On Jan 9, I participated at the first India Twitter Conference. Organized by Compare Infobase, it was a conference on and about Twitter and how it is being used by Indians. It was organized as a panel discussion by some prolific tweeters from the country on 'Is Twitter Indian in Character?'. The panelists included:

  • Kanchan Gupta - Associate Editor of the Pioneer
  • Saad Akhtar - Runs Flyyoufools.com, a popular, web comic
  • Pramit J Nathan - Heads Idea to Impact, a branding consultancy
  • Simarprit Singh - Founder of TwitSnaps.com, CEO- Compare Infobase Ltd
  • Lydia Polgreen - South Asia correspondent- New York Times
  • Sidin Vadukut - Managing Editor- Livemint.com at HT Media Ltd

The discussion started at around 3pm and continued till 6 in the evening. While there was not much new to the discussion and nor was anything new to learn about Twitter, there were some great insights into what Twitter is and how it is being used. Twitter, for instance, was described as an experience in Chandni Chowk. Such is the social integration at Twitter that you are almost always with someone you know on Twitter. A phenomenon described as always being with someone you know. But the business implications of Twitter were obviously the most interesting topic in the conference. A special emphasis was on how Twitter is an effective medium, but also were discussed the ethical issues of ghost-tweeting, or how celebrities outsource their tweeting  to social media agencies. An example was given by Simarprit: to check if Mallika Sherawat tweets for herself, he asked her a question in Punjabi one day, after around 6 hours he got a very generic reply in English. Later in the night, he sent another tweet in Punjabi to her and got a prompt reply in Punjabi. He concludes that while sometimes Mallika herself tweets, during the day (at least) it is a social media agency tweeting for her. Another issue discussed was how Guy Kawasaki and other famous Twitter Celebrities use Twitter. And it was an interesting point to be made that now Twitter is like a new Media Source - like a customizable headlines reel that can guide you to news you care about lightening fast. Another important point was - to be successful on Twitter, you need to understand why you are tweeting. There were similar many insights into the social and Indian character of Twitter and why Twitter clicks in India. If you are still not on Twitter, it would be a nice idea to join Twitter. You can find OSSCube at Twitter at @OSSCube