Social media | CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon

18/03/2016

How Modi’s Social Media Skills Earned Him a Spot on Time’s Internet Influencers List – India Real Time – WSJ

Since Narendra Modi took office nearly two years ago, his social media might has helped cultivate his international profile as an Indian prime minister who receives rockstar welcomes at concert venues and sports arenas overseas, shares smiling selfies with other heads of state and boasts among the biggest banks of Twitter followers of world political leaders.

This week, he burnished that image by winning a spot for a second consecutive year on Time magazine’s list of the 30 most influential people on the Internet.

The roundup of online luminaries describes Mr. Modi as an “Internet star,” noting that the prime minister, unlike other world leaders, uses social media to break news and conduct diplomacy. With 18.7 million followers, Mr. Modi ranks second only to President Barack Obama among political leaders.

The magazine’s picks of Internet A-listers also includes U.S. presidential hopeful Donald Trump, who has nearly 7 million Twitter followers, artist Kanye West and the author of the Harry Potter series, J.K. Rowling.

Mr. Modi used Twitter to announce Mr. Obama’s visit to India last year as the guest of honor at India’s Republic Day parade, and signaled a breakthrough in tense relations with neighboring Pakistan by tweeting that India’s foreign secretary would travel to that country. He tweets in several languages, shouting out to other world leaders on their birthdays and congratulating them on election victories.

The digital-savvy leader and his Bharatiya Janata Party’s social media team runs a full-time, data-driven operation. It coins hashtags and uses what one member called “online volunteers”–a digital army to retweet and comment on posts relating to the prime minister and his policies–to keep him trending.

They also use specialized software to study social media behavior and track the ebbs and flows of online sentiment to Mr. Modi’s speeches and actions, funneling their analysis to help craft his message–and to tweak it when traffic turns unfavorable.

Mr. Modi appears to have become a regular on Time’s rankings. Last year, he was on its “100 Most Influential People” list where Mr. Obama called him India’s “reformer-in-chief.”

Source: How Modi’s Social Media Skills Earned Him a Spot on Time’s Internet Influencers List – India Real Time – WSJ

Posted in Economics, India alert, Politics | 1 Comment »

Tags: Addition, Android operating system, Application programming interface, Bernie Sanders, Bleacher Report, Buffer, Business, Button, Social media, Twitter

20/06/2014

Ensure English is Used on Social Media, Jayalalithaa Writes to PM Modi: Full Text of Letter – NDTV

Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa has written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to ensure the urgent amendment of an instruction that asks government departments to use Hindi for tweets and other social media posts.

Following is the full text of her letter:

It has come to my notice that the Ministry of Home Affairs has issued two Office Memoranda, the first by the Official Language Department of the Ministry of Home Affairs (O.M.No.12019/03/2014-OL, dated 10.3.2014) and the second by the Co-ordination Division of the Ministry of Home Affairs (O.M.No.11020/01/2013-Hindi, dated 27.5.2014). These Office Memoranda direct that official accounts on social media like Facebook, Twitter, blogs, Google and You Tube which at present use only English should compulsorily use Hindi, or both Hindi and English, with Hindi being written above or first. This makes the use of Hindi mandatory and English optional.

As you are aware, as per the Official Languages Rules, 1976, communications from a Central Government office to a State or Union Territory in Region “C” or to any office (not being a Central Government office) or person in such State shall be in English. This provision has been introduced following the introduction of a mandatory proviso to Section 3(1) of the Official Languages Act, 1963, by an amendment in 1968 which states as follows:-

“Provided that the English language shall be used for purposes of communication between the Union and a State which has not adopted Hindi as its official language”.

In this context, while the Office Memoranda have been primarily made applicable to Government of India officers and offices located in “Region A”, social media by their very nature are not only accessible to all persons on the internet but meant to be a means of communication to persons living in all parts of India including those in “Region C”. People located in “Region C” with whom the Government of India communication needs to be in English, will not have access to such public information if it is not in English. This move would therefore be against the letter and spirit of the Official Languages Act, 1963. As you are aware, this is a highly sensitive issue and causes disquiet to the people of Tamil Nadu who are very proud of and passionate about their linguistic heritage.

Hence, I request you to kindly ensure that instructions are suitably modified to ensure that English is used on social media.

via Ensure English is Used on Social Media, Jayalalithaa Writes to PM Modi: Full Text of Letter – NDTV.

