Oh, well...

Technorati Tags: Racism,Australia,Times of India,media

There's a funny feeling I get when I post on this blog. Its like I'm talking to nobody, yet talking to myself. Maybe that's what its all about....hmmm.

Anyway, Its been 10 months and life has made sure I've been shit busy all along. I'm settling into a 9-5 thingy once more, but this time its different. (When i write this, it feels like one of those Hindi movie directors that introduces his film as a "different" one, for lack of anything else to position it as) ... oh, well. :-D

Since I'm here, thought I might as well leave a token to restart our conversations. The recent talk about racism in OZland and those attacks...it's all a big funny....or so I believe. While racism anywhere should be laughed at, I fail to understand why a petty crime (mugging) is being converted into such a national issue for weeks on end, and then suddenly dropped like a hot potato. What's happening to Bhajji's nephew's case, what about that dude who's still in coma? Does anybody know? I'm sure NDTV's australian correspondent (forget the person's name) is clueless as to why he doesn't see himself on prime-time anymore. Poor him, he prolly din't know how the media fraternity functions - either that or he had really high expectations... oh, well... 

Back to the topic - it irks me to see that we citizens allow the media to bloat up petty crimes (racially incited or otherwise), while at the same time we're happy to see an issue (however small or big in it's significance) suddenly cease to even exist in the eyes of the media. I remember having a chat about this with a few friends over bakery tea and cigarettes, where all I heard was appreciation for an editiorial (presumably the last one focussing on OZViolence) written early June in TOI. While its well written and all, the focus seems to be on delivering well-structured back-handed compliments to OZ on being racist ‘just like India’. It’s as good as stoking the fire by telling the people that it’s okay… oh, well…

*puts his virtual pen down*

*goes for a toilet break and forgets he has a blog*

Vidd.

Social Media Demographics in India

Technorati Tags: Social Media,India,Twitter,Facebook,PR 2.0,internet

While just being a Tweeter in India today is being perceived as being ‘plugged in’, there’s yet a long way to go wrt Social Media in India. Some of the statistics here seem to validate this argument. Thought I’d share it with you.

While India has had overwhelming print / TV media eco-system (over 25 news channels, 20+ national newspapers, over 150 registered vernaculars, etc.), social media is yet to evolve to a stage where marketers start taking it seriously. The growth is rapid, however, it is still only the beginning of the transition phase for Social. A large part of it could be attributed to the Indian psyche of being less dialogue-oriented and more functional online behavior. Having said that, 52% of the current netizen population is under 25 and most of them spend time online going to dating & matrimonial sites. :-)

Social media might be premature, but before we say ‘Slumdog’ we could be left out of the lightning-fast internet community unless we create a platform for ourselves and utilize it to connect with our audience!

I’ve been attending a few conferences / workshops on Social Media and my honest opinion is that if you’ve attended one, you’ve done all of them. The reason being that fundamentally, they all say the same thing: “We can give you tips & tricks, but largely, most of it is DIY!" I completely agree with this, as you can NEVER use social media effectively with cob-webs in your head and more importantly, you’ll never be able to communicate well if you don’t try enough! Just go out there and start your own twitter profile/ FB page about something you believe in. And when you do, get back to be and give me some tips. :-P

 

More later,

Vidd.