Twitter Shutting Down The Bengaluru Engineering Centre Resulting In 20 Employees' Lay off

UPDATE: A state from Twitter India has clarified that The affected employees are less than 20 in overall numbers and they belong to the engineering center in Bangalore and this is very miniscule in percentage terms compared to the overall twitter headcount which is approx. 3500+ globally.

In 2015, Twitter acquired Bangalore, India-based ZipDial which resulted in the establishment of an engineering & development center in Bengaluru. Now, in a sudden development, Twitter has decided to shut down the Bengaluru development centre in India and as a result of this nearly 60 employees, which are part of ZipDial, will be laid off.

“Over the past 18 months, we have incorporated the technology and talent of our ZipDial acquisition across our company,” said a Twitter India spokesperson.

In last two years, Twitter’s stock price cut roughly in half — the micro-blogging platform is reportedly laying off half of its staff in Bangalore, including all of its engineers there. While Twitter declined to disclose the number of people affected few reports stated that only 20 staff will be laid off.

Twitter will however maintain offices in Bangalore, as well as Delhi and Mumbai.

STATEMENT FROM TWITTER SPOKESPERSON

Engineering is a key part of our global company and we continue to focus our programs and efforts on improving the core product experience for our users worldwide. As part of our normal business review, we have decided to stop the global engineering work at the Bangalore development center. We thank the impacted individuals for their valuable contributions and are doing as much as we can to provide them a respectful exit from our company.

Twitter remains committed to India as a strategic market for users, partners and advertisers. Today, India is one of our fastest growing markets worldwide and we continue to invest in key initiatives to further expand our audience, increase user engagement and drive revenue in this important market.

Globally, Twitter workforce consists of 3860 employees. However, the company did not reveal the total number of employees it had in India as of June 2016.

Earlier this week, a Twitter investor had also sued the company over claims that they had misled investors on key growth metrics, including user base and user engagement.

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Twitter Launches ‘Make in India’ Emoji

In what could be seen as Twitter's Diwali gift to India, the social networking giant recently unveiled a special #MakeinIndia Twitter emoji for the country. According to Twitter, its main aim behind the emoji is to promote India as a global manufacturing hub.

With the #MakeinIndia emoji, the Indian government has became the first non-US based brand to have a Twitter emoji, which can been considered as a big achievement in itself.

[caption id="attachment_102384" align="aligncenter" width="621"] The Make in India emoji features its prominent lion logo against an orange background.[/caption]

Coincidentally, the big announcement came a few days after commerce and industry minister Nirmala Sitharaman's visited the Twitter headquarters in San Francisco. The main agenda of the meeting was to discuss India's importance as a strategic growth market and how Twitter can help in promoting the country's brand to rest of the world. And, now with the emoji launch, we can say, the agenda has been appropriately fulfilled.

The Make in India brand campaign hashtag already has over 300 million impressions and nearly 24 million engagements in August and September this year. Further, the official account of the campaign, @MakeInIndia has a huge fan following of over 700,000 followers since its inception a year ago.

In order to highlight this much ambitious Indian government campaign, an emoji of a black lion on an orange background, a version of the programme's official logo, will now appear next to every #MakeInIndia hashtag tweet worldwide.

According to a press release by Twitter, "The #MakeInIndia emoji symbolises success of the brand campaign on Twitter with nearly 500 million impressions this year to promote India as a great place for foreign direct investment to transform the country into a global manufacturing hub."



With its huge global reach, the Make in India emoji by Twitter can prove to be a huge success for the Indian government as it can attract huge global attention towards the campaign.

"The 'Make In India' story is increasingly resonating with business leaders around the world and Twitter has proven to be a valuable and effective channel to tell the highly-engaging story to an influential global audience," said Sitharaman in a statement to a national daily.

This Is How Facebook and Twitter Captured India On Diwali Day

On ocassion of Diwali, one of India's largely celebrated festival, two of the largest social media plaforms - Facebook and Twitter have captured India's geography with their users' activity about the festival of lights.

In the picture below, Facebook recorded 45 million unique people having 198 million interactions about Diwali in the last five days, India was followed by Guyana and Nepal in the list of countries with the highest number of posts about the festival of lights.

