Indian Social Media Landscape

No less than TIME magazine themselves asked whether Facebook is on a decline. While I understand it’s fashionable to ask whether products that are seemingly approaching the plateau of their product life cycle – are dying out, I do not think Facebook’s going anywhere.

And why? (I like to analyse questions like these from an emprical and this-is-how-we-work way rather than cull out numbers, graphs and stats that can be used to say anything)

1. It’s become our Flickr and Picasa: Apart from professional photographers and enthusiasts who benefit from pro features, I can’t recall too many people using either service anymore. Let me put it this way – you’re just back after a vacation. Or a friend’s birthday party. Or just transferring photos you’ve taken using your phone cam. What do you do with them? My guess is, Facebook and tag. And one doesn’t need stats to say how important photos are to the Facebook experience.

This is the second part of the article on how Mr. Barack Obama used social media to win the presidential elections. Do read the first part of the series

4.    Use of Audio Visual Media:

The campaign managers created a page on Flickr where people could see pictures of his campaigns, his personal moments with his family and as a presidential candidate reaching out to people. All these visuals created a sense of him being there everywhere. It gave the opportunity for people to follow his campaign virtually and see the success he was getting in each state.

On his separate channel on You Tube, there are more than 1800+ video snippets uploaded with close to 20 million views. These numbers may still look small when compared to TV but remember all this publicity is FREE. In fact, so famous were Obama’s videos, that it induced Will.i.am to come out with a music video “Yes We Can”