Indian Media Still Doesn’t get Twitter [One Way Communication]
In India, Twitter is spreading like a wildfire, especially in the media world – every media house sports it’s Twitter handle and wants you to follow them.
But media being media, they still do not get the ‘new media’. And before you hit back on me, answer this question – how many of tweets from Indian media houses are conversational in nature?
Even though,Twitter is informational for some (Twitter in India – People Use it as a News Service [Survey Report]), the biggest impact one could ever have is by building community, by building an engaging community around the brand.
Indian Media on twitter - 'Following others is a sin'
What’s really happening is that most of the Indian media brands use Twitter as a way to push out news (starts and ends with RSS feed integration), without giving a damn to readers/followers – a process, I’d call shovelware
Shovelware is a derogatory computer jargon term that refers to software noted more for the quantity of what is included than for the quality or usefulness. The term is also used to refer to software that is ported from one computer platform or storage medium to another with little thought given to adapting it for use on the destination platform or medium, resulting in poor quality.
The metaphor implies that the creators showed little care for the original software, as if the new compilation or version had been indiscriminately created/ported with a shovel, without any care shown for the condition of the software on the newly created product.- wikipedia
Essentially, Indian media is still using Twitter as ‘just another content promotion channel’ without listening to what readers/followers are asking for – and this is where they have again got it all wrong.
After all, how many tweets from media companies are about other website content? Do they care to reply to their followers? Do they really add value, beyond those website links? They don’t even follow others! Will it be wrong to say that their twitter presence is just a namesake?
Twitter is about creating engagement with the community and one-way communication doesn’t help. It’s time traditional Indian media houses learn a thing or two from their US counterparts who lived in their own world, suddenly woke up and realized that new media has taken away their bread and butter!
What’s your opinion on Indian media’s usage of Twitter? Do you agree with media’s usage of Twitter?
[Aside, follow us on Twitter – we do add value!]
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About the author - Ashish Sinha is a Startup Mentor/Product Strategy Coach, and the founder/chief editor of pluGGd.in.
He has launched/managed couple of products (consumer as well as enterprise) in US and India, and now consults with startups/small businesses on their product/media strategy. He can be reached at: ashish (at) pluGGd.in [+91 98452 06443]
All Rupert Murdoch’s in the making..:) lol
The sad part is that they are clueless about how many of the followers are just Bots. Or the ones who would go about following everyone.
How about writing about how journalists use Twitter?
do they use it?? i remember one top end guy tweeting “how do i write an article in 140 characters”…:)
hahah top guy ha?
Again, journalists are using Twitter in India, big time.
Mahafreed, No one doubts that journalists are using twitter.
- What is being questioned is how the media houses are using twitter?
- Also Indian journalists actively using twitter is more of an expection(@sidin @sreejit @nramin & the biggies ofcourse.) than the norm.
- Could you name 3 journalists who write about where you live? Remember an average person cant.
Actually there are a lot of journalists on twitter.. check out @chupchap/indian-media
Balu, There are atleast 20K+ journalists in India. May be a whole lot more. 300+ is still a drop of the total number. Compare this to a site like http://muckrack.com/ its peanuts!
The bigger question is how are these folks engaging their audience.
Well I interact a lot with these cutting edge media types and most of them just dont get it. It is not due to a lack of knowledge I hope, but a serious lack of application. Most of time you do hear statements like “I place this in ToI and I get x eyeballs”. Although Mahesh Murthy and the likes have done some good stuff bringing paradigms of CPC, most of them just still dont get it.
I think most media houses are ruled by old bosses and the incestous nature of such industries prohibits lateral movements. I suspect many of them will realise soon that the light at the end of the tunnel is that of an oncoming freaking train.
That is also a major reason why ad based startups in India are facing such a huge challenge too IMHO.
Thinking aloud – given the ratio of followers vs followed in the samples above, I believe you should check with the followers on why they follow, say NDTV on twitter. If being shovelware gives them a (perceived) audience of 8,000+, that could well be a strategy, unintentionally/ intentionally.
After all there’s no master/ golden rule that twitter should only be used for conversations – it may be used as a broadcast mechanism with zero conversation depending on the kind of approach/ user. I’d perhaps use another channel to strike a conversation with NDTV (on their website/ email) and use the twitter feed only for keeping myself abreast of news.
