recently asked me to join Facebook and these were her words..."I am sure you will love it. It’s damn addictive and damn cool. The stupid quizzes are too good.” She was so right. I was addicted to Facebook almost immediately. Even now, I might not get time to say hi to a friend but I play Mafia Wars every day for 10 minutes at least.”
Right at the start, Facebook was a means to let the world know what you are doing or thinking at a particular time. The site was, literally, an altar for personal trivia. It meant that you could put up your photographs, even those embarrassing ones shot on a holiday, play games and voyeuristically, know everything there is to know about your friend/neighbour/boyfriend/girlfriend/husband/wife’s life, or at least as much as they allowed you to know. A Facebook profile shares details on where you've worked and studied, your addresses and numbers, your favourite books, films and quotes, whether you are hungover from “that fabulous party on the weekend” to your pet’s name, everything put up as public messages on the "fun" or "super" wall.
It also simply meant that your private life was no longer private. “The unfortunate thing is, that most people put their entire life online,” says Siddhi Varma, professor in Jawaharlal Nehru University’s sociology department. “If you are hugging your girlfriend at a party or even in the privacy of a room, the photographs are all on Facebook; if you have broken up with your boyfriend/girlfriend, it is on Facebook. It’s like a reality show playing online all the time. It's a reinvention of the notion of privacy.”
Over time, however, people moved on to using social networking sites like Facebook as a means to market their business or network. Gone are the days when you’d log-in to simply see what your buddies were up to, check their updates and pictures, exchange remarks and comments. Now, social networking has assumed an importance that far outscores a person’s need for simple, light internet chatter. The features and applications offered on sites such as Facebook make it easy for users to network on a more professional level. Facebook has literally lifted networking from the realm of college users and placed it as a marketing and advertising tool of business and other related activities.
Take, for instance, Sahil Makhija. If you’ve had anything to do with the rock scene in India – attended a gig, RSVP’d an event, or even so much as shown interest in the happenings in your city – you’ve very likely already got mail, wall posts or event invites from Makhija. He’s the frontman of well-known metal band, Demonic Resurrection, who’s used the medium to maximum effect to promote his bands and music in the country and abroad.
At last count Makhija had 5,000 friends on his Facebook profile, his band, DR, had 2,500 fans, his own fan page had 1,500 fans. “Where else could you mobilise 10,000 people from a single platform?” says the musician who admits to spending a majority of his time every day on Facebook. “Every message I post, every status update now goes out to more than 10,000 people. I send people mails about every show we’re playing, all the news that’s happening with the band, promotions, volunteering to help with the distribution… anything at all and the response is immediate and effective.” His burgeoning fan base has now led the musician to propose another novel idea: offering college festivals and show promoters a marketing package worth Rs 1 lakh for every show the band is booked for. (Makhija’s recent status update read: Remember this kids, when you book Demonic Resurrection or Workshop for your college festival/club show/corporate show/music festival you get a FREE marketing package from Demonstealer worth Rs 1,00,000).
How does this work? “We offer to plug the sponsor on all our mailers, posters, Facebook updates, Twitter posts, texts, fliers… what have you. We have access to the advertisers or sponsors’ target audience and we’re using our credibility as a popular band to throw our weight behind the sponsors. We’re just extending the advertisers’ scope into social networking, to a TG that they would not have access to the same way that we do. So now colleges or promoters can offer their sponsors (the sponsors of the show) an extra marketing avenue. And it’s working,” says Makhija.
A lot of people use Facebook to meet new people online, get an idea about mutual spheres of interest and have an option to connect on a more professional level. What you have on your screen is a medium of gaining knowledge that is stripped of the coldness of a news channel but yet serious enough so as not be disregarded as idle chatter.
Now there are designers advertising their lines, authors and musicians spreading the ‘word’ about their latest opus, people from everyday walks of life putting up gadgets and other stuff for sale, various other self-employed professionals discussing and marketing their services – the list of business activities is as endless as it is diverse.
Karishma Shahani, who owns an independent handbag label, Princesse K, markets her products on Facebook through a business page, along with her sister Mahek. “There are huge divisions of networks available on Facebook,” she says. “For instance, networks are divided as per country/university. These have also helped us get new references via some of our personal contacts. Overall we are able to get the best of quantity and quality on Facebook as it not only allows us to include members from diverse networks but also lends a niche outlook when it comes to filtering these same members in individual networks.”
Revati Dilip Borawake, 30, uses Facebook for her business. Her brand of apparels, for both men and women, is called REVA. “I love the camera, I'm a trained actor and I also write. That's how I hit on the idea of publishing my albums and poetry on Facebook. My website is still under construction, so this was the perfect medium for me to display my work and stay in touch with people without the hassles of emailing people about my whereabouts. I change my status update once a day and the content depends on the event on that day or my mood on that day."
For 27-year-old PR executive Anchal Ghosh, who handles clients like Satya Paul, Tie Rack London and Bwitch premium lingerie for Genesis Colors, Facebook presents a unique marketing opportunity for businesses through the creation of business pages. “We launched Tie Rack in India in 2009 and now we have created a page called Tie Rack London in India. Through this platform, we regularly tell our fans/ customers about the new product range, about the presence of the brand pan India and about unique offers.”
Author William Dalrymple is “an enthusiastic user of Facebook”. He has used the events application to organise several literary events, like the Jaipur Literary Festival. Even politicians aren’t far behind in using Facebook as a means to get back to their opponents as the Kashmir’s first family, the Abdullahs, found to their disgust. A war of words broke out between ruling National Congress and Opposition People’s Democratic Party in Jammu and Kashmir over the posting of pictures on the site, which caricatured Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, his father Farooq Abdullah and grandfather late Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah as characters of the film 3 Idiots. PDP’s Mehbooba Mufti promptly sent out an SMS, which read, "Someone posted three idiots on Facebook. Three Abdullahs! Such hatred and anger that could consume everyone,” while asking people to check the photograph on Facebook.
