The simplest solution that occurs to me is tagging. Have users tag their photos with keywords before they upload them and end the entire albums mess in one go. This will bring the focus to individual images, make for easier navigation through photos relating to the same topic, and it will also keep photos in circulation for longer. Every time I upload a photo tagged car, my older photos tagged with car turn up on the side as related items. How does that sound?

Tags are any day a better way to organise things than albums (or categories) are. If you are like me and have hundreds of albums, then you may like nothing better than to ditch the whole lot of them in favour of something simpler.

When we’re constantly distracted and interrupted, as we tend to be online, our brains are unable to forge the strong and expansive neural connections that give depth and distinctiveness to our thinking. We become mere signal-processing units, quickly shepherding disjointed bits of information into and then out of short-term memory.

via Does the Internet Make You Dumber? – WSJ.com.

I think a lot depends on how we define “smart”. If I had to define intelligence, I would say it is the ability to process large amounts of information and the ability to instantly recall any bit of it when required. But this definition does not take into account criteria like creativity and imagination.

I do think the web changes people’s priorities a lot. Knowledge is understood to be more important than wisdom and even knowledge isn’t seen any more as something worth striving for. It’s all just a click away after all.

Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg seem to assume that once something is public, it’s public. They confused sharing with publishing. They conflate the public sphere with the making of a public. That is, when I blog something, I am publishing it to the world for anyone and everyone to see: the more the better, is the assumption. But when I put something on Facebook my assumption had been that I was sharing it just with the public I created and control there. That public is private. Therein lies the confusion. Making that public public is what disturbs people.

via Confusing *a* public with *the* public.

Makes sense. Much more sense than most of the recent outrage has.

Someone found the episode amusing and created the hashtag #chetanblocks which was soon swarming with all manner of online creatures and their opinions on the right and wrong of it. Then people started cracking jokes (and a good many excellent ones were cracked too). Then people began feeling the pain of the seemingly wronged book writer. Now, a few hours after the whole ruckus, all is silent in Twitterland.

Here is what I think of it. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with blocking someone on Twitter. It’s a feature, and it can be used by anyone against anyone they think deserves it. I am not going to debate the ethics of it – there are none.

Instead, I want to rant about a tendency I have noticed on the social web. On Twitter, more than anywhere else, the talk is very commonplace. The sort one would expect at a very large and noisy gathering. People share inanities, call each other names, laugh at utterly stupid things, carry out coffee table debates… you get the idea. This is a big reason behind Twitter’s charm, and this is what makes it such a powerful marketing platform.

And then one day, a celeb-type, perhaps prompted by all the hype about it in the mainstream media, trots in and is shocked at the plainspeak. I have seen this happening more than once. Perhaps they expect to be treated the way they are treated on their TV channels, their newspapers, their book signings etc? I don’t know.

One thing I have learnt about Twitter is that it is not the place for people who take themselves too seriously. If you are joining a social network, keep the social in mind. If you want to be in the midst of people, act like people. Don’t expect celebrity high-speak to work. Idhar sab log waise bhi celebrity hai — every single one of them. I am not saying that is a good thing or a bad thing, just that that’s the way things are on Twitter – that is how things work here.

While the block button is always there, clicking it at every disagreement isn’t good policy if your fundamental reason for being on Twitter is to socialise with your readership, and as a result, sell books.

For the record, I am a big fan of Chetan Bhagat’s work. I think he can be called an ambassador for popular Indian writing (as opposed to the high-brow shit many others insist on limiting the definition of literature to). I also thinks he tells good stories.

I wanted to do a post on what has changed and my reasons behind making those changes. Also, Patrix asked for it (see his post on the same topic).

Till now my blog has been like an article repository. One that got updated with essays and stories whenever I wrote something worth sharing. To this end, the blog has had a look more suited to a content-powered website. I have traditionally gone for a solid, full, and well-organised look. To cut a long story short, vmohanty.com has been more a site than a blog.

Add to that situation the fact that social media has grown in prominence in recent months. My own presence on Twitter and Facebook has a decent following (I’m just saying!) and I post tons of content there in the form of short text updates, photos, and comments. In the olden days, people did all this on their blogs.

But times have changed and the amount of interaction people used to have on blogs has dropped very noticeably. I share my photos in controlled environments inside social networks and they are viewed by people who care. My blog posts get more comments when they show up as notes on my Facebook profile. I have more followers on Twitter than I have feed subscribers on my blog. I actually get more feedback on my blog posts via twitter than I do in the comments section! Who would have thought of all this a few years ago?

I figured therefore, that I should “plug” my blog into my social media profile, because it sure as hell is not going to be able to stand on its own in the middle of all the other places that define my “presence” on the web nowadays. The blog must become a part of my small extended empire (as opposed to the centre of it).

