Role of Social Media in India

As we are currently in the modern and digitalised world, no one can live without internet. I would like to share some useful information, which gives us an clear idea about what is the current situation of social media in India. India has a population of over 1.17 Billion. India is also ranked second after China in terms of population. Can anyone Guess how much importance do people give for social media and how many hours do people averagely spend in the social networking internet websites perday ? Well I am sure it is a lot more than you expect. Have a look at the image below which gives you a clear picture of the question asked earlier ?

Image Source : http://www.internetmarketingjournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/social-media-india-2.0011.png

This gives a clear picture and as I said earlier you can see there are 52 Million active internet users in India in the year 2009. There are 20 Million Indians who use internet everyday. They spend most of their time in social networking websites such as Orkut, Facebook, Youtube, Twitter and so on. As this survey was done two years back now we can say that Orkut in India has become more outdated as facebook has more users than orkut and hence there has also talk that facebook was likely to buy orkut but still they have not given any official announced regarding that issue because, in 2009 Orkut had more users than facebook and so they did not want to be taken over by facebook. But currently in 2011 I am pretty much confident that the number of users of facebook has crossed over 10 Million in India.

As we can see a dramatic change in the increase in number of people using these social networking websites daily, the IT companies started to feel the pressure and hence decided to ban the usage of social media at work. They thought this will help the employees to concertrate more in the work that they do rather just getting diverted because of these social networking websites. To be exact, almost 96% of IT companies in India have banned the use of these social networking websites at work time. This has led to a slight fall in the number of people using social networking websites in India.

But this is not the downfall of social media in India, as social media is emerging with a new trend and different dimensions day-by-day  it attracts more people towards it. Now a days, children at the age of 5 are taught how to use computers in schools which helps them very well in exploring the world when they are growning up. These social networking websities lay as a strong platform for these children not only for their future but also to be in touch with the current world around them. Hence, these children are brought in such a way but once when they start to work, they are literally forced not to spend time in these social media websites.

When we look the other side of it, we can also see an increase in number of people using internet for educational search, general information search as well as to listen and watch music/video. I believe only this gives them a vast knowlegde and understanding rather than just books and lectures. To conclude with, I am quite sure that even though there are some drawbacks in India in using these social media it will standout itselves and improve more and will also increase as the years come by.

My Identity in The Digital World.

Hi everyone,

As we all know now we have entered in the Digital world where everyone have their own  identity in different ways. We can say that due to this drastic development in the field of digital identity in the recent years the life style of the people has changed a lot and has moved to a higher standard. I am sure that we all are blessed to be in the middle of such an age because we have all the things that we want in our hands. This has also made sure that we are in regular contact with the happenings in and around the world. In my case, Digital Identity has helped me to change a lot over the years and has also enhanced me now to get more contacts with people who are in good level in my industry.

The first digital identity account that I had for my own was in the Google accounts. This account was first created not because of my interest, but I was literally in a situation to have an e-mail account for myself because wrote a common exam in India and they asked me to give my e-mail address, in order for them to mail me the marks, but at that time I did not have one and gave my friend’s account. That was the time I decided to create a new account for myself and this is how I entered into the world of Digital Identity. Slowly I started to learn many things in it and then I found out many interesting features, within this aim that I have chosen. I started to forward mails to my friends as I was doing this during my end-off- my schooling.

After my schooling I started to hear slowly about the other accounts and the wide options that they have and found out that they were mainly focused on chats, sharing pictures and files. Because of this evolution it was the introduction of Yahoo messenger and so I created an account and started to chat a lot along with my friends. We had some pictures and music sharing and it was really a new experiece for us. As soon as this was introduced google also started something similar to this called Google Chat, which is very much similar to the yahoo messenger and was amusening. After this the main social networking came which attracted everyone and I was eager to see what  Facebook could offer, in terms of the new evolution of Digital Identity. The introduction of facebook was like a forest fire in my country as it had more people accessing mainly because of its additional features like: the chat, wallpost, comments, videos, pictures, applications, games and so on. All of us including me created an account on facebook as soon as it was introduced, but still we can’t trust Facebook due to its  information which can be misleading and some of the information can also be unreal and we can not just blindly believe what people write about themeselves, and assume the same. It is really an exciting social network, however, at the same time – not a reliable one.

As I was brought up with the inspiration with a  musical background, my dad owns his very own Light Music Orchestra in India called GOLDEN RHYTHMS, and we have organised many events and have been performing for the past 15 years or more. We planned to extend our digital identity and take our orchestra to next level, therefore, we created our own webpage and as expected, we had really good feedback. We also got more events to perform so that we could prove our talent.

Here is the link to our website:  http://goldenrhythms.com/ for your reference. Then we  got more into this digital identity I thougt about the ways to extend it and then found out Orkut, but to be honest –  I was the last  person to join the Orkut, but still using it to convey messages to my friends.

The latest development of  my digital identity is twitter as it is slowly trying to impress people in our country and people start to tweet everything they do. Now twitter has become like an everyday meal and they can not survive without it. In other words, both facebook and twitter are network communities which have a major influence on its users. For me, I spend about 2 -4 hours on both twitter and facebook, which has given me a profound way to contribute my work,  as I am relatively fresh on this  twitter planet.  To speak about my current progress and development in extending my digital identity is a result of this blog.  I have also concluded that using these digital identities, in order to show my friends, family and other students at Salford University, gives me more opportunity to showcase my talent and improve more skill in my field.