Why fear social media? Veeresh Malik, There is this BIG bird in the sky, covering the sun, and people run around thinking that the sun has been destroyed! In actual fact, it is often just a cloud, or cyclical. This is human nature. At other times, the story is - sky is falling, sky is falling. Social media is something like that. It scares many of us because we dont understand it. Conversely, it also gives some of us delusions of grandeur, for the same reason. Today, our lives to a large extent are dictated by social media numbers, especially as consumers. Such and such person has so many followers and apply a few more algorithms, get some form of presumed power to, as they imply, pretend that the sun will not shine unless said persons flap their wings. There are many indicators available online, and one which is very interesting for Indians is known as the India Influencers List, available online. This is a ranking of Indians of all sorts. You may recognise some, if not all of the names, and it follows that the sublimnal message being sent across is that what these people or brands say has some deeper meaning as well as power. There could certainly be some truth in that. But. One parameter used is the number of followers and/or friends and/or hits online. And the India Influencer list does not appear to factor in the number of fake followers in their estimates. Obviously, some estimates are more important than others? Let us analyse some of the rankers on the India Influencers list with another independent website that provides analysis of number of fake folllowers. This is the position as on date of publishing, the numbers are presented without prejudice and without liability and in good faith, and since they are dynamic, keep changing. Rank, name, percentage of fake followers. 1) Amitabh Bachchan 76% fake 2) Dalai Lama 30% fake 3) Shah Rukh Khan 58% fake 4) Narendra Modi 68% fake 5) Sachin Tendulkar 80% fake 17) Shashi Tharoor 65% fake 24) Chetan Bhagat 72% fake 27) Virender Sehwag 82% fake 28) Rajdeep Sardesai 62% fake 33) Barkha Dutt 52% fake 35) Gul Panag 58% fake 38) Pritish Nandy 59% fake 46) Sagarika Ghose 62% fake 47) PMO India 59% fake 49) Vijay Mallya 73% fake 54) Anand Mahindra 66% fake 55) Omar Abdullah 60% fake 65) Kiran Bedi 74% fake 66) Taslima Nasreen 33% fake 68) Subramaniam Swamy 42% fake 69) Arvind Kejriwal 63% fake 70) Ramesh Srivats 30% fake 75) Madhavan Narayan 35% fake 78) Vir Sanghvi 59% fake 85) Sushma Swaraj 73% fake 87) Mahesh Murthy 52% fake 90) Milind Deora 60% fake 98) Nikhil Wagle 53% fake 309) Veeresh Malik 13% fake I will gladly provide the links to people who ask. What are the conclusions one can draw from this? # The percentage of fakes appears to be directly proportional to the commericial importance of the person, whether sportsperson, cricketer or politician. # On the other hand, the percentage of fake followers drops sharply for persons who are on the social media scene for some social purpose or larger benefit to mankind. Or for fun. # Obviously somebody is generating all these fake followers, and chances are that the entities are common for all three categories - politicians, actors, cricketers. # These rankings are what they are, flawed or otherwise, but they do tend to influence policy as well as decision making. And that is where the main problem lies. Whats a solution, then? For one, the people and entities running their own social media accounts should and can make efforts to delete fakes, or be caught out eventually. For another, the decision makers in our country who get scared by these lists, should know that behind many of the social media heroes of India are hollow shells of fake followers.
Posted on: Wed, 20 Nov 2013 04:30:18 +0000
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