Biography of Twitter

It’s surprising how far Twitter has come in a short period of time. I still remember joining Tweeter about a year and half ago and being greeted by some friends who were already on it. Since then a lot has happened. I have got new followers, added new people to the list of people I follow, been witness to changes and developments at a national and global level, read new articles and posted blogs. Some six or so months back a prominent journalist had tweeted if we are developing a Twitter fatigue. Well, I have not and I continue to find Twitter exciting.


It was launched in 2005 and took about two years to become popular. And although, when it started becoming popular, many called it an alternative to Facebook, Twitter was neither modeled on FB nor had been meant to rival it. FB was originally launched as a photo sharing app which eventually became a platform where you could do several other things around networking apart from photo sharing.

Twitter, on the other hand, was launched a networking site where you could only post short (140 letters) messages. Given the succinct nature of messages, it never became another FB-like site and established an alternate pattern of networking, less chatty and more impersonal, promoting, in sum, the kind of messages you wouldn't share with a friend or a family member but a person you shared an interest with. This is why Twitter became a platform to engage with others on issues of public interest, politics, social issues, films, books etc.

There are enough rabble rousers on Twitter but very few people who have no opinion or at least are not on a networking site to express them or review them based on others', the type FB mills with.

But does Twitter have an impact? Last week, the India govt blocked the Twitter accounts of some journalists and social commentators because they had attacked the government. A couple of days later, however, their Twitter accounts were unblocked again. Nothing can establish Twitter’s power better than this flip flop by the govt. First, fearing that a few Tweets might cause a fire, you block an account; then realizing that blocking will lead to a backlash both on and offline helping the blocked person to become the face of opposition, you unblock his account again.

This kind of incident is not new to Twitter. While I have been on Twitter, the site has faced threats and demands from various governments and heads of states (China being one of them and very frequently so) demanding that Twitter content be sanitized, dissenters blocked, etc. Although Twitter resisted the demands to block sites or give sanitized content initially, eventually it gave into the coercion, promising to sanitize content based on regional preferences/threats.

You can’t blame Twitter for this because the networking site may be one without national boundaries but its servers are vulnerable to being blocked by national governments and their cyber security apparatus. There are ways to circumvent even that but lack of easy access to the site will still shoo away some users from the site.

Twitter is not the only networking site that has suffered this fate and no networking site can avoid this for too long. And, if you were not a starry-eyed idealist, you would realize that toning down content is more preferable to being blocked. However, this whole cycle of people expressing their dissenting views and governments asking networking sites to block them or remove dissenting content and the networking sites resisting the demands – is not a futile affair.

The bad press governments receive each time they try to curtail networking sites’ freedom will eventually make them hesitant about attacking networking sites and push their boundary of tolerance a little further . And each time a new fight between governments and dissenters breaks out, it will be fought from a point where the boundaries had been laid last time, making each clash a step towards a more tolerant world. That’s the role Twitter has played since its birth together with other networking sites.

Why Twitter Works for Me?

I am among those who joined online social networks very late and even after joining some of them, like Face Book and Linkedin, I wasn’t regular on them. Twitter changed that. I joined even Twitter very late but once I did I got addicted. I found it very different from FB (remember, it was launched as a rival of FB) and other networking sites. What, according to me, separates Twitter from other sites is that it’s not a platform for purposeless chit chat among family members and friends, but informative and purposeful exchange of ideas expressed with a hint of style and snap and lot of brevity, just 140 characters . (Some manage to pull their messages into one- liners really well.)

Another thing that works for Twitter is that it is personal without being intrusive. People connected with you on Twitter may get to know you over a period of time but not through sharing of personal details but purely on the basis of commonality of interests. In fact, if you see the format of Twitter, it encourages sharing personal information only so much as is required for another person to be acquainted with you (a one-sentence bio and photo), underlining the character of networking it promotes: sharing ideas.

Many may complain about Twitter’s restriction on number of characters – 140 – but I find it engaging to contract a complex message into a sentence or two and if you have exceeded the limit, it’s interesting to figure out how you can drop letters from words and words from sentences without distorting the message. In fact, that we understand the message contained even in savagely truncated Tweets suggests that you don’t necessarily need to bend over backwards to explain something to somebody; if you supply the reader with little bit of details, the reader works out the rest. It promotes brevity and precision in communication.

It would be ignorant of me to say there is nothing in the networking world that can match Twitter because there are so many networking sites and I am not familiar with most of them. For example, for a very long time I was not a Linkedin fan; although I had an account I used to seldom visit or update it. Then a friend one day made a strong case for Linkedin and explained how prospective employers or consultants access you through Linkedin and the bigger your network the better your visibility with them, and for last five months or so I have been regular on the site. And I read some time back that there is another networking site like Tweeter open only to people coming from the scientific community.

