From an Inland Letter to Twitter!

I still remember those summer vacation holidays when I used to visit my maternal grandpa's place with my mom for two months and I my mom used to make me write letters to my Dad asking about his where abouts and normal routine, who in turn returned the favor by replying back.Though it was more of a writing practice for me but practically that was the only feasible medium to interact and contact ones out station friends and relatives. As making trunk calls to talk was a herculean task in itself and calls in those days were made only to convey occasions of births, deaths and marriages, as telephonic conversation was an expensive affair and telephone per say was a rare commodity and it was more of an item of luxury rather than an item of necessity. But things evolved at a brisk pace and we are staring a situation where telephones have rather almost gone extinct and are well and truly outnumbered by mobile phones. Also the cost of a phone conversation has gone down to such an extent that the only scheme left with the mobile operators is to pay the customer for using their services:). But fortunately options galore and we have hundreds of mediums to interact and network all across the globe, thanks to the concept of Social Networking!

With the advent of technology and globalization we have heck lot of options to communicate with our friends and relatives. The growth of internet has made our lives very convenient and easy, there was a time when one of the few social networking options on the internet other than emailing happened to be chat on the yahoo messenger. Infact it was rage among my friend circle, we used to go to internet cafes, paid 50-60 bucks per hour just to chat on the yahoo messenger. The concept of chatting across different rooms was too alluring, I basically went on to chat with few of my out station cousins and friends but most of my adventurous friends tried their luck in all the chat rooms like Friends, Love, Sex etc categorized across various cities and countries. And trust me it used to be the talking point in the school too, somebody boasting about his American girl friend whom he as supposedly proposed and wooed over the American chat room, somebody bragging about a holiday in singapore, thanks to the promise made by her new found friend in the Singapore chat room, some rather self proclaimed practical ones happy with the notion of a Delhite girlfriend, thanks to the Delhi chat room and last but not the least some really adventurous ones boasting about growing up into an adult pro by virtue of a video chat, courtesy his Australian strip model friend. Oh, those were the days when things moved really fast, slowly we graduated to some other similar social networking sites too but no sooner that boredom started to creep in, there entered google with a supposedly new concept in the form of Orkut. And Orkut pushed in a fresh breeze in our fun deprived lives. Orkut provided us a platform to not only regroup and chat with old friends but also gave us an opportunity to find new friends through our friend's network, and a variety of other new options like sharing pictures, flashing our favorite videos, giving a brief about ourselves and writing and recieving testimonials much in the school time slam book style. So being in the orkut was THE thing and those who weren't the part of this bandwagon were seen with a tinge of doubt.

But as with the mobile phones, no. of internet connections at home started to increase to an extent that now everybody has an private internet connection at home,consequently no. of social networking sites also plummeted. And people started to get bored with Orkut as they found other avenues like Facebook more interesting, as FB not only provided them with all the features of Orkut but also drafted in various games and interesting tests on its console too, keeping the fickle minded young generation roped in and virtually killing Orkut's business to an extent that now if you are still on Orkut and you don't have an account on FB, people behave as if there is something wrong with you. But none of the networking sites has excited me more than Twitter. Its simply one of the most powerful concept in the social networking arena, it not only provides you with an opportunity to express your views,share photos and connect to your friends but it also gives you an exciting opportunity to follow, explore and peep into the lives of the celebrities whom you have been adoring for years. Following superstars like SRK, Deepika, Warnie, Tharoor,Priyanka, Rajdeep Sardesai, Yuvraj to name a few and knowing their daily lives and plans through their tweets is an interesting and a delicious concept. And these superstars sharing their photos, upcoming plans and views on various matters is really something which was a matter of imagination before this powerful platform hit the scene. Twitter has gone on to to become such a powerful medium that even the news agencies have deployed special personnels to keep a track on the celebrity tweets to give them masala news. The power of a 140 character tweet can be ascertained by a simple fact that it led to the downfall of stalwarts like Tharoor and Modi. But for a common man like me who is a non celebrity the options on twitter aren't that many because the celebrities almost tweet things like 'Off to GYM' & 'Back from loo' and garner rave reviews for each of these tweets. But who the hell will care if I tweet anything like ' Had a good day in Office' or for that matter anythng. So what purpose it holds for me other than following these high profile celebrities and superstars, though even that is quite a boon considering the avenues this tool has opened. But yeah I feel something innovative can be done for the non celebrity class too, in the language of twitter world, for the cattle class too:).

Though the modes of networking have come a long way in last 30 years or so with each one of us having their own moments of joys and remarkable memories attached to them but there is still lots to come and these networking tools will scale newer heights in future too but one thing is for sure everybody is equal here, with equal rights to express ones views and use the medium to express oneself so no one expects or demands a special status neither any one gets it. There's no Taliban, no Pramod Muthalik, no Mulayam Singh either, to ask for a ban on computers and English. No MNS to demand you tweet or talk only in Marathi. At the most you may find a bot that offers you sex and then gives you a virus instead. We have truly come a long way from an Inland letter to Twitter, still miles to go!

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