[caption id="attachment_102367" align="aligncenter" width="700"] Facebook heatmap shows the most active Diwali locations in India[/caption]

Top 5 countries in terms of percent of Monthly Active People (MAP) engaging with Diwali content were:

1. India – 21% of MAP
2. Guyana– 19% of MAP
3. Nepal— 18% of MAP
4. Singapore – 14% of MAP
5. Bhutan— 10% of MAP

Twitter too recorded Diwali activity in India and made a actibity heatmap in form of dequential video :

We don't know about view from space, but Twitter was brightly lit yesterday. Here's how India Tweeted #HappyDiwali https://t.co/qK5GbrJ0oK

— Twitter India (@TwitterIndia) November 12, 2015

Twitter Opening First R&D Centre Outside US In Bangalore

India seems to have caught the eye of Twitter. After acquiring Bangalore based ZipDial, its first Indian startup, last month, the tech giant is all geared up to open a research in design centre in Bangalore. The Bangalore centre will be Twitter's first such office outside of United States of America.

According to a report published in the Financial Times, the California based tech giant has plans of making use of ZipDial's team as the basis for its new research and design facility.

This new R&D facility will help Twitter accelerate its growth in emerging markets such as Indonesia and India. According to a report published by eMarketer, a research firm, India is all set to become the largest market for Twitter after the United States with 40 million users in the period of next three years.

What exactly Twitter has in store for Its new R&D centre hasn't been disclosed by the social media giant yet but according to Valerie Wagoner's statement to Hindustan times, the centre will be used to manufacture new products for emerging markets like India and Indonesia and not simply be a typical silicon valley back office. Valerie Wagoner is ZipDial's founder who is currently an employee with Twitter.

Twitter Opening First R&D Centre Outside US In Bangalore

India seems to have caught the eye of Twitter. After acquiring Bangalore based ZipDial, its first Indian startup, last month, the tech giant is all geared up to open a research in design centre in Bangalore. The Bangalore centre will be Twitter's first such office outside of United States of America.

According to a report published in the Financial Times, the California based tech giant has plans of making use of ZipDial's team as the basis for its new research and design facility.

This new R&D facility will help Twitter accelerate its growth in emerging markets such as Indonesia and India. According to a report published by eMarketer, a research firm, India is all set to become the largest market for Twitter after the United States with 40 million users in the period of next three years.

What exactly Twitter has in store for Its new R&D centre hasn't been disclosed by the social media giant yet but according to Valerie Wagoner's statement to Hindustan times, the centre will be used to manufacture new products for emerging markets like India and Indonesia and not simply be a typical silicon valley back office. Valerie Wagoner is ZipDial's founder who is currently an employee with Twitter.

It's Official, ZipDial Acquired By Twitter In A Deal At $30-$40 Million

Last week IndianWeb2 reported that Twitter was in advanced talks to acquire Bangalore-based ZipDial for between $30 million and $40 million, and today Twitter announced the deal has closed as Twitter looks to expand in the world's second-biggest mobile market, India.

Twitter in its official blog's post announced - "We're very pleased to announce we've reached an agreement to acquire ZipDial, a product partner based in Bangalore, India, to make Twitter even more accessible to people around the world."

ZipDial in its official blog confirms the acquisition, "This is a huge achievement for the entire ZipDial team, and an opportunity to reflect on everything we’ve accomplished since our start in 2010. The company was founded on the insight that consumers and brands in emerging markets behave differently and have different needs. We build for them and their unique behaviors.", said Valerie Wagoner, CEO & Co-Founder, ZipDial.

Twitter did not disclose terms of the purchase however as per unidentified sources, the deal is at $30 million to $40 million. This Twitter's first ever Indian startup acquisition.

ZipDial has built a mobile platform that lets people follow and engage with content across all interfaces. The user experience combines SMS, voice, mobile web, and access to mobile apps to bridge users from offline to online. For example, through ZipDial, it’s easy to engage with a publisher or brand by making a toll-free “missed call” to a designated phone number. The caller will then begin receiving inbound content and further engagement on their phone in real time through voice, SMS or an app notification. These interactions are especially appealing in areas where people aren’t always connected to data or only access data through intermittent wifi networks.

Over the past two years Twitter collaborated with ZipDial on a variety of campaigns, including the Indian elections, Bollywood film promotions and @MTVIndia's #RockTheVote "Dial the Hashtag" campaign.

With this acquisition, Twitter might use ZipDial's platform to deliver itself to feature phones and others with irregular Internet connections.

Twitter In Talks To Acquire India's ZipDial

A report has been circulating across the web that Twitter is in advance talks to acquire India's ZipDial, a Bangalore-based mobile startup that has honed in on a mobile use practice that is unique to the Indian market.