What crap!!….Well that’s exactly how our teammates working inside media companies explain the terrible things to their management. “And the lameness will be justified”
@Karthik – very vaild point.
My only concern with that sort of thinking is that it lacks strategy.
This is exactly how US media lost the war/battle (what’er one wants to call it) and this is how indian media eventually will lose the game to new media (and it won’t happen now, but the good news is that such stupidity from media will continue)
mmmmm, Now that’s interesting. Am I seeing some inclination towards agreement with last RM & Google article Ashish??…wink wink*
Yes, it does seem like waiting for a strategy to form on its own
…there’s none at this point. I would tend to think that media houses (the brands) could perhaps look at twitter as a mode to broadcast news (on TV, print and now on tweets) while they use their star journos/ anchors to connect with audiences – after all, that people-connection helps in conversations – than, say talking to a logo.
NDTV works because all the anchors talk about the their twitter channel on the shows. Also @Bdutt show we the people has live streaming of twitter comments on the show. SO not exactly a one way communication. You connect to me through twitter and i reply through TV.
There is a user motivation here for sure. Its better than the earlier form of SMS ur comments to 56388 that would have a cost resistance.
Its clear that there are multiple ways to create two way interaction with the audience and media companies should strive to do this – it seems that is the common thread across these comments. Media companies can use channels like Twitter to push content or pull inputs or a combination of push via traditional media channel and pull via digital channels. Should be fun to watch how all this plays out.
BTW – cost resistance of SMS short code can be defrayed by using virtual number or tying rewards with short code interaction.
Well I think that talking to people on streets (shoving mike in their face!) and having a studio-audience is media’s traditional understanding of interaction with people. I haven’t found any sort of interaction with audience through any other channel/mode so what wonder that Twitter is another tool just for promotion of their content.
Also, it’s not just Indian media but everyone else.
Well, if you think that’s the way it is (and should be), then learn from how new media in US is giving a tough fight to traditional media.
I do agree with the article. I started understanding twitter reading some posts which “Guy Kawasaki” wrote. One question he clearly answers to is “why you follow almost every follower?”. His answer- ‘I follow everyone for two reasons: first, common courtesy; second, so that anyone can send a Direct to me. I like Direct messages because they are so much more efficient than email.’
Media houses just think that they are big enough to not follow anyone- arrogance you can say! But I tell you, there are other users who make good conversations out of retweets from these news tweets. And that’s whr such media tweets are losing!
Nice article. We’ve seen similar evidence. We think this space is still in its early days and people are figuring out how to use 2.0 technologies. One factor to consider is pure logistics. Media companies have long had call-in numbers, sms numbers, email id’s and used these to request user input. The problem to sort through the inputs and then to interact with each is not a small task. Some media companies will pick some inputs and use it during their programming (ex: scroll bar on TV). But how many can you truly interact with. Tweets that media houses may get from users fall into the same category (and hence the default for now seems to be to use the medium as a broadcast channel).
The most interactive apps that media houses use are polls where every responder has an input. What is needed is simple applications that (1) allow users to interact easily (2) allow media houses to acknowledge this interactivity in an automated but still personalized manner. We’ve had some success with SMS 2.0 apps – SMS gives a lot broader reach than a pure online channel. We have deployed such a community for a radio station and are in talks with other radio/TV outfits. We’ve also tied SMS interaction into Twitter thereby creating an integrated community. To us it seems that media houses are looking for the right solution even while they (along with the rest of us) figure out this social media beast. Interested folks can contact us at jerryatcellzappdotcom.
I know I am little late to this party – But here are my thoughts.
The fundamental problem of the media is as follows: They are looking at someone else to innovate & lead them out of this attention hell. A messiah or a white knight outside their industry. They forget that they need to be leading the way & innovating.
- Shovelware – I think you hit the nail on the head by branding it as such. Even in terms of shovelware they are doing a bad job.
Shouldnt readers consume more of their information given how easy it is get to it? I am willing to bet that the reader consumption on media sites has gone down, this is different from the traffic to their sites. Back in the day (aka my grandpa’s time) people used to reader the paper cover to cover or atleast a good chunk of it starting with the obituary
(Sad, I know but thats what the hindu newspaper reader who was about 60 did). The focus of the media is sadly on the breaking news or the top news & keep highlighting the same content again & again till the view tunes out.