Posted in India alert, languages, Social & cultural | Leave a Comment »

Tags: Government of India, Hindi, India, J. Jayalalithaa, Narendra Modi, Office Memoranda, Official Languages Act, Prime minister, Social media, Tamil Nadu

10/02/2014

THE WORLD’S TOP 10 MOST INNOVATIVE COMPANIES IN CHINA

From: http://www.fastcompany.com/most-innovative-companies/2014/industry/china

THERE’S A STUBBORN MEME THAT CLAIMS CHINA HAS NO CULTURE OF INNOVATION. IN ACTUALITY, IT’S SHAPING GLOBAL BUSINESS TRENDS, MOST NOTABLY IN SOCIAL MEDIA. MAMMOTH NETWORKS SUCH AS TENCENT‘S WECHAT, FOR EXAMPLE, ARE NOT SIMPLY FACEBOOK COPYCATS–THEY’VE SPARKED THE MESSAGING WARS OCCURRING ON AMERICAN SOIL AMONG APPS LIKE SNAPCHAT AND KIK, AND CONTRIBUTE BILLIONS TO THE WORLD’S RICHEST COUNTRY.

BY FAST COMPANY STAFF

1. XIAOMI

For launching low-cost, high-quality smart TVs and -phones to steal market share from industry stalwarts.

2. BEIJING GENOMICS INSTITUTE

For making DNA sequencing mass-market.

3. CHINA’S LUXURY BRANDS

For greeting its booming middle and upper classes with distinctly native offerings.

4. HAIER

For letting its 80,000 employees self-organize and oust ineffective leaders—a bold approach to innovating the fridge and microwave business.

5. TENCENT

For pummeling the Chinese social-networking competition and sending chills through Silicon Valley with a 10-terabyte storage offer.

6. GEAK

For making wearable tech closer to vogue with a ring that syncs to phones and shares contacts via fist bump.

7. PHANTOM

For clearing the air in Beijing homes with the app-controlled EcoTower. .

8. BAIDU

For moving from search to smart cameras, giving users their own Internet-enabled monitoring devices.

9. YY

For letting anyone become a star in the world’s most-crowded country.

10. COOTEK

For tapping into user demand for faster typing.

Posted in China alert, Economics, innovation, Technology | Leave a Comment »

Tags: Beijing, China, GLOBAL BUSINESS TRENDS, HAIER, Silicon Valley, Social media, TENCENT, Tencent Holdings, WeChat, Xiaomi Tech

25/09/2013

Social media not a game changer in 2014 elections

Reuters: “Political parties in India are relying more on social media ahead of the 2014 election as a way of increasing voter support, even though politicians in general do not expect such efforts to significantly influence election results.

Parties are trying to ride the digital wave by conducting workshops to teach leaders and foot soldiers how to improve engagement on websites such as Facebook and Twitter.

The country of 1.2 billion people had around 165 million Internet users as of March, the third-largest in the world, according to data from India’s telecommunications regulator. But the number of social media users is likely to grow to about 80 million by mid-2014, a report released in February said.

For the Bharatiya Janata Party, India’s main opposition party, social media is helping as an “accelerator” in conveying their messages to the public.

“I don’t call it a game changer, but an accelerator in this election … it’s definitely setting a narrative, it is influencing a lot of people,” Arvind Gupta, head of the BJP’s IT division, said in an interview.

via India Insight.

Posted in India alert, Leadership change, Politics, social media, Technology | Leave a Comment »

Tags: Bharatiya Janata Party, BJP, current-events, India, Indian National Congress, internet, Narendra Modi, politics, Social media, technology

23/07/2013

China’s Smartphone Generation

BusinessWeek: “Every day at noon, workers spill out through the red gates of the Xue Fulan garment factory on the outskirts of Beijing to enjoy one precious hour of lunchtime freedom. They are mostly in their late teens or early 20s, living in no-frills dormitories within the factory complex. Most saunter out on a hot summer day with a water bottle in one hand and a smartphone in the other.

While personal computers are rare inside the factory, many of these young migrant workers—who are just climbing onto the lowest rung of the urban economic ladder—are now on the Internet daily. With 12-hour workdays, their free hours are scarce, but they still find time to use social media and dating apps, play video games, and read lifestyle and news sites, where they can catch a glimpse of the upscale urban life they aspire to.

