How Twitter killed the blog star Or How Social Media affected the millennials

Well first off, it is fairly appalling I return to my blog after about a year and half however in the interim I have been dabbling in more corporate blogs on Linkedin and give out doses in shorter forms via Twitter ( Damn who thought 140 characters could be so addictive)

Coming to the topic on hand, honestly blogging as a medium has lost its shine but some things do bounce back so quick recap of social media trends and how we desi's responded over the years.

The fun of being a millennial ( born in the 1980s) really gave us a range of technologies to experience. you know VHS tapes, audio tapes (Side A and Side B), Floppy Disk and off-course Yahoo messenger

2000-2003

I guess most Indians got online and experienced hot mail, yahoo messenger on dial up connection ( the speed was nothing to speak about however the telephone bills escalated quite fast)

People still had secret identities so folks had email ids like loverboy_27 or angel16 as user names :)  and crumby desktops where you always had 2 fingers on the  "Alt-Tab" button to maintain your privacy

2004-2008

I know Facebook and Orkut released around the same time but Brazilians and Indians really took to Orkut like Fish to water, every one who had a net connection was on it and the things which mattered -  No of scraps, No of Fans and No of testis --- monials that it :P

Orkut was the first time people let their guard down, engage in private conversations on the scrap-book (wall for Facebook junkies) which really changed how one reacted to electronic medium ( the word social media didn't really catch on)

Yahoo Groups - By 2008, it was no longer cool to have secret identities and social discussions happened via groups.  It was a radical thing to share email forwards even at work.

Facebook was catching up but it was still for the cool kids ( NRIs, or MS students) not true blue desis who were seeking Fraanship

2009-2012

As smartphones began to evolve and better internet speeds + Wifi, the internet truly became personal , you didn't need to fight with a sibling to get online

Facebook got better and addictive, Google didnt do much for Orkut so it died. thankfully it was pretty fun having friends on Facebook, folks on Gtalk - ( This was Facebook before hyper fast news feeds and attack of Famville and Candy Crush requests)

This was the time every one had blogs and people who would religiously get and monitor comments :) - I quite liked that phase to be honest.

2012-2014

The attack of "Selfie" - This truly marked the Phase 3 of social media where the focus of interaction moved from one to one to actually one to many .... all emotions conveyed through sappy status messages, pics of self  (imagine a giant head with pimples and all with a small effiel tower in the background) and this is where the disconnect actually began.

People had more than "800-1000" friends on the network but would speak to less than 10 on a regular basis. since people keep broadcasting their lives on Twitter and Facebook, there was liite incentive to even catch-up

Blogs also a causality, then you get addicted to social media, you lose the urge to write in the long form, I really believe our future generation kids will be ADD (attention deficit disorder) because we are always online but not really connecting with people in the ways of the past.

Now people are so bored rather than communicate how they feel, i guess they did just post a "sad selfie" on Facebook or Snapchat.

2015 & beyond 

With the older folks (Parents, Uncles and neighbors) coming online and invading facebook, the youth are retreating to new technologies like Whatsapp, Viber etc.

Whatsapp groups are the new yahoo messengers and I am also seeing the resurgence of blogs on cooler sites like Medium / Quora and Tumbler.

Video is becoming a strong medium - Vine, Youtube, Meerkat & Periscope ( Video selfies - ugh :P )

The  "Dark Social" is pretty much Social Media Phase 1 on the mobile which only reinforces the fact - what goes around comes around.  
The only casualty in this evolution is the ability to communicate in long form - from letters, email chains and long chat conversations is becoming short form, statuses and pictures 

Gangnam Style, Kolaveri and Innocence

If you have an existence on social networking sites, you could not have missed a portly Korean man prancing around in extraordinary goofy style which is now "Gangnam Style" the most viewed and liked video in the history of Youtube.  

Some time back, another video sung quiet off-key by Southern Actor Dhanush "Kolaveri Di" was  the talk of town, this very ordinary piece of singing reaching a far greater reach than imagined.  Clearly in this era of the highly networked world, an Internet connection and social media channels like Twitter, Facebook and Youtube, ideas both good, bad, ugly and funny can resonate across the world. 

