Why aren’t More Indians Using Twitter? – Pandodaily is wrong
I frequent the recently launched Pandodaily.com for its excellent coverage on Startups and Technology trends. Their recent coverage on Google’s Search-Your-world fiasco was splendid. Especially Sarah Lucy’s (former Techcrunch Blogger) articles are a treat to read. But her recent post on Indians’ twitter usage is factually wrong. You can read the orignal article by clicking here (at Pandodaily.com).
The article lists the below reasons for Indians not using Twitter much.
1.India’s Poverty inspite of its size
2.Very less(??!!) English speaking people.
3. Pseudo Democracy
4. Rapidly growing but still small middle class.
All of the above might contribute to the less usage of Twitter in India to some extent, but they are not the main reasons, The main reason for Indian’s not using Twitter much is – Text Messaging (SMS).
Yes, Text messaging heavily in India. Apart from being very effective and convenient, the cost of Text message in India is very less or absolutely zero.This is unlike US, where text messaging is costly than in India This also needs to be seen in the context of feature phones still being more prevalent than smartphones (though that situation is changing).
Yahoo/Google/Facebook messengers are used personal and group chats. Add to this the now popular Blackberry Messenger Service. For all other social needs Facebook is used. (Earlier it was Orkut) The recent Facebook stats proves that. More details on the statistics is available here.
With Texting and Messengers taking care of short conversations and Facebook covering Social Networking, where does Twitter fit in? Many have signed up for Twitter and nobody uses it. Twitter is not alone here. The same arguments apply for Google Plus.
And again, this doesn’t mean, Twitter is not used at all. Twitter is making fast inroads and a list of popular tweeters can be found here. Once SmartPhones are more prevalent twitter usage will shoot up.
So, the real reasons for Twitter Usage less in India is the above and not what has been mentioned in Pandodaily’s post.
Hi-Decibels 
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