Last week the government-affiliated China Internet Network Information Center reported that 591 million people in China now have Internet access; that’s 45 percent of the population. Just six years ago, only 16 percent of China’s population was online. Among the drivers of the steep rise in Internet penetration: the rapid adoption of Internet-enabled mobile devices, especially among groups that previously lacked regular connectivity, including China’s migrant workers. More than three-quarters of China’s netizens (464 million people) now use a mobile Internet device—instead of, or in addition to, a laptop or PC.

Kantar Media, a U.K.-based global consumer research and consulting firm, polled nearly 100,000 Chinese Internet users about their online habits and preferences in 2012 and just released its analysis of the study: 59 percent of respondents said that online chat and dating were their favorite uses of the mobile Internet, while 43 percent described themselves as “frequent” users of social media. Notably, the number of Chinese netizens who claimed they had visited a social media site in the past day was higher among mobile Internet users (32 percent) than among all netizens (26 percent). Weixin (“WeChat”), Tencent’s (700:HK) popular social-media app, is almost exclusively used on smartphones and tablets.

Megacity commutes are also correlated with more time online. In 2012, Chinese commuters who travelled more than one hour to work were three times as likely to go online daily as those whose commutes were under a half hour. As China’s large cities sprawl, traffic jams proliferate as well. Shen Ying, a general manager at CTR Media, Kantar Media’s joint-venture partner in China, believes that the “fragmentation of ‘social’ time created by longer commutes” goes hand in hand with the “desire for social networking.” Fortunately for China’s lonely subway passengers, Internet access on Beijing’s subway is more stable than on New York City’s.”

via China’s Smartphone Generation – Businessweek.

Posted in China alert, Consumer, Economics, Internet, Migrant workers, social media | 1 Comment »

Tags: Beijing, China, china internet network, China Internet Network Information Center, Chinese Internet users, global consumer research, internet, mobile internet users, Sina Weibo, Social media, technology

26/04/2012

* Understanding social media in China

McKinsey Quarterly: “The world’s largest social-media market is vastly different from its counterpart in the West. Yet the ingredients of a winning strategy are familiar.

No Facebook. No Twitter. No YouTube. Listing the companies that don’t have access to China’s exploding social-media space underscores just how different it is from those of many Western markets. Understanding that space is vitally important for anyone trying to engage Chinese consumers: social media is a larger phenomenon in the world’s second-biggest economy than it is in other countries, including the United States. And it’s not indecipherable. Chinese consumers follow the same decision-making journey as their peers in other countries, and the basic rules for engaging with them effectively are reassuringly familiar.

In addition to having the world’s biggest Internet user base—513 million people, more than double the 245 million users in the United States. China also has the world’s most active environment for social media. More than 300 million people use it, from blogs to social-networking sites to microblogs and other online communities. That’s roughly equivalent to the combined population of France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom. In addition, China’s online users spend more than 40 percent of their time online on social media, a figure that continues to rise rapidly.

This appetite for all things social has spawned a dizzying array of companies, many with tools more advanced than those in the West: for example, Chinese users were able to embed multimedia content in social media more than 18 months before Twitter users could do so in the United States. Social media began in China in 1994 with online forums and communities and migrated to instant messaging in 1999. User review sites such as Dianping emerged around 2003. Blogging took off in 2004, followed a year later by social-networking sites with chatting capabilities such as Renren. Sina Weibo launched in 2009, offering microblogging with multimedia. Location-based player Jiepang appeared in 2010, offering services similar to foursquare’s. This explosive growth shows few signs of abating, a trend that’s at least partially attributable to the fact that it’s harder for the government to censor social media than other information channels. That’s one critical way the Chinese market is unique.

As you shape your own social-media strategy, it’s important to fully understand some other nuances of the country’s consumers, content, and platforms.”

via Understanding social media in China – McKinsey Quarterly – Marketing & Sales – Digital Marketing.

The Biggest Challenge for Marketers: Engagement (mpdailyfix.com)
Social Media is Driving First Time Visitors to Restaurants (coverboom.com)

Posted in Affluence, China alert, Consumer, Digital communications, Social & cultural, social media, Technology | 6 Comments »

Tags: China, Digital marketing, marketing, mckinsey quarterly, Sina Weibo, Social media, social networking sites, technology, Twitter, YouTube

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