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If You Can’t Beat Them, Join Google and Facebook.
The office of the prime minister
(PMO) of India, the biggest democratic
country, with a population of 1.3 billion people, has at last opened
an account on Twitter and announced its
decision today to join Facebook, following the old saying if
you can’t beat them join them.
Dr Man Mohan Singh, a renowned
economist and India ’s
Prime Minister believes in relentless handwork and action aimed at India ’s
economic growth despite its obstructive
political environment and is a man of few words. He was subjected to severe
criticism for the silence he maintains on controversial issues, especially the
scams which have rocked his party’s second tenure in the governance of India .
Fed up with the abusive posts,
morphed pictures and all sorts of twisted and contorted facts and false
accusation which appear in the social web in the name of democratic freedom and
criticism, Man Mohan Singh seems to have given up and taken the bold step to
take the bull by the horns and use the social web to communicate and set things
straight.
The timing of the move by the PMO
is interesting. A junior court in India, where petitions were filed against
Google, Facebook and twenty odd social media companies for breech of infringement
of a law only enacted last year, making companies responsible for user content
posted on their websites, had warned of a crackdown "like
China" if they did not take steps to protect religious sensibilities.
Last month, the companies said it was
not possible for them to block content.
However, Google and Facebook removed
content from some Indian domain websites today, following a court directive
warning them severe restrictive action if not complied.
Though no one really thinks that India ,
with its democratic credentials will go to any extent its neighbour China
has gone to restrict the functioning of the social web, it looks like the
carrot and stick policy of the government is at last paying off.
By joining the networks, the
Prime Minister and his government is clearly showing that the Social web in India
is here to stay and will be an integral part of the democratic environment
likes the developed countries.
At the same time India has also
sent the right signals, through its administration and judicial system that it
is in no mood to tolerate and live with excessive and irresponsible use of the
social web and will look forward to exerting the same level of control over the
regular media, as a country with religious sensitivities and prone to violence.
In fairness to Dr Man Mohan Singh
and his office, whose priority was to fire fight various political and other
crisis over the last two years, having the fun of tweeting and posting updates
like many other world leaders and millions of ordinary citizens is a reward long
over due.
Article first published as If
You Can’t Beat Them, Join Google and Facebook. on Technorati.
Can India Really Block Google And Facebook Without Banning Candles?
The simple answer, like in the case of China
is “yes”. However if the question is, can India afford to take such extreme
measures, the answer is likely to be “not really” because, simply put, India is
not same as China when democratic values are concerned.
Concerned with the rising and abusive character
assassination of the political leaders through morphed images and the dangers
of inflammatory posts in a religiously super sensitive nation, the flash points
of which the government has to strive very, very hard to keep from exploding,
the Indian government and now the Indian judiciary
have warned the Internet giants that they need to act.
Will The New Facebook Profile Make “Nostalgia” Disappear For Ever?
Last week Facebook started
rolling out the much anticipated updates which were to follow their substantial
revamp aimed at catching
up with Google+. The timing was just right to create the necessary uproar
and interest among its 800 million followers and the rest of the world and make
them ready for the quantum leaps Mark Zuckerberg was
about to announce during F8, the annual conference of Facebook developers.
In fact Facebook went ahead and
implemented the change to its news
updates a few of days back which in itself drew wild worldwide reactions.
Though there seemed to be wide
support (more than 2000 likes and 100 tweets as received by this innocuous
comment, which raised the author to a HuffPost Influencer status) for the
changes, there were also avalanches
of protests from disgruntled users who objected to Face book’s arbitrary
choice of what the user should see in the status update timeline. One survey
showed disastrous results.
The main changes announced
concerned how News Feed will act more like your own personal newspaper, and how
you won't have to worry about missing important stuff. Because all your news
will be in a single stream with the most interesting stories featured at the
top.
The other
most important feature was a new Twitter-like timeline called Ticker with real
time streaming of friends' activity like “likes” of an update, comments on a
post or subscribing to a page.
Though these innovations looked
nice, especially visually more appealing with larger photos and suited those
with a large number of friends or those who visited Facebook less often to
check friend’s updates, they seem to have incurred undue wrath of loyal
members, threatening to switch to Google+
The protests were surely
following a now familiar pattern:
“In the
history of Facebook changes, the pattern has typically been that users complain
loudly at first and threaten to
leave the site but then eventually learn to live with, if not
like, the new approach.”
However, Facebook has announced seven
important updates in the conference, of which the changes to the Profile
page seem to be the ones which will have far reaching consequences.
In a nutshell, the Facebook
Profile page is becoming your life story, your illustrated autobiography, a
chronicle in which everything you chose to appear right from your birth day,
everything you posted on Facebook reflecting your daily life and interaction
with those around you will be available to anyone who is allowed an access. The
whole information will be nicely indexed, year wise and moth wise for easy
access.
The social impact of such a
feature, available on the 800 million members and possibly billions who will
eventually join the network is, at the minimum mind boggling! We may bid good by
to “Nostalgia”, or the simple joy of
discovering a lost picture, for ever, because nothing is hidden farther from a
mouse click!
Article first published as Will
The New Facebook Profile Make “Nostalgia†Disappear For Ever? on
Technorati.
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