Social media was invented for Indians, says Sree Sreenivasan, a digital media professor at Columbia and co-founder of SAJA, the South Asian Journalists Association. "They take to it naturally and with great passion. It allows them to do two things they love: Tell everyone what they are doing; and stick their noses into other people's business." (The gregarious Prof. Sreenivasan, when last I checked, had 4,995 Facebook friends; he, his wife, and his father—a retired Indian ambassador to the U.N.—are all my Facebook friends. My wife and brother are the professor's friends, too. Q.E.D.)First, let me get this. Varadarajan has Tamil Nadu connections. Sreenivasan could easily be a name from Tamil Nadu, and definitely from southern India. And me, well, .... :) aaah, too many opportunities for sidebar comments!
Anyway, that is an interesting way to look at FB and Indians--how FB fits well into an Indian way of life. More from Varadarajan:
Prof. Sreenivasan of Columbia, no slouch on Twitter himself, says "I tell folks in the U.S. that you ain't seen nothing yet. Wait till Indians really combine their love of the cellphone with social media. Then, Facebook, Twitter, etc, will really explode.For whatever it is worth: Yes, I use Twitter. I blog. I am on Facebook with 38 friends :) ht
"Take the Mumbai terrorist attacks in November 2008, for example, when so much fuss was made about how Twitter had 'truly arrived' with the way it was used during the attacks. Back then, Twitter worked in India only via smartphones and Web browsers, of which there was only a small number. Today, there are hundreds of millions of cell \phones. Imagine if they could all easily Facebook and Twitter via text message!"
Is it any wonder, then, that Facebook has gone to India—gone, I'd say again, to the place where it belongs?
No comments:
Post a Comment