Much of the new plan didn’t need any work at all. My blog URL is on my Twitter profile, and my posts get pushed to Facebook and Friendfeed via RSS. But what I needed was a way for the blog to share in the feel of the social web.

To this end, I tried to make my blog look more real-time. I let go of the need to categorise my posts into one of my ten clean categories and went for the more fluid convention of tags. My sidebar consists of nothing but a tag list now. This serves many purposes. Firstly, the list is a clear indication of what the blog is ‘about’. Secondly, the list is never static and keeps changing as I make new posts, with old tags coming up as and when I revisit those topics. What’s more? The tags also make for a great gateway into the deeper recesses of my blog.

Next, I implemented the Backtype Connect plugin on my WordPress installation. It finds mentions of my blog posts on Twitter (and elsewhere) and plugs them into the specific post’s comments area. I found a plugin to do the same with facebook too, but it doesn’t seem to work too well. I have also installed a new Twitter-based microforum app called Tweetboard that shows threaded Twitter conversations right on this page. You can acces it by clicking on “tweets” on the left.

The theme I am using is called Prologue and it is a WordPress theme to mimic Twitter. I made some minor adjustments to it (added a horizontal top navbar, changed some labels, implemented the post title function, etc). I chose it because it is simple, minimal, and easy to read. In addition, it lets me have a Twitter style display picture near the beginning of my posts.

This is more important than it might seem because a lot of my readership (most of it in fact) comes from Twitter and the display picture makes for a useful comfort element when that happens. I know this because I find display pictures very comforting on Twitter myself. They are like faces of people I know.

I have also changed the default URL structure on my blog so that it is very short and simple now. Only the base URL followed by a 3-digit post ID. This makes the links easy to remember and easy to post on Twitter etc. Yes, I know about URL shorteners, but you and I both know that we all hate them. I want postings on Twitter to look like they came from my blog, not a spam nest. Update: Changed the URLs to a fuller form. Pho Freak made a good point in the comments.

In the long run, I intend to keep posting all manner of stuff here. Articles and stories will continue to show up as before, but unlike the past there will also be a lot of opinion (politics, culture, life in general) just like on my Twitter stream.

I have rambled enough. Feel free to let me know what you think of the redesign and of the blog. If I have missed something, ask away.

About a week ago, I was sitting in the company of a few random journalists. They were talking about Twitter, a hot little web service that allows members to post 140 character updates to the internet and receive similar updates from other members. These updates, technically speaking, are status updates (the sort you post on Google Talk or on your Facebook profile), but they can vary in nature. People use Twitter to break news, do political commentary, share interesting links, and even write micro-fiction (stories 140 characters or less in length).

However, as is common practice among people from mainstream media, nobody in the gathering saw Twitter as much more than an uppity little pastime. Why anyone would feel the need to broadcast the most frivolous bits of their daily lives to the whole world was beyond what they could imagine.

I joined Twitter over two years ago. I was there before Barack Obama got on it and made it a crucial tool in his campaign to be the President of the United States of America (and won!). I was there before some of the world’s largest corporations started using Twitter as a direct line to their consumer base. I was there before news of some of the most devastating natural disasters in recent times spread across the world through Twitter.

I have seen it all unfold, in a manner of speaking, before my very eyes. As you might imagine, every time Twitter is called ‘frivolous’ (or some such thing) in my presence, my heart rages in righteous indignation. Why must something as time-tested as Twitter suffer judgment by those who only came to know about it five minutes ago?

I have therefore, taken upon upon myself the reponsibility of bringing to mainstream light, the various glorious aspects of Twitter.

Twitter for News:

Logging into Twitter every morning is like entering a village square at mid day. The place is full and everyone is talking the talk of the day. I admit, it is very noisy, but one learns to listen soon enough.

People are usually discussing the big news of the day, current match scores, their opinions on what TV thinks is ‘in’ along with random bits from their lives as well (like how bad the traffic is or how much they would like to quit their job RIGHT NOW). On Twitter, the tiny is as newsy as the big and breaking.

And this isn’t news handed down to me from the high and mighty mainstream either. It’s people like me – office-goers, bus/train-takers, students, entrepreneurs – the everyday sort, who tell me what’s up with my world.

What’s more? I get to join in. I discuss issues of national and international importance with people from all walks of life and make informed decisions. I am part of the news cycle. I am the newsman as well as the audience.

Many times, Twitter serves as a live news source as well. For example, if a tweeter is at a momentous gathering or at the scene of a disaster (like the 26/11 terrorist attacks), all that anyone, anywhere in the world has to do is to start following his updates on Twitter to get their fix of the latest.

Of course, such news may be fragmented and full of noise. But then so is TV news. I am not suggesting Twitter as a replacement for news channels, only as a complement. An extra layer of protection against newslessness, if you will.

Twitter as a networking space:

I follow over 2000 odd people on Twitter. Among these, are business-owners, students, scientists, military men, techies, researchers, money experts, designers, writers, artists, photographers, and these days, even celebrities (blessed aren’t we?).