Sources said that the deal is likely to be priced between 30 million and 40 million dollars and may be announced as soon as this week.

Another source said that two companies have been looking to acquire ZipDial, including Twitter.

ZipDial enables global brands to engage with 100% of their consumers. Its patent-pending consumer intelligence platform drives solutions such as couponing, friend referrals, missed-call marketing, on-pack activations and more.

Must Read: Top-10 Startup Acquisitions Of 2014 In India

Founded by Valerie Wagoner along with Sanjay Swamy and Amiya Pathak in 2010, ZipDial is a platform built on top of a unique phenomenon in India and other developing countries. Since prepaid mobile plans are the norm in these places, the missed call has become an essentially free method of communication.

ZipDial would be Twitter’s first acquisition in India if the deal gets completed. Also, if the deal is sealed, it would be the latest in a series of acquisitions of Indian startups by US companies, keen on capitalising on the opportunity to pick up talent, knowledge and traction in the world's biggest and one of the fastest-growing markets.

Twitter partnering with TV Channels in India to drive user growth

In order to increase its user growth in the country, Twitter is looking into putting its partnerships with Television channels in India on a fast track. India is considered as one of the most important and fastest growing markets for the company. Twitter recently also unveiled its Amplify product with Vodafone and Star sports. The product helps the networks monetize content.

The company is looking forward to these television partnerships as a key means to monetize its user base all around the globe. In 2013, Twitter acquired the startup Bluefin Labs for a whopping $67 million. The startup makes use of analytics to tie social media chatter to TV. The company has already tied with Airtel DTH in India, which allows the DTH customers to see tweets on the comfort of their big television screens. More such deals are currently underway.



According to Rishi Jaitly’s statement to Economic Times “We want to make twitter the second screen for television channels in India. In keeping with television, I would say stay tuned”.  Jaitly is the Indian market director at Twitter.

The current focus of Twitter in India is less towards monetization and more towards increasing user growth, as the company considers India as an important strategic growth market for itself.

According to the research firm eMarketer, India will soon account for the third largest market for Twitter, with around 18.1 million users using the micro blogging site by the end of this year. Over all, the site has around 270 million monthly active users.

The Television strategy will benefit the television channels as much it will benefit Twitter, as the micro blogging site will increase the curiosity and conversations around shows and help the channels fetch new viewers for its shows every day.

According to Pratiksha Rao’s statement to Economic Times “We’ve worked with a number of channels like general entertainment channels Colors and Stars. Even Doordarshan has a very interesting personality on Twitter. The idea is to educate brands and teach the best practices like talking to your audience and getting the talent involved.” Pratiksha is the entertainment partnership manager at Twitter.

Twitter is currently working meticulously towards its four pillar strategy for boosting user growth in India. This four pillar strategy involves deploying products such as Twitter missed call that even works on feature phones, partnering with broadcasters by getting actors on the platform and by inciting the   brands involved to increase engagement and the advertising spend on the site.

Twitter partnering with TV Channels in India to drive user growth

In order to increase its user growth in the country, Twitter is looking into putting its partnerships with Television channels in India on a fast track. India is considered as one of the most important and fastest growing markets for the company. Twitter recently also unveiled its Amplify product with Vodafone and Star sports. The product helps the networks monetize content.

The company is looking forward to these television partnerships as a key means to monetize its user base all around the globe. In 2013, Twitter acquired the startup Bluefin Labs for a whopping $67 million. The startup makes use of analytics to tie social media chatter to TV. The company has already tied with Airtel DTH in India, which allows the DTH customers to see tweets on the comfort of their big television screens. More such deals are currently underway.



According to Rishi Jaitly’s statement to Economic Times “We want to make twitter the second screen for television channels in India. In keeping with television, I would say stay tuned”.  Jaitly is the Indian market director at Twitter.

The current focus of Twitter in India is less towards monetization and more towards increasing user growth, as the company considers India as an important strategic growth market for itself.

According to the research firm eMarketer, India will soon account for the third largest market for Twitter, with around 18.1 million users using the micro blogging site by the end of this year. Over all, the site has around 270 million monthly active users.

The Television strategy will benefit the television channels as much it will benefit Twitter, as the micro blogging site will increase the curiosity and conversations around shows and help the channels fetch new viewers for its shows every day.