Takes me back to the song Friday by Rebecca Black which was derided by people all over the world, imagine the kind of rejection the poor girl would have faced.  Still the criticism stayed virtual or the trolls who hound celebs, journalists with vulgar and crude language. 


Sadly another video found a much larger audience than it should have, "The innocence of Muslims" a disparaging video made by mischievous elements with extremely poor production values and the voices overdubbed so even the actors were taken for a ride. 

Such an ugly video, found credence and has been circulated by the same social media channels which promote so much of mirth to become a weapon of hate, leading to deaths and damage to people and property. A mob killing an envoy, bomb killing Russians and South Africans in Afghanistan and attacks on Norwegian embassies and protests worldwide.

The Innocence of Muslims is not the only ugly video on the Internet, there are lots of hate videos against Hindus, Muslims, Christians and Sikhs. 

The violence has promoted many nations to block social media sites. Censorship will only take the world on a slippery road, and violence over hate speeches and thoughts will only increase the fault-lines in the society. 

Social Media is not the cause of unrest but only an medium for amplification. I hope in not so distance future only Kolaveri ( Murderous rage) is reserved for the likes of Dhanush and people learn to take things in stride and live life "Gangnam Style".

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. In fact have the wisdom to reject hateful thoughts.

Mental Crutches

Last week, as my boss mentioned the new Smart Art graphics in power point presentations is making most presentations look the same. I had to agree with him, in the name of improving productivity the dependency on tooling is only dulling our creativity and other mental faculties.

Number Crunching - Thanks to caculators and excel sheets, even basic arthimetic has become impossible, both shop keepers and customers alike are clueless without technology.

Birthday Reminders – There was once a time, I could remember the birthdays of all my close friends and family members, then with the advent of social networks facebook and orkut, the dependency on social networks to remind us of birthdays leading to a large gap in memory.

Spelling – the most disturbing dependency I have fallen prey to is the spell check options in MS Word or even on google search. Now there are words for which I dont ever know the right spelling, just depend on auto corrections. My biggest fear now, writing an written exam on pen and paper.

Limiting Social Interactions – This is the most disturbing dependency which we have grown so fond of , when we could meet face to face, we have moved to cell phone conversations, from cell phone conversations, we have moved to text messenging and most uncapable to making human contact anymore.

Tablets / Smartphone fixation - Steve Jobs proudly claimed the iPad is the definitive post PC device and it is the end of the desktops and laptops. Although I agree desktops and laptops are clunky devices but typing on a glass surface is even more difficult. It is scientifically proven, devices like tablets and smartphones are more suited for passive consumption rather than comfortably typing or creating inputs.

Although technology is definitely taking humanity ahead, there are several de-humanising and limiting effects as well so that mental crutches we have grown to depend on needs to be reduced if not eliminated altogether. 

Pointless things people (even me) did on Orkut

Last week, I got a blast from the past; I received an orkut friend request from an old acquaintance, its been ages since I accessed orkut page much less connect with anyone. This made think about the old days when orkut was a rage and how Indians got the first taste of social networking ( it was simply called orkutting back then :P )

How many scraps do you have ??

People actually kept count of the scraps on their profile and cheered on when they hit land marks like 1000, 2000 etc. Any guy/gal with 5000 scraps was popular but someone with 10,000 scraps was a orkut super-star.

Profile visit kiya but scrap nahi kiya

The creepy feature of orkut allowed you to note people who visited your profile recently, and people took serious offense to not been scrapped when someone left their digital footprint on their profile.

Sugary sweet testimonials

the extension of the how many scraps syndrome was how many testimonials do I have, emotional blackmail and quid-pro-quo ensured. But on the other hand, it did make for cheap thoughtful birthday gifts ;) get it “on your birthday, I really wanna share ….”.

Increasing Fans on orkut

I know one particular friend of mine who would become fans of all people in the friend list, so that even 50% reciprocity would ensure he/she would become the most Fanned person.

Wanna be fraindship

as a guy, I wasn't so bothered but girls got hit on so often with unsolicited friendship requests from English murdering desis :)

Today, orkut has become a sort of relic, with facebook and twitter ruling the roost today, but orkut had its dream run in the days of clunky assembled desktops and seedy cyber cafes. Now we have neat 3G and GPRS smartphones. 

Cheers to the initial heady days of social networking!