Needless to say, life isn’t ever dull on Twitter. Besides, a resource base so diverse and knowledgeable is a thing to die for, don’t you think? Sure, Google will whip up more links than you need, but there is something about actual expert advice that a search engine doesn’t even come close to beating.

Twitter is an extremely handy tool when it comes to basic research. Are you standing before a multiplex wondering which movie to go for? Post a tweet via your mobile and watch recommendations and mini-reviews flow in. Looking for a good online resource on banking? Post a tweet. If you’re even slightly lucky, you will probably get pinged by an actual banker.

Twitter for branding:

Twitter works because of the people on it. But unlike something like Facebook or Orkut, Twitter enables a much more open exchange of ideas and conversations. Whatever you say on Twitter, goes out to all your followers. Over time, a tweeter builds a lasting identity in his little pocket of people.

Those who have the most to gain from branding, have taken this message to heart. Existing brands – corporations, publications, movie studios – have taken to Twitter to complement their advertisement strategy. Lesser brands have benefitted from Twitter too. Pizza shops, libraries, movies have used Twitter to gain traction in their respective markets. Twitter is where word-of mouth truly comes to life.

More and more celebrities have taken to Twitter for better self-branding. And not just movie stars either. Twitter is now home to sportspersons, authors, ministers, wannabe-ministers, public servants, NGOs, TV personalities and a whole lot of other professionals. It is a market for markets.

This Lok Sabha election, in a somewhat Obama-inspired moment, politicians and political parties alike chose to make Twitter a tool in their campaign strategies. I have personally been in the middle of several heated debates with some very dedicated political activists.

Twitter started off as a seemingly inconsequential status update service, but grew into a many-fangled modern beast of communication. What it is today, is a model of connectivity much suited to our chaotic times.

Twitter isn’t one tweet. To see it at work, you need to jump in and let it wash over you. Unless you would rather just watch TV of course, in which case, God help us all.

Today morning, I woke up to find my replies tab replaced with a new “mentions” function. While seemingly inconsequential, this makes things a whole lot easier for users. I constantly have Twitter Search tab open in Firefox to track retweets or to see if someone tagged me in a tweet. Now I don’t have to.

The current web interface has integrated search, trending topics, username tracking and all major Twitter features enabled. Here are some other things I would love to see them add to it.

1. How about a localised version of trending topics? Show me the hot topics being discussed among my friends, not all of Twitter. The Twitter universe is vast and rich, but there are pockets of it in which various people feel comfortable in. Tech people subscribe to the tech crowd, news people live in the news sphere. My personal Twitter pocket comprises of mostly Indians. It would be nice to see what my crowd is talking about when I log in.
2. When I go to a user’s Twitter page, I want to see if he/she is following me or not. If not, an Orkut-style bread crumb telling me how I am connected to someone would be nice. There are Twitter apps that allow for this. I don’t see why the official web interface can’t.
3. How about having a box pop up upon mouse-over on usernames (or user pics). Friendfeed does it already and it is a big help. This box could have details about the user (user bio, stats) as well as contextual information on how I am connected to him/her and what friends we share (like on Facebook).
4. I want to see the number of times a tweet of mine, or anyone else’s, has been favourited. This can be done with a simple message under the tweet that says: “Faved 8 times” or “Faved by 8 people”. If the main stream proves too inconvenient a place for this, the notification can be on the tweet’s permalink page. The “like” function is one of the most used feature on Friendfeed and Facebook isn’t doing very bad with it either. Time Twitter opened up the favourites.
5. While something like Friendfeed’s realtime interface might be overkill on Twitter (I follow 1990 people), a way to notify users of new tweets would be most welcome. How about something like the yellow bar in Twitter Search that tells of new results “since you last searched”? One of the reasons why Facebook scores in this department is because of the little red notifier they have in the bottom right corner. No conversations are lost track of and no eagerly awaited update is missed.

If I had to guess, I would say Twitter’s monetisation strategy would depend a great deal (if not completely) on its web interface. They have already added a cute little box highlighting apps and services centred around Twitter. I wouldn’t mind at all if that space became home to social ads in the future. Here’s hoping for the best!

Of course, if you want to follow someone with abysmally low IQ levels (It’s true! I took a quiz on Facebook!) you can follow @vimoh on Twitter.

I will try to list a few things they might want to do to make this happen.

Facebook Notes

The notes feature is one of the less-pimped features of Facebook. Most people’s Facebook notes only comprise of imported RSS feeds. I remember a discussion on Friendfeed (this was soon after the launch of Friendfeed’s realtime interface) where someone said the only thing missing was a means to do long-form blogging.

Facebook has always had this feature. But they need to play it up more. Perhaps it can be included in the list of things you can do with the new publisher tool? What’s more? You can upload notes from m.facebook.com as well. In my experience, notes can be a solid replacement for web journals, especially if you want to keep your posts within friends.

