The first conference to be held in the country on the Twitter platform turned out to be a disappointment for most Tweeple. Sam Pitroda, Advisor to the Prime Minister on Public Information Infrastructure and Innovations, had organised the conference to give his views on ‘Democratisation of Information’ but the event itself turned out to be the topic of discussion, rather than what he actually said.
Within minutes of starting the conference, the tag ‘#Pitroda’ was trending on Twitter, and his Twitter handle @pitrodasam was getting hundreds of questions. But that’s where the event broke down as Pitroda could not answer all the questions that were tweeted his way.
“I'm giving up on @pitrodasam's farce of a Twitter presscon. Three relevant questions and I've got no answers,” tweeted Nikhil Pahwa, Founder and Editor of online news portal medianama.com
As soon as the conference started, at 3-25 p.m., Pitroda tweeted asking people to first watch his video on YouTube. This put off many as they felt that he could have asked people to do this while announcing the press conference on Monday. There was also no indication of the format or the agenda of the conference. While Pitroda tried to highlight the UPA Government’s position on censorship, transparency and accountability, many thought nothing new was being said.
“Sam Pitroda, king of telecom, needs Twitter training,” posted Anant Rangaswami of Firstpost.com
But social media experts said that Pitroda had taken a bold step in using social media to connect with the people. Despite the hiccups, clearly this will not be last time anyone uses this platform to do a conference. “Hope we do this more often,” Pitroda tweeted at the end of it all.
> thomas.thomas@thehindu.co.in
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