Oh, by the way, Omar Abdullah checks Facebook regularly on his BlackBerry. "You can really get sucked into it," he says. “I am often flooded with messages from people wanting to discuss Kashmir politics.”
Krishna Byre Gowda, the current MLA of the Bytarayanapura constituency in Bangalore, successfully utilised Facebook, to promulgate his candidature in the last elections. His Facebook page titled ‘Krishna Byre Gowda for a Better Bangalore’ has a following of 1,769 supporters, many of whom are not part of his governed constituency. In his most recent post on his Facebook page, the politician made a mass appeal to the members of his group to come out and vote in order to ensure fair elections. His punch-line “Krishna – Because I want to live in an inclusive society” rings different from the standard ‘Vote for….’ slogans that abuse the walls and side walks of most parts of the city.
Apart from the elections, this Facebook page has been successfully used in the past to popularise several of the worthy events that have been conducted by the MLA within his constituency. A recent pension and senior citizen camp, conducted on 7 March 2010 saw more than 30 members of this Facebook page offer their confirmation to attend the event. Several who did not post their confirmation also managed to attend the event, thereby taking the attendance of his Facebook followers alone to more than 100.
His post requesting volunteers for the BBMP election fetched him 67 confirmed replies. This particular post called for members of his Facebook page to come forward and offer their time in helping with the campaign, else to design material for his campaign or help manage his database for the election. He also encouraged interested members to leave contact numbers as well as available time slots in case they were interested in working within the actual election set-up.
Gowda feels that common pages on social networking websites work best to establish contact with an educated and socially conscious group of individuals. He also says that the non-intrusive nature of these sites allows people to make a choice about what they want to read and ignore that which does not interest them. “By allowing people the choice to either follow your progress though this page, or participate in events and camps being conducted, the members never feel that their hand is being forced into anything. I feel this freedom of choice is instrumental in maintaining the image I have strived to make for myself.”
The Twitter Mania: But even Facebook cannot compare to the Twitter.com juggernaut, the micro-blogging site that has revolutionised social networking like nothing before. Since its inception in 2006, Twitter is on a roll that seems just ceaseless. Though Twitter is fairly new in India, the net savvy and networking denizens of the country have already recognised its potential and latched themselves on to it.
From a critically observational point of view, Twitter is very innocuous: a micro-blogging service that enables its users to exchange messages of upto a 140 character limit each. But it has proved to be enough and suddenly tweets are everywhere and about everything, from how you missed your morning cup of tea, to the new pair of high heels that you so desperately wanted to buy but couldn’t, to how the car mechanic wasted two hours of your time.
According to Rohan Joshi, a 27-year-old TV presenter and stand-up comic, who is extremely popular on Twitter, “Twitter is a lot less cluttered than Facebook. The biggest difference is that you have to already know someone to join their Facebook circle. Also, while I do have an Facebook page, I don’t really want to know about my friend’s Farmville status. I follow people on Twitter who have something interesting to say – they could be from any part of the world.” 22-year-old writer Shaheen Bhatt, who is now more active on Twitter than Facebook says, “Facebook has basically become an online photo album. I use Twitter to receive info and also put out any interesting info I might have. It's also almost like a new improved search engine.”
For CNBC producer, Dharmesh Gandhi (23), Twitter is a place to vent his emotions, a place where he can get real time updates from his friends. “I can interact with people here and it's not just about Farmville and Mafia Wars. I follow people who have similar interests as me. I haven't been on Facebook in over a year.”
If Facebook and other networking sites brought the world closer, Twitter shrunk it even further for you, and not at all in a negative sense. It gave most people access to politicians, stars, sportspeople and musicians who were once inaccessible. If your favourite celebrity tweets that he couldn’t find his blue shirt or what his day has been like, it is like knowing a little personal and intimate detail of the latter’s life, which gives you a sense of closeness and self-importance.
Superstar Shah Rukh Khan, who stayed away from blogging and Facebook unlike other stars like Aamir Khan and Amitabh Bachchan, ultimately succumbed to the temptation at the insistence of his friend, Karan Johar. He tweets at 1amsrk. He says, “It felt odd at first, but Karan suggested I should open up a bit, share my life. I think I have thoroughly enjoyed the experience.” Today, he has over two lakh followers, following every little detail that he opts to tweet.
Most of it might be idle chatter, but Twitter is also an effective tool in spreading awareness, getting feedback and in promotion of self. Unlike other networking sites, you can easily surf Twitter on your mobile handset and in this case, Twitter’s character limit is a blessing in disguise; typing short messages saves time and effort, and if the rule says keep it short, why complain.
Then there are the pass-it-along tweets, random bits of information that sometimes come in handy. But most importantly, it is the instant updates you get that might redefine your life or the world at large that makes Twitter such a powerful tool of networking. Somebody might tweet that the floor in her house is shaking and learn from the seven o’clock news bulletin that an earthquake had actually occurred in that area.
In case you are one of those who wonder what the fuss is really about, and why tweeting a few inanities on a site every ten minutes/one hour/six hours/two days, whatever, or putting up trivial data about your day/relationship status/state of mind should really matter, or one of those who are really tired of those ‘add-on’ Facebook messages by people you're indifferent to or actually dislike, you are probably among the minority in India, or clearly above 40 years of age. For the rest of urban India, social networking is part of their daily routine.