Email Posting

Facebook’s mobile site is among the best there are. But it doesn’t allow for posting of pictures. The only way I can post photos to my Facebook albums from my mobile is by MMS (an across the world, inter-continental MMS at that). Apart from being unreliable and slow, it is also costly.

Facebook should allow for posting of photos to the wall via email. While they are at it, they should also let me post notes by email.

More Feed Filters

I love the new live feed that has Facebook users across the world crying in anguish. I think it is a step in the right direction. But it needs to become more flexible. Facebook’s vast range of applications can make this feed richer than Twitter’s or Friendfeed’s can ever be. They should allow for EVERY type of item to show up on this feed. They should also allow the users to determine what they want to show in their personal feeds and what they don’t.

Currently there are only two options — either put up with someone’s updates, or ban them altogether.

Vanity URLs for Profiles

It is possible (and fashionable) for people to carry their Twitter URLs around in their heads, on their visiting cards or even in their heads (so they can shoot unsuspecting strangers with it). With Facebook, the only way I can tell someone about my profile is by giving him my email and/or asking him to search for me.

A simple URL like facebook.com/user or user.facebook.com or even facebook.com/members/pages/user will go a long way in opening Facebook up.

Tagging Users with Ease

One important factor behind the success of any publishing system is its ability to reach out to prospective readers. Newspapers advertised, blog posts linked and tracked back to other blog posts, Twitter lets users tag each other using a simple @username command. On Facebook notes, the tagging process is much less intuitive. True, photos and notes can be tagged. But tagging someone while writing a note is not possible.

If Facebook does go for vanity URLs, usernames might help in this regard. A @username or a #username might be converted into a link to the user’s profile.

A mega wall?

A large part of Twitter’s appeal lies in the tracking that their search service allows. Anything you can spell, you can track. The ‘trending topics’ section is a virtual heatmap of what theworld is talking about, right now. Facebook’s opening up its status message stream won’t do much good unless these little bits of text become part of a greater whole, like they did when Facebook tied up with CNN to broadcast President Obama’s swearing-in ceremony. Millions logged in and shared their thoughts on the historic moment.

It is that kind of global participation that I am talking about. And why only global? Why not local events? Why not allow uses to create pages to carry out live discussions on specific events and topics. On Twitter, all this requires is a hashtag. On Facebook…?

If I had to define Twitter in one word, I would simply say that it is an interface. Think about it.

Apart from the interface, there really is nothing that keeps Facebook and Twitter from turning into each other. Of course, an interface is never just an interface.

It is the interface which ends up deciding what kind of conversations a platform will encourage. It is the interface which allows or disallows users to do things that they want to do.

Facebook has been called a walled garden for long. And not without reason either. Apart from being a platform closed to the external web, it also had solid walls within the garden. I for one, found the place very nearly impossible to navigate in the beginning.

Twitter on the other hand, was a simple and solid idea. It did one thing, and did it well. There was little to learn and the experience was so smooth that people were at a loss for words when asked to explain it.

Twitter users, by and large, eagerly await news features (as do users of Friendfeed). Facebook however, with every redesign, ends up displeasing a great many of its users. Why do you think that is?

I think Facebook is growing faster than its users are. The Twitter crowd is the Twitter crowd, a breed that came into being because of Twitter and continues to thrive because of the sphere called microblogging that Twitter has spawned.

The Facebook junta, on the other hand, is the social networking crowd. They came from various Internet places and took to Facebook mostly because their friends were already on it. In other words, they lack the early-adopter style enthusiasm for change that marks the average Twitter user.

My personal sphere on Facebook comprises mostly of people who log in anywhere between once a day to once a week to check if anyone has uploaded photos. That’s about it.

The new Twitter-like design of Facebook scores because it alters the basic way Facebook communicates with its users. It encourages (some might say forces) users to stay logged in for longer periods of time and participate more actively in the many live and ongoing discussions that are sprouting all over their Facebook sphere.

I have seen my Facebook come to life in these past few days. I have seen scores of comments on simple status updates and shared links. This never happened earlier. The new-look Facebook has finally put Facebook in a position where it can allow its gazillion odd features to be of use. The thousands of photos, quizzes, book and movie review apps can now enable and enhance conversation instead of being pretty little ornaments.

Of course, the current look is not as streamlined as I would like it to be, but I do believe it is a huge step in the right direction.

BuzzGain tracked over 1,200,404 Indian blogs, over 12,000 print media sources and over 34,000 Indian microbloggers to come up with detailed metrics, analysis and sentiment of their current trends regarding the elections.

They set up over 30 campaigns within BuzzGain for Elections 2009 by state, party and key political individuals for the last 4 months. Their results bring answers to some key questions like:

1. Who has more share of voice online?
2. Is the sentiment of online users positive, negative or neutral?
3. Which party do younger online voters have a preference for?
4. What is the gender demographic of breakdown for voters and readers online?
5. What are the top issues mentioned by online viewers & voters for the election?

