It is fascinating to see how twitter has gained in popularity as a medium of communication. Its a powerful tool that unleashes the Yahoo chat room on mobile. People talk with each other through sms and discuss a topic or update about their daily experiences, encounters and thoughts.
A conversation starts flowing amongst friends on receiving information via sms from the website. Information on live and important events that are or are not covered by the media reach at the very instant in the consumer’s hand. The consumer doesn’t need to wait for getting access to a television or getting information via computer. I see this as another step of bringing information faster to relevant people. This will bring people closer to each other on a number of topics. Moreover, applications such as Twitter are much more a relevant tool for India as compared to web blogs due to a very high penetration of mobile phones.
Apart from the democratization of propaganda machinery another aspect that needs to be looked into is how mobile based internet applications are going to affect the traditional information media that is already feeling the blow of internet on their revenues.
Unlike western countries newspapers still enjoy high circulation in India. However, with the advent of 3G and applications like twitter which are providing real time, up-to-instant information on mobile the newspaper and tv media are now in danger zone. These channels will now need to be present on the internet with all their ammunition to be able to direct the users to their content and retain them with all the analysis. A faster and affordable wireless internet will make a lot more people will start reading the news articles and watch the videos on the internet. The companies must come up with a business model to monetise this. Asking for subscription on internet is not a cool thing and is likely to fail.
Anyways, it is interesting to see how innovation is breaking authority and bringing changes in market structures. Lets have 100 percent foreign direct investment in Indian media now… the race is going to heat up and we are in for changes that would need a lot of money…