Reporting has become a commodity, pay 25K a month to PTI and you get to start your own news site. Journalism is still buried behind walls of fear of plagiarism. Here are some questions to the average reader – Can one name 5 journalists that they read? (Columnists perhaps) Is it not in the interest of the media house to publish that information with the article? A good number of the articles dont even make it online.
Indian Media houses have been thinking that print is not going to be impacted for a while. Yet they are concerned about being over dependent on ads on the offline medium. That might be true for vernacular languages given that tier-II & III cities are starting to be more educated but english newspapers are in for trouble soon. Some of them have realised that online cant be a second fiddle in the long run, which is why 6-8 of the top news sites have invested money and redesigned their websites. Some such as the hindu have even started the web first policy. This is a step in the right direction.
Fundamentally if they realized that they have to stop treating their audience like school kids and start to engage with them, they are going to benefit from it. There are encouraging signs that they are open to it.
But getting back to Twitter & microblogging – they need to lead rather than follow. You will find that most Indian sites end up posting agency news feeds through the day to get google news juice and then save the content for the evenings. GOOG has been slowly pull the rug under them by taking one function after another from them (First it was the front page, next picture thumbnails, next the search box & now authors) It is only a matter of time before Indian media houses complain about google.
By the time they get on twitter and start to engage cracks will appear in that model as well. There are about 50+ media sites on twitter all having less than 10K followers. This is especially pathetic when you consider that the audience is about 600K users (loads of NRI’s are on twitter). If you compare this to the likes of CNN which has about 3M followers, you wonder if these guys are even on the same planet.
Yet there is hope, if you look at the twitter handles such as bangalorenews there is a niche audience. Question is how do you engage them? DNA was out front when they had 2 people out of bangalore running their twitter handle. It created an engaging medium but for some odd reason they stopped.
Media houses need to think of this as investment for the tough times that lie ahead. They are too busy investing in the epaper sites. I seriously doubt the depth of that audience for english papers. Mobile sites have to go beyond a simple html page with 5 topics. If a pepsi distributor can enable his employees who take stock (at various stores to replish them) with smart phones, why arent journalist being enables with smart phones & twitter? Microblog allows you to know who your audience is, yet these guys dont use them. Someone needs to be wake them up.
Readership surveys point a rosy picture for vernacular language newspapers while for english papers the picture is good for TOI, others have a problem. Either ways 2010 promises to be an interesting year ahead.
Frankly this is worth posting as a post – so w/o spendind too much of time on asking for your permission, I will go ahead and publish!
Ashish, Thanks for asking. I have posted it on my blog as well http://arjunram.com/2009/12/12/indian-media-new-mediatwitter-et-all/. Feel free to post it.
I might be a good idea to put a disclaimer that I run a company(Taazza) that is working on solutions for this problem. Feel free to reach out to me offline if you have any questions.
I have sent you msgs on twitter, the following changes are required on the new post.
Arjun Ram
Taazza with a double “z”
and would appreciate a link to my blog.
Thx!
[...] 13, 2009 I shared my perspective on why Indian Media still doesn’t get Twitter and though some of you disagree with the logic (heck! Twitter is a news channel), my basic point is [...]
Twitter means constant engagement – constant is the operative word. Most media companies believe just appointing one web editor is enuf to tackle this issue. Another issue is monetisation: does constant engagement on twitter fetch money to my kitty? obviously not. it is an add on service at this moment, but sure to be a killer movie in the years to come.
Sinha mentioned ’shovelware’. He is spot on.
Today, the media houses use twitter through their bignames to drive traffic to their online presence. Nothing beyond this.
There are very few exceptions.
Journalists are expected to read a lot – online and offline. Beyond their respective publications. Well, that’s not happening. When that happens, you have a lot more to share with one’s followers than linking them with the pubishing house/tv station’s websites.
Online reading is gaining momentum. I have not come across a secondary school student who has not surfed and read something or other – including the Delhi Times/HT City kind of shit – online. Nothing wrong. Let them read crap online first and move up the ladder to read something substantial. It’s all part of growing up.