These are not results of surveys or other techniques, but rather live data using indexing and analysis technology. Here are some graphs illustrating details of BuzzGain’s research. Some of the results surprised me.

Our enterprising news channels continue to broadcast the events even as I type this. None of the cricketers are seriously injured and a helicopter is taking them to Dubai right now. Sri Lankan authorities have officially called off the cricket tour.

The Indian Home Minister Mr. P Chidambaram has gone on record and said that security arrangements for the players were “hopelessly inadequate”. Pakistan’s ISI chief Hamid Gul “has quickly blamed the Indian external intelligence agency Research and Analysis Wing for the attack” (see end of this article).

As you might imagine, apart from guesswork, a lot of things remain unclear about the attack. So let me just comment on the things that ARE clear.

I am not a cricket fan by any stretch of imagination. But I do know that cricketers are practically gods in the sub-continent. The game’s following transcends politics and ethnicity. This attack happened in Pakistan and the only people who actually died in it are Pakistanis. But more important than that is the fact that it was an attack ON cricket.

The message that these so-called terrorists want to send out, said one of the many talking heads on my TV set some time ago, is that they own Pakistan now and the rest of the world should stay away.

Messages are tricky little things. It doesn’t matter what you write in your message. What matters is who reads it and what he or she reads into it. It all boils down to one question – what are you looking for?

The animals who attacked the bus came with a lot of plans. They came to either blow up the bus (they lobbed grenades and had rocket launchers) or hijack it (packets of dry fruits, similar to what the Mumbai attackers survived on for nearly three days, have been retrieved from the bags they dropped while fleeing).

What did they achieve? Not much. They couldn’t kill a single Sri Lankan cricketer. Their grenades missed the bus. They were faced with men who would rather die than run away (like they did) and let them win.

This was, in more ways than one, a FAILED mission. That’s what their message means and that’s what it must be read as.

…Ajith moved the Supreme Court through counsel Jogy Scaria seeking quashing of the criminal complaint on the ground that the blog contents were restricted to communication within the community and did not have defamation value. He also pleaded that there was threat to his life if he appeared in a Maharashtra court.

A computer science student, Ajith pleaded that the comments made on the blog were mere exercise of their fundamental right to freedom of expression and speech and could not be treated as an offence by police.

Unimpressed, the Bench said, "We cannot quash criminal proceedings. You are a computer student and you know how many people access internet portals. Hence, if someone files a criminal action on the basis of the content, then you will have to face the case. You have to go before the court and explain your conduct."

I for one, am happy that the Sena is actually seeking legal recourse instead of vandalising cyber cafes or getting them to ban Orkut. As for the decision of the court, I agree completely. As Prem Panicker explained in an email, it is no big deal.

The SC only said that it cannot, suo moto, quash a criminal prosecution.

It did not say the case is well-founded — that is for the court to decide on the basis of existing law.

Ajith incidentally cannot say he is in fear of his life and hence the case should be quashed — what he *can* do is ask that the case be transferred to a Kerala court, on the grounds the alleged offense was committed there, the alleged culprit is based there, and not in Thane.

My friend Gopal Sathe mailed in explaining why this is a good thing. The blurry lines between the mainstream and the lawless realm of the web needs to be given a shape.

I’m not talking about the specifics here. But I think that some guidelines for notability need to be laid down – within the framework of these guidelines it would be easier to dismiss the Sena case, but at the same time would prevent people from misusing the freedoms granted by the internet.

The medium is inherently public. Cloaked in anonymity people say things they might not in any other situation. In some… no in many cases, this is a good thing. But a blog dedicated to chronicling, in unrestrained detail, the love life of the people working with the blogger? Regardless of the veracity of the information. Particularly if the identity of the blogger, or any of his subjects becomes known. Think about it for a second.

Now consider. If instead of a blog post, this 19 year old had made a short film, and got it screened in public. We might still disapprove the Sena suing him, but wouldn’t find it fundamentally wrong of them. Norms need to be established. To protect our rights, to individual dignity and privacy, and also our right to free speech. After all, if we can cry foul when a blogger’s work is copied without permission, then why can’t a blogger be sued? Even if the other side of the argument is the Shiv Sena? Because to condemn their case without hearing it first is to become a fundamentalist oneself.

I hope, in the long run, such cases come up more and more, urging creation of laws that would help govern the Indian Internet. The web has far too long been known as home to the unsocial and the anti-social.

Less then 5 years ago, I was told that the time when the web begins to hold its own in the Indian media sphere, was still some way off. Those who told me this were no whiny naysayers. They were my teachers at my journalism school, in charge of teaching me (and 14 others like me) the ways of New Media.

