Twitter expects the upcoming Karnataka elections to give its user engagement drive a huge fillip, and the microblogging site has lined up plans to provide real-time updates on the campaign trail and connect voters to politicians on important election issues.

Talking to BusinessLine , Taranjeet Singh, Country Director, Twitter India, said the company sees significant opportunity in Karnataka, a State of 6.8 crore people. “This is larger than many European countries put together,” he said.

As the elections near, the State is witnessing a pitched battle between the BJP and the Congress. “Twitter is the place to see what’s happening in the State election, and engage in conversations about political progress among citizens,” said Singh.

Interestingly, Karnataka government is better established in its digital practices in comparison to many other States, and this is one reason that Twitter is bullish. In line with this, the company is conducting awareness campaigns on how to use keywords and policies at the MLA level, and conversations around social issues.

Its gameplan includes ways in which politicians can engage with individual voters through ‘name-targeting’ — an industry term for personalised auto-generated messages.

The company is also looking to push Twitter Lite, a data-friendly version of the original, in Karnataka’s hinterlands where connections could be patchy. The Twitter Lite app consumes 70 per cent less data and takes up less than 1 MB of storage space, similar to the lite versions of LinkedIn and Facebook.

Location- and device-targeting will play a strong role in urban Karnataka, but in rural areas, the approach has to be different, especially in terms of the context and content played out, according to Sanchayeeta Verma, Managing Partner, Wavemaker. Opinions on social media are increasingly influencing the political rhetoric, as well as influencing voter behaviour.

To a query on the quantum of growth Twitter expects from engagements such as the Karnataka polls, Singh said the company does not comment on growth specific to regions.

Not all of what Twitter is doing in Karnataka is new. For example, it is replicating some of the initiatives it deployed in last year’s Gujarat elections. Twitter did not go into the details of its strategy, but sources in the advertising industry told  BusinessLine  that the company is creating a database of people who are interested and actively involved in supporting a political party. Twitter, however, denies this.

While Twitter is shaping political opinions, it faces stiff competition from Facebook, which has 250 million users in India. Industry watchers say this number is at least ten times that of Twitter’s. However, in its recently announced fourth quarter results, Twitter continued the trend of double-digit engagement growth. For the first time in the last 7 quarters, it posted a net profit, of $91 million, and better-than-expected revenues.

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