Times of India, NEW DELHI:
According to a report by Burson-Marsteller, a public relations firm, India is missing out on a huge opportunity to promote itself on Twitter because it doesn’t even own the @India user account. Instead, the account is owned and managed by an Indian man living in China.
“The @India account is owned by an Indian person living in Guangzhou, China. The account owner shares pictures from his daily life and has made it clear that his Twitter handle is not for sale,” Burson-Marsteller said in a press note.
The Indian account, which has a very low-resolution image of Taj Mahal as its display picture, has over 13,000 followers. It also calls itself SnapDel and links itself to a parked domain full of advertisements. A search at the www.twbirthday revealed that the account was opened on March 16, 2007 though the first tweet was only made on October 3, 2008.
Burson-Marsteller came across @India profile as part of its study called Twiplomacy that looked at how governments in various countries are using Twitter to communicate to the rest of the world. The study found that of all the accounts that use the names of 193 UN countries, only nine were managed by government officials.
The report says that the vast majority of country accounts are owned by private individuals, who registered the name in the early days of Twitter. Between 2006 and 2009 there was a Twitter land grab, similar to the .com domain frenzy in the 1990s, of brand and country accounts.
Today all English-language country names have been registered. However, only a third of them (71 accounts) are actively used. The majority is dormant (43 accounts), inactive (30 accounts), protected (13 accounts) or suspended (36 accounts). The data for the study was collected earlier this month.
“Looking at the findings it becomes clear that few governments and tourism organisations have understood the power of country branding and marketing on Twitter,” said Matthias Lufkens, head of the Burson-Marsteller EMEA (digital practice). “There is a huge opportunity for countries to use Twitter as part of their communications to engage with a large and growing audience.”
Twitter has a policy of removing accounts as well as transferring accounts to the real entity if it finds impersonation. Salman Rushdie, a famous writer, came on Twitter last year. But he found that @SalmanRushdie was already taken. He lodged a complaint with Twitter and managed to take the control of @SalmanRushdie. Similarly, India recently successfully asked Twitter to remove several accounts that were impersonating Prime Minister’s Office.