Of the 14 in my class, 12 had either broadcast or print journalism as their first choice of specialisation and had been put in that room owing to unavailability of seats. Only two (me and another) considered “this Internet thing” to be of any consequence. We learnt the nuances of web publishing and the pros and cons of our medium as compared to the “mainstream” (newspapers and TV channels). In the background, Google launched Gmail and acquired Blogger.

I don’t know if 5 years was the timeframe we were chasing in our hunt for legitimacy in India, but it has certainly begun to seem so lately.

Internet penetration in India keeps growing at ever faster rates. A recent survey by Internet and Mobile Association of India says there are over 3.3 million Internet users in rural India. Given India’s population, the number may not mean much, but it is a clear sign of the direction things are going in.

A TV channel has time limits. A newspaper has space constraints. The web has no such problem. It can do much more; and it does.

By the time my newspapers get to me, I have already scoped the day’s headlines on the RSS reader on my mobile phone. When news breaks, I turn to crowd-sourced news on Twitter. It is chaotic true, but probably no more so than the frantic and confused correspondents on my favourite TV news channels.

My favourite news channels, to be fair, have felt the rush of the coming wave. They have solid web presences. I can watch videos, read editorials (and blog posts by their staff), and listen to podcasts on their websites. What’s more? I can also do all of this on my mobile.

Those with smart mobile devices don’t constitute an elite either. If anything, the mobile market is outracing the web as far as reach is concerned. The visiting British Foreign Secretary, recently on a visit to Amethi, wrote in his blog.

We stopped at an internet café in the middle of nowhere – I wanted to do a blog but the dial-up was not fast enough. But the mobile phone revolution is reaching here – the shop was selling 5 – 10 mobile phones a day, and although there are 850 million people on less than $2 a day, 8.5 million new subscriptions per month is eating in to the backlog.

People’s representatives are getting online, not just through a typical brochure website, but on social networks like Facebook and microblogging platforms like Twitter. Celebrity bitchfights, fodder for much trash TV, now happen on the said celebrities’ respective blogs.

If this is not the age of the web in India, it is certainly the beginning.

First a recap of the process:

We are out to find who the most popular Twitter user in India is. Mostly because we think the value a user provides to his followers (fun, information, news, whatever) can’t be measured by looking at the number of tweets they have made or the number of followers they have.

We thought the most logical way of finding that out was through a vote in which users come out and actually say who they like best.

So we set up a process like this:

Those interested in participating in the poll must first follow @itwote on Twitter.

Then you must tweet your nomination. If (for reasons known only to yourself) you wanted to vote for me (@vimoh), you will tweet:

@itwote #twitterguru @vimoh

The more such nominations a user receives, the more points he/she builds up till the day of the nomination counting. The nomination process is open till November 12, 2008.

A few points to remember though:

1. You can only nominate one person.
2. If you nominated for someone and then changed your mind, you can nominate again. Only your last nomination will count as valid.
3. Your nominated twitter user must be from India.
4. You cannot nominate yourself (Sorry, but we have to mention this).

The 5 users with the most nominations go into the final round of actual voting that happens on November 13, 2008. On that day, you will have to vote for one of the 5 finalists and the one with the most votes will be declared TwitterGuru.

Some users have raised questions and objections to the idea. I will try and answer some of the recurring doubts here.

I think it is a pointless exercise and proves nothing.

Ans: Perhaps you are right. But then you have to wonder if any kind of voting counts as anything. There are always those who don’t vote and those whose votes end up invalid. That doesn’t mean the fault is in the process.

What’s with the seven day nomination period?

Ans: Some users don’t on a daily basis and might miss out on the updates. In any case, Twitter is just too noisy a place for a message to come across without potentially being lost among other messages first. The week-long nomination period will help more users take note of the contest and will hopefully invite more involvement.

How come you are allowing nominations to be changed? Serious elections don’t work that way.

Ans: We understand that. But please note that real elections don’t allow regular folks to nominate candidates on as immediate a level as we are doing.

Also, real elections are preceded by issues that need solving. Candidates step forward to solve them. People hear their proposals out and make their choice.

Hear we are only looking to find who people like most (for whatever reasons). There is a great difference!

But then what’s the point behind this? Why do this at all?

Short answer: Because we want to.

Long answer: I see iTwote.com as a social experiment. Blogs don’t come with an audience attached, Twitter (potentially) does. If you have something to say, it won’t take you long to find yourself in the middle of a community that wants to hear exactly what you have to say.

It is not just the physical format that separates Twitter from other platforms. I have gotten a lot of people to start blogs. But they quit soon (“nobody comments on my blog”) in the absence of connection. A big part of the Twitter experience is to connect and converse.

We think it is a good idea to harness the conversations and harvest opinions out of them to gain (however blurry) a picture of things. TwitterGuru is merely our first baby experiment to test this system. What we can do with it in the future, I leave to your imagination.