According to Pratiksha Rao’s statement to Economic Times “We’ve worked with a number of channels like general entertainment channels Colors and Stars. Even Doordarshan has a very interesting personality on Twitter. The idea is to educate brands and teach the best practices like talking to your audience and getting the talent involved.” Pratiksha is the entertainment partnership manager at Twitter.

Twitter is currently working meticulously towards its four pillar strategy for boosting user growth in India. This four pillar strategy involves deploying products such as Twitter missed call that even works on feature phones, partnering with broadcasters by getting actors on the platform and by inciting the   brands involved to increase engagement and the advertising spend on the site.

Lucknow teenager becomes PM of India for half an hour

Qasari Ali, a 19 year old teenager from Lucknow recently found himself embroiled in a controversy when he acquired the @PMOIndia twitter handle for himself. @PMOIndia is the official twitter handle for Prime Minister of India.

As a result of the 16^th May Lok Sabha elections the UPA government had to make way for the NDA government at centre. But the outgoing government which handled and started the twitter handle refused to pass on the same to the new government. This action taken by the UPA government has led to a political battle between the two parties with the BJP accusing UPA of misusing the national digital asset.  According to BJP, @PMOIndia is a national asset which should have seamlessly passed on to the incoming government.

Instead of passing on the twitter handle, Congress went ahead and archived the tweets under a new handle @PMOIndiaArchive making the @PMOIndia handle available.

Amid all this, Ali thought of changing his twitter username as his existing one was very long. He checked out if @PMOIndia was available and seeing its availability, he immediately saved it for himself and started using it. But his new twitter username existed only for 30 minutes. Ali’s account went back to its previous username within half an hour without any explanations from twitter.

This handlegate has left a big impression on Ali’s life. When his parents found about his doings, they scolded him left and right and asked him to apologize to the entire nation. Following their instructions, he immediately put up a tweet through his twitter handle @IAmQaiserAli apologizing to the entire nation. His tweet said “Apology for taking the name of @PMOIndia. I did it because it was vacant. Apologies.” Even after apologizing to the people of the country, he still fears that the police would knock at his doors any minute and arrest him.

Qaiser has no intentions of pursuing a political career whatsoever and instead he wants to be an entrepreneur. He has even started his journey towards his dream by launching a social networking site Picxter.

Meanwhile, Omar Abdullah, chief minister Jammu and Kashmir came out in support of the Lucknow teenager. He tweeted “Poor chap probably never imagined this publicity”.

Lucknow teenager becomes PM of India for half an hour

Qasari Ali, a 19 year old teenager from Lucknow recently found himself embroiled in a controversy when he acquired the @PMOIndia twitter handle for himself. @PMOIndia is the official twitter handle for Prime Minister of India.

As a result of the 16^th May Lok Sabha elections the UPA government had to make way for the NDA government at centre. But the outgoing government which handled and started the twitter handle refused to pass on the same to the new government. This action taken by the UPA government has led to a political battle between the two parties with the BJP accusing UPA of misusing the national digital asset.  According to BJP, @PMOIndia is a national asset which should have seamlessly passed on to the incoming government.

Instead of passing on the twitter handle, Congress went ahead and archived the tweets under a new handle @PMOIndiaArchive making the @PMOIndia handle available.

Amid all this, Ali thought of changing his twitter username as his existing one was very long. He checked out if @PMOIndia was available and seeing its availability, he immediately saved it for himself and started using it. But his new twitter username existed only for 30 minutes. Ali’s account went back to its previous username within half an hour without any explanations from twitter.

This handlegate has left a big impression on Ali’s life. When his parents found about his doings, they scolded him left and right and asked him to apologize to the entire nation. Following their instructions, he immediately put up a tweet through his twitter handle @IAmQaiserAli apologizing to the entire nation. His tweet said “Apology for taking the name of @PMOIndia. I did it because it was vacant. Apologies.” Even after apologizing to the people of the country, he still fears that the police would knock at his doors any minute and arrest him.

Qaiser has no intentions of pursuing a political career whatsoever and instead he wants to be an entrepreneur. He has even started his journey towards his dream by launching a social networking site Picxter.

Meanwhile, Omar Abdullah, chief minister Jammu and Kashmir came out in support of the Lucknow teenager. He tweeted “Poor chap probably never imagined this publicity”.

Superstar Rajinikanth joins Twitter

For the first time, superstar Rajinikanth enters Twitter, and thus makes his foray into social media. This move of Rajnikanth seems to be for publicity and promotion for his upcoming and much talked about film - Kochadaiiyaan.

Rajnikanth wrote his first tweet