What's remarkable
about India's mobile story is the way it is changing our online
experience. "On the go" is no longer a niche phrase. Accessing emails
and replying to them used to be the preserve of BlackBerry owners once upon a time. Today you can do that from any mobile phone.
Look at the Facebook Timeline. The "status messages" indicating "what's on your mind" have dwindled to a minimum. There are now more photographs and videos. And, importantly, a lot of them are uploaded on the go by users from their smartphones.
On an average, an online Indian has at least two devices. A huge majority -- as many as 72% -- of them have at least one mobile phone, and 48% of them access internet on the mobile, says Norton's annual Mobile Survey released last week. And what do they reach out to the web for? Sixty per cent of them to network with social circles, 44% to read news and 42% for online messaging.
Other studies also indicate a similar trend. Global Information research shows users spend on an average of 35 to 40 minutes daily on either business-related networking or social media sites. A Pew Research Centre study notes that there is a new form of video journalism emerging on Youtube as more people upload and view "witness videos" in times of events like earthquake, flood, accident etc.
As we get more networked, there's also more data in cyberspace. But that may not mean we are all better informed, since there's a limit to the amount of data our brain can perceive, analyse and retain. What we know, and how much we know, will naturally depend on what and how we consume data online.
Most of us are quite disorganized online — we drift from email to Twitter or Facebook to umpteen webpages, guided merely by the weblinks we see. We surf along without much purpose, gathering some random information that may interest us, but not what we may necessarily need to know.
As mobile internet explodes into the next phase, we will need to be more selective and organized by making more use of customization and filter tools on emails and social networking sites. That's the only way to make the best use of the infinite terabytes of data floating on cyberspace.
Look at the Facebook Timeline. The "status messages" indicating "what's on your mind" have dwindled to a minimum. There are now more photographs and videos. And, importantly, a lot of them are uploaded on the go by users from their smartphones.
On an average, an online Indian has at least two devices. A huge majority -- as many as 72% -- of them have at least one mobile phone, and 48% of them access internet on the mobile, says Norton's annual Mobile Survey released last week. And what do they reach out to the web for? Sixty per cent of them to network with social circles, 44% to read news and 42% for online messaging.
Other studies also indicate a similar trend. Global Information research shows users spend on an average of 35 to 40 minutes daily on either business-related networking or social media sites. A Pew Research Centre study notes that there is a new form of video journalism emerging on Youtube as more people upload and view "witness videos" in times of events like earthquake, flood, accident etc.
As we get more networked, there's also more data in cyberspace. But that may not mean we are all better informed, since there's a limit to the amount of data our brain can perceive, analyse and retain. What we know, and how much we know, will naturally depend on what and how we consume data online.
Most of us are quite disorganized online — we drift from email to Twitter or Facebook to umpteen webpages, guided merely by the weblinks we see. We surf along without much purpose, gathering some random information that may interest us, but not what we may necessarily need to know.
As mobile internet explodes into the next phase, we will need to be more selective and organized by making more use of customization and filter tools on emails and social networking sites. That's the only way to make the best use of the infinite terabytes of data floating on cyberspace.
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