And this conversation is not over. I invite comments, complaints, abuses (umm… maybe not), and suggestions. The comment form is open.

It starts and grows on Twitter until some people decide 140 character replies aren’t really working anymore. They take it to their blogs and the conversation continues in the comments (possibly through Disqus).

Some have integrated their Twitter status messages with their Facebook accounts. The conversation continues in the comments to those status messages, spreading through the social network via the ubiquitous share button.

Some of those who blogged have Friendfeed pulling their RSS feeds. The conversation has taken news turns in the lively comment threads there. Some of those who only read the blog posts have shared the posts on their FF pages and have their own conversations going.

What’s more? Many of the people involved in this conversation have their Twitter accounts, their blogs, AND their Disqus accounts plugged in to Friendfeed. Every single quip and retort is rendered commentable. The conversation explodes into a thousand pieces!

I am just skimming the surface of this issue. There are a million other ways the conversation might take. Forget following it, even making sense of it is a far cry. Need I remind you of the existence of those who are eager to label the social web ‘noisy’. Can we really blame them?

Expecting a single web service to solve this problem isn’t practical. While the limitations of one service may not be there in another, there will soon emerge a set of needs that force the user to look beyond his favourite online hangout.

This is the time when I give you an answer. Unfortunately, I have none. I was hoping you could help me out on this. What do you think we need to better follow the conversation?

Good news is – your name is Vijayendra Mohanty. It’s not a special name by any stretch of imagination. But it is your name. So it is important.

So here you are, online and trying to make sense of the blogosphere. You read up acres and acres worth of beginners’ guides on the web and chat up scores of seasoned bloggers and web professionals. They inspire and motivate but you end up more confused than when you started.

You decide to start by lurking at some select joints in the blogosphere. You pick up RSS feeds left, right, and centre and read (as best as you can) the hell out of them. You give up on all but a few of them a week or so later. This is also the time when you start paying more attention to the few feeds that you are still reading.

You start clicking over to some of the blog posts and see a veritable torrent of comments under each write-up (you wouldn’t choose anything less than a pro blog, would you?). People are speaking their minds, letting the blogger know how wise, insightful, stupid, or short-sighted he/she is.

You realise you can contribute to this conversation. A lot of these people are not really saying anything. You can actually answer some of these questions and probably even introduce angles nobody has raised (noticed?) yet.

So you put the carat in the comment field and type out your point of view. After that, you set right (politely of course) a few of the buffoons that got to the thread before you did. Then you unassumingly sign the comment Vijayendra Mohanty and leave the URL field blank (you don’t have a blog, remember?).

The next day, you go back to the thread. There are more comments. Your heart jumps! People have taken the time to acknowledge your comment. Some agree with what you say and some don’t. But you are present there alright! You even get an @ reply from the blogger.

Pleased with yourself, you learn a valuable lesson – the web is about presence. Brochure-type websites for companies, photo blogs and galleries for professional photographers, tech blogs for those who know their machines. If you don’t blog, your name is your presence.

It represents you on comment threads. It is what you are known as to anyone who has ever been to the blogs you frequent. You are a known quantity.

If all the comments you have ever made on any blog post were to be aggregated on one web page (blog?), they would show a pattern, wouldn’t they? Your interests, you choice of topics, your use of language. Your general way of dealing with disagreement and with other people. Your personality!

Actually, it is not that IF a situation. If you have ever commented on a blog that uses Disqus Comments, you already have a page like that. Here, for example, is the disqus page of Karen Swim – a commenter on this blog. People can even subscribe to your comments the way they would subscribe to your blog (if you had one). There are other comment services like Disqus, (eg: IntenseDebate and SezWho) but I only have first hand experience with Disqus.

Taking comments responsibly can prove to be a powerful pre-launch strategy if you want to start a blog some time soon. But you might want to hurry up and get that vmohanty.com domain that has become such hot property, thanks to you obsessive, incessant, and insightful commenting.

You look for news yourself. You are not dependent upon the mainstream media for collection and dissemination of news. You are free to skip all propaganda, all inanity, and all the talking heads that the MSM can throw your way.

You subscribe to news your own way. Independently, in a free and rich way. Your news is whatever you decide it is. Your friend’s recent trip to Sikkim is news to you. Your favourite jokes or your daily horoscope can be news to you. This blog can be news to you (RSS link on the sidebar). Even your porn can be news to you!

You use RSS newsfeeds to stay updated of your news. You use newsreaders to organise and access your news. You even decide what news is worth talking about when you submit it to news aggregation services.

What’s more? When you blog, you become news. Your text reaches the masses free of cost. Your videos entertain thousands. People send your photos to their friends because they like what they saw.

RSS, feed mashing, and free-to-use API keys have created an immense range of possibilities for you and me to access and use news. Perhaps even define news!

News does not belong to them anymore. It’s ours!

