twitter india

Twitter India is going big time on capitalizing the chatter around ICC world cup and they have broght back Hashflags, which were introduced in 2010.
Users can Tweet with hashflags by mentioning three-letter country code, and the respective country’s flag will appear right next to the hashtag.

There’s nothing social networks like more than big-ol-sporting events which draw in masses of people sharing, voicing their opinions and showing support for their favourite teams.

With Twitter and Facebook being engaged in a war to dominate the Indian market, it’s no wonder that they’ve launched campaigns surrounding the ICC Cricket World Cup 2015.
Here’s a statistic from Facebook that says it all – Out of the 1.3 billion people on Facebook, over 100 million of them are interested in cricket. Moreover, 45% of all the people who like cricket on Facebook are from India.
In the runnup to the World Cup that kicks off on February 14, Facebook is publicizing itself as ‘The Biggest Cricket Stadium In The World’. Obviously the social network is looking at the increased revenues it can earn from advertisers who’re looking to get in on Cricket madness
Facebook’s tips for online marketers – Target people in countries such as India with cricket-related messages; use Facebook’s video ads to develop cricket-themed messages; use Facebook’s demographics to target audiences based on age, gender and interests such as cricket.
The other giant Twitter has announced that it will take a similar approach to the one it used last year during the Brazilian Football World Cup. The social network has rolled out a cricket-themed timeline providing updates on games with images and commentary. Further, users will also be able to add things such as flags to flair up their tweets.

Match timelines will allow users to see all the score updates as well as Tweets related to that game from within their network or official accounts. Users won’t need to follow their favourite players or teams to see their updates, instead simply clicking on their country flags will let them do so.
Tournament timelines will give users all the buzz surrounding the World Cup and will have match schedules, upon clicking which users will be directed to respective match timelines.
While India isn’t the only nation that’s participating in the ICC Cricket World Cup 2015, for Facebook and Twitter they might as well be.
As far as G+ is concerned, it seems Google has given up on bringing community engagement to the social network?

With Twitter increasingly becoming a political proponent in India, the government seems to be stepping up its assault to curb free speech.

According to Twitter’s latest Transparency Report, the Indian government made 41 account information requests during the July 1 to December 31 period, up from 16 in the first half of 2014. The number of accounts affected by government requests went up from 44 in the previous period to 1,938 in the latest one.
The social network says it complied with 22% of the requests made, where some sort of information was produced, but doesn’t go into specifics. One removal request was based on a court order, while 14 others were made by government agencies/police. While 15 takedown requests were made, only one Twitter account was withheld.

While the Indian government’s move to regulate the Twitterspace doesn’t come anywhere close to what countries like the US are trying to do, the trend of information requests does seem to be on an upswing.
Also while the government’s move is seen as largely negative, there is a need to regulate social media to a certain extent, a example of which we got to see when the government cracked down on the pro-ISIS Twitter handle last year.

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Twitter’s India traffic is nothing great to talk about, but the adoption by mainstream media and various other professions will surely make it much bigger and louder.

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