The net is too infinite and viral a place for any idea to remain restricted to handful of sites, but if you divided the networking sites into two types – say one based on interest and the other on social interaction – I would throw my lot with the former.

How Facebook, Twitter and their Likes are Changing the World

Each time I read about the revolts breaking out in various parts of Arab and the details of how the protesters are organizing them, one question crosses my mind: Would it be possible in pre-social-media era? Facebook, Twitter and blogs are as much to thank for the success and spread of the revolutions as the people who are revolting.


For example, Egyptian protesters not just took inspiration from their Tunisian counterparts (where the protests broke out first) but also the know-how of how to organize and carry out successful protests. The Time has reported a Tunisian blogger as writing how a protester can stay safe and agile by wearing comfortable clothes and the importance of carrying water to protest venues. “Don’t discuss your strategy with just anyone you meet at protest site because it could be a security person in plain clothes,” the blogger warns.

It explains why the Internet becomes the first casualty when nervous governments want to stifle freedom of speech. The Internet gives people access to informal media (or social media) – Facebook, Twitter and blogs etc – empowering them to express their views in as-is form. This democratic character of informal media makes it more worrisome for repressive governments than conventional media which being organized are easy to control and suppress.

An Egyptian, a Google employee, set up a subversive group on Facebook and was jailed by authorities, and tortured. After the authorities freed him under public pressure, he went to Tahrir Square and gave a speech describing how he was tortured while in jail. Next day, the Egyptians who were part of his Facebook group went to Tahrir Square to join him, triggering protests that would eventually force Mubarak to step down.

History may have instances where a person singularly kicked off mass protests, but what is unlikely to have precedence is a popular protest in one country beginning a chain of revolutions in several countries, leaving regimes toppled and fates of nations reshaped in its trail. And no one knows where it will stop. That’s the power of social media.

                           A Scandalous Literary Work

Currently I am reading a book that many will recoil at – Lady Chatterley’s Lover – by D.H Lawrence. The book was published in 1928 and had created a furore in England and America because of its controversial storyline which is about extramarital affairs with graphic details of sexual intimacies.

Chatterleys are an unhappy couple. An accident has left Mr. Chatterley physically challenged and unable to perform conjugal duties. He also is indifferent towards his wife and encourages her to have a chequred relationship with someone so that Mr. Chatterley can get an heir to his immense wealth. Lonely and unloved, Mrs. Chatterley embarks on an affair with her husband’s gamekeeper, a caretaker.

The story gives you the glimpses of old English society, very lopsided and snob, and shows how the upper classes were indifferent to the plight of the ones below them. The Chatterleys have collieries and stay in a mansion, a world completely insulated from the lives of those working in their mines.

Lawrence had to have the manuscript typed by an Italian because several decent-minded English-knowing typists had refused to type it earlier due to heavy use of sexual expletives in the book. Upon its publication in the US, the book was banned. The ban spawned pirated copies which sold very well. It was DH Lawrence's last novel.

Some Quotes by a Cerebral Celebrity

A few days ago I read the phrase cerebral celebrity and drew up a list of criteria that one needs to meet to qualify for the distinction. One has to be informed, of course opinionated, public service spirited, articulate and has to have contributed to something that has an impact on people at large. I removed journalists and writers from my list of contenders because these criteria are part of their job descriptions. When I looked at the film world, I found a few (very few). Mahesh Bhatt, the film director producer, was one of them. Mahesh Bhatt is many things rolled into one; a successful filmmaker, social activist, writer, opinion maker, etc. Also, he is a man who always has something interesting to say.


Mahesh Bhatt is on Tweeter and he hasn’t disappointed me and his other fans.


Here are some of Mahesh Bhatt’s Tweets:

"There is an awe making mechanism hardwired in humankind. This need to be (in) awe of someone or something shadows us all our life.”

“Traveler, there is no path. Paths are made by walking!”

“I joined the world of movies when I was just 19.Having spent 40 yrs in it one thing I know for sure is that I don't know anything for sure.”

“If you pray for rain, you gotta deal with the muck too.”

“Cinema is the means through which a nation can forge a common identity, a common purpose, and a common resolve.”
“Unless you stake all you have for what you believe in you can't possibly win!”

“As long as you want something from someone, there will always be someone out there to control you.”

“To survive in the show business you need guts and the ability to constantly resurrect and reinvent yourself.”

“Art, religion & the zeal to improve the lives of the human lot, spring from the frustration and impossibility of making any sense out of life.”