Most of us were brought up in a world where the majority opinion counts. The surprising thing about the majority opinion is that its roots are unknown. ‘A government job is the way to go‘ your parents and relatives might tell you. Not because they have studied the benefits of government employment closely and compared it to all manner of jobs elsewhere. But simply because that is what they have been brought up to believe. That is what they have been told ever since they were old enough to spell ‘JOB’.

I recently met a youngster who, at the age of twenty, didn’t know what he was going to do with his life. He was a refreshing sight. All confused, and still determined not to go the way everyone else had. He likes talking about science. National Geographic, and Discovery Channel stuff. His biggest grouse with the world is that nobody ‘gets’ him. He would tell his plans (or lack of them) to his friends (people his age – his classmates) and get responses like, “You should get into engineering,” or, “Don’t dream of crazy things,” or, “Come back to the real world.”

Apparently, the real world comprises solely of engineers.

I got thinking about how well-suited the Internet is for those who refuse to let go of their uniqueness. Unlike in the real world, the accepted reality is not what the majority thinks it is. Reality is dictated by the maverick’s interpretation. The web is a catalyst for great ideas. It is a place where a good idea can be itself, prove itself of use to millions and not have to fight ‘accepted standards‘.

What if the 20-year-old I just mentioned were online? What if he had a blog on which he wrote about popular science? What if he had a steady readership of… say… a 100 and grew it to a 1000 through regular and informative posts? He could turn it into a layman’s science journal!

Imagine him networking with other science enthusiasts. Imagine him starting his own science quiz website and getting sponsorship from Nat Geo and Discovery. Or maybe he could get schools to pay him to organise science camps for kids. He could become a resource to TV channels and get featured on science shows as a guest. He could, in time, write books on various science topics.

Even if my optimistic dreams come up a little too short, his career would be more rewarding and useful than most engineers’.

Our schools need to take computer education to the next level. As it is, most kids learn on their own and end up knowing more than the folks who teach them. Talk to a teenager about gadgets and you will see my point.

The current system trains students to use the web like they would use the typewriter. Use Google to do homework. Use email to send your resume. Use chat and social networking to hang out with friends. No wonder Orkut and chat are seen as wastes of time.

We need to learn the web. All over again. The medium is the message.

Listen to my story.

My first blog was an experimental web-based diary. It was hosted at a service called tBlog. Back then, I used to go to a cybercafe once a week to check my email and update my blog with whatever had happened in my life in the last seven days.

In time I graduated to blogging about stuff I found on the web. One of my pet obsessions was taking email services for test drives. I was a frequent poster on the Email Discussions forums. I did all of this for no other reason than my love for the web. Perhaps that is why this hobby has paid off so many times.

When I decided to pursue journalism, nobody was surprised when I chose New Media (it’s about time they started calling it cyber media – it’s not ‘new’ anymore). At the admission interview, I discovered I was one of the few who had made that choice. Everyone else was either into TV, or newspapers.

I also discovered, to my pleasant surprise, that no one had even heard of blogging. However, I like to believe that at least two of the faculty members had. My level of web-awareness got me an admission.

During the ten months long course, I realised I didn’t like news writing. During those ten months, I learnt a lot about blogging as a social phenomenon. That was also the time when I attended my first ever bloggers’ meet and made URL-friends. I was willingly consumed by blogging. Even my term-end dissertation was on blogging (I have forgotten the full title).

Then came job hunting. I didn’t want to work for a dead-tree publication. I couldn’t see myself as a TV person either. I insisted on an online gig. Nothing was forthcoming. So I sought out work as a copywriter in an online marketing agency. They managed the web presence of companies who couldn’t be bothered to do it themselves. There was nothing social about it. We were practically making brochures.

I quit in a month due to a pestering old hag (my immediate superior). I thought she was loud and obnoxious. I also didn’t like her because she sucked at computers and had no respect for them.

I started dreaming web dreams again. I was still unemployed. But I was blogging and was happy.

A couple of months later (during which I did nothing but write stories and send out my resume to web-based publications) I got an email from a major web portal. They had an opening for a sub-editor. I was also told that they were considering integrating news blogs into their regular package of offerings. I jumped at it. I suspect posting my blog URL on top of my resume had something to do with the job offer.

I liked my work and my new office. But during my stint as a sub-editor, I discovered many important things about the way my mind worked.

It was around this time that I started mypajama.com. It got me a fair reader base and I got constant and mostly positive feedback on my stories and essays. More importantly, I started imagining myself on my own. Doing what I pleased with my time and making a living for myself based on what I love doing.

Six months ago, I quit my job to write a book. What I feel right now, is indescribable. If you don’t know what it is like being on your own, nothing I say will make it real for you. I spend my day reading and writing. Taking breaks in between to do the work that brings me my monthly pay.

And I owe it all to the hobby I picked up in a cybercafe five years ago. And it was costing me 40 rupees an hour back then. Those were the days! These are the days!