SOCIAL NETWORK

I watched the movie Social Network yesterday on television as it was premiered for the first time at Sony Pix, and regretted that I should have watch this movie at theater. The film is about the founding of Facebook and its founder Mark Zuckerberg.

Though I heard a lot about movie earlier but never thought that the life of the founder of the most popular virtual social space would be so dramatic in reality. The drama was compelling with Oscar deserving performances. Irrespective of the fact that the film portray the character of Zuckerberg in gray shades but get all the respect and accolade for the clarity of thought that the character had. Mark created this website after been rejected by her girlfriend so the social network ardent should be thankful to her as well.

The idea is the key for the success of any business, resources are required later , these just supplement the idea and since Zuckerberg borrowed or stolen the idea from his college mate Winklevoss twins without giving them any credit he landed up in the law suit. That brought me to one question why Winklevoss shared the idea with Zuckerberg simply because they did not have the skills of converting their idea into reality and needed the talent and skill of Zuckerber.

I am a Google loyalist therefore I think that the concept of social network was pioneered by Google and further certainly someway or other had created the ground for germinating and refining the idea of social network.

Anyways, the other thing that I noticed an advertisement of Airtel in the breaks, which was flaunting the fast, easy and anywhere accessibility of face book on Airtel network as the USP of Airtel, this surprisingly made me realize the power of Facebook as a brand and of complete social networking concept that is being leveraged by Airtel and many such companies.

Many companies be it fortune 500 or a start-ups are leveraging Facebook for enhancing there reach to customers. They are putting advertisements, creating fan pages, introducing and launching new products online and why not? It is the fastest word of mouth publicity, with one click thousand people get to know about your company. Most importantly the fans can interact with companies directly on there web page.

There are many reasons for the success of social network sites but the most important reason is that you get to create a society of your own choice virtually that you don’t get in reality and it has long way to go.

Does Electronic Media Behave as fourth Pillar of Democracy?

This is one question that has disturbed me over a period of time. In a democratic country like India media plays the important role for raising the voice of people, asking questions, informing people and forming opinion about any issue.

Therefore two things become very important one is:
• The nature and gravity of issue raised by Media in public Interest
• The sincere and genuine effort of representing the issue or story

The present situation is such in the electronic media industry is getting over-crowded with many news channels coming into existence, making it very competitive space. The news channels are not only competing with themselves but these are also facing generic competition from entertainment channels for getting the maximum eyeball.
All news channels wanted to get the maximum audience therefore this has lead to two noteworthy changes in the news that we see:
• The focus has shifted from content to present-ability (making news a sensation).
• The News channel has brought an element of entertainment in the news

Since the competition has increased ,the profits have reduced therefore news channel specially Hindi new channel not keeping any concern for the content have identified the cost effective way of finding news in the form of few adventures video taken from You tube and making it as 30 minute entertaining news program. For such news they don’t need any journalist on field so saving salary, and other expenses.
English news channels are still better in terms of presentation if not in terms of content as they mostly bring arm chair critics to their panel and discuss few issue that they thing could appeal to their target audience.

All this lead to a paradigm shift in the attitude of whole electronic media industry and the mentors that every news is a product and it has shelf life and therefore it brings me to the question that Is electronic Media behaving as fourth pillar of Democracy.