Few days back, Sherlyn had  undergone a photo-shoot. Thereafter  she posted these images on her  twitter

After some days, Sherlyn found  tweeting

Where has my pic  disappeared!!! This is strange!  Can Twitter kindly let me know  where my pics are? Is there a  censor board on Twitter?

After coming to know that her photos were deliberately deleted by Twitter and that she has been banned from posting images, she further replied stating,

Is there no freedom of expression anymore? My images are sensual, not suggestive. I’m an Indian and I shall not do anything that goes against my ethos

Twitter has banned me from uploading pics…My Team is trying 2 get in touch with Twitter to sort out the matter.

Sherlyn also said that she will quit Twitter if the problem persists. Noticeably, Sherlyn Chopra become the first Indian Celebrity to get banned by Twitter.

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IndianWeb2.com: Indian Web 2.0, Technology Startups, News and Reviews

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While on global scale brands like Twitter (need no intro) and Jaiku are main players along with Pownce (from Digg), India is also deliberately paving way in Microblogging, though Twitter remain the key player in India too, a lot of Microblogging platforms were introduced in past 6 months in India. Below are major microblogging platforms in India;

A web app from Indian mobile technology company Webaroo, SMSGupShup is major Indian microblogging platform. It provide users to send/free free text SMS to any mobile device. Unlike to Twitter, it provide its users to create and join groups to send and recieve SMSs to and from users in these groups respectively.

As apparent, sending and receiving SMS via mobile and online site usage seems to have 1:5 ratio thus the site doesn’t appeal much sleek in UI.

Vakow is the next major microblogging and SMS based site in India after SMSGupShup, interms of usage and site traffic. Vakow too provide SMS message from web to mobile devices plus other features such as tagging, to tag the messages and group them based on these tags.to send Pics from web to mobile devices although a light weight, low resolution black & white pics only (see here).

Vakow also have a Facebook App (Link) and an other vakow app for Orkut, where in later one can forward SMS messages to friend’s scrapbook.

Moroever, Vakow guys have worked to develop way, through Tiwtter API, so that one can send updates from their mobile devices to twitter via Vakow, reason being Vakow cost less twitter, when it comes to sending message from any mobile devices in India to twitter servers.

Yewoh is on other hand a microblog service for Karnataka state of India and thus limited to mobiles in Karnataka only though users can send the messages through Yewoh system to anywhere in the world. The app is currently in alpha release and going through fixes and usability improvement, perhaps to come up with version for all over India rather than Karnataka only.

Snockles is one another such service we have blogged about previously, its a mobile message board, in short functionality are similar to that of Twitter along with features it carry. The app however is different in product marketing in way that it provide Enterprise Snockles which is a product in the social software for business category and as per the website amongst the world’s first on-demand and mobile enterprise solution for business social networking and collaboration.

Kwippy is one of my favorite nanoblogging service including twitter, reason being – you can post message from Gmail or GTalk directly to kwippy or integrate Gtalk and Yahoo messenger status, share links. Kwippy is thus a micro/nanoblogging webapp + IM status logger + social network.

In kwippy, the whole focus is on the Instant Messenger, right now Gmail adress book(Gtalk) and Yahoo only. The friends list on the instant messenger is the most intimate friends list you can find, of all social networks – as per Kwippy blog. The microblog app presently is in private beta, but one would get invite soon in a day or two. Rest is much similar to Twitter such as lingo like ‘followers’,'following’ and twits being Kwips here.

MOBS.MyToday.com is yet another microblogging service in India but with different concept, where one can greater controls over their messages over mobiles and can register for service through mobile sets only without going to website itself.

At Mytoday Mobs, one can create groups or closed user groups via cellphones called – Mobs, than can send messages over cellphone to other users who ever join your group/ Mobs. The service provides keywords to use in SMS such as Create to create mob, PUB to publish, Start to join Mobs and one can register for service in India by SMSing ACCEPT CityName to 575758.

Funpiper is also a microblog like service though use of cellphone is not a part of service but messages cane be sent to your friends with no message size limit unlike to other microblogging services. At funpiper one can plan events through its service with friends, send message along with pictures sending features and embedding video links.

Other Microblogging Services by Cellphone Operators in India: Reliance MBlog (WAP link), Nokia N-Series M-Blog

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IndianWeb2.com: Indian Web 2.0, Technology Startups, News and Reviews

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According to report Japan’s risen cellphones and SMS technology has made it to quickly adopt Twitter phenomena and the same reports has predicted that India along with China, two countries which already have huge amount of SMS/ mobile users might be able to do better with Twitter.

Report has released a geographical chart of Global distribution of Twitter users where US, Europe and Japan has most twitter users, though the geo location resolved in chart are of just 11,000 users from 19k users and thats too of only who specify their location. India is one among those area where there is lesser twits, but on the contrary India is Second Largest Mobile market in the World just after US and has added record 10.16 million users in month of March only as by Reuters’ report.

Moreover, there were 261.1 million estimated wireless users in India at end-March comparing to US 257.9 million wireless users. All these stats convincingly spoke of how fast can India provide a boost in Twitter hype and to bring this hype down to India I dont think there is any more point or stat, where India lag behind Japan or US.

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IndianWeb2.com: Indian Web 2.0, Technology Startups, News and Reviews

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Snockle service is free of cost, all the message that received via Snockles are free of cost though charges will apply but from respective users’ mobile network service providers, when you send messages. In an analogy to Twitter it has ‘Track‘ phenomena what is known as ‘Follow‘ in Twitter which gets his/ her updates through the Web and SMS once you track that person as per settings.

Snockles is currently being funded by Web Spiders, an Indian based firm providing RIA development services, the firm has seperate service of snockles for business and corporate sector known as Enterprise Snockles, which provide on-demand social software to achieve level of collaboration and networking in business and corporate sector level.

Snockle will be available soon to Australia, Singapore, South Africa and few European countries through UK gateway.

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IndianWeb2.com: Indian Web 2.0, Technology Startups, News and Reviews

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The blogger of the post found that there are  1631 active twitter accounts (at the time of posting) in India, which is surprisingly low i.e. there is a twitter account for every 687,000 people in India, indeed there would be lesser figure as Indian people who could or wish to use Tiwitter or say people who are more web savvy are living abroad and working either as a part of IT workforce in pretty good amount and does not mention India as their Home or native place while creating accounts, as the blogger at Twitter Facts has mentioned  this – "A Twitter account was considered to be held by someone from India if the location explicitely refers to India or if the Twitter user was located in India according to one of the Twitter mapping mashups." 

All the way an Interesting post and great analysis also need to mention one can found IndianWeb2 Twitter account at http://twitter.com/indianweb2 and dont forget to look at this great post at Twitter Facts: First State of Twitosphere in India especially the graphs and charts, the one here amon them is here in this post. Also have rankings mentioned along with account URLs those of Twitter accounts are nice resource for Twitter geeks among whom my favourites are http://twitter.com/labnol (Amit Agarwal) and http://twitter.com/Gauravonomics ( Gaurav Mishra).

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IndianWeb2.com: Indian Web 2.0, Technology Startups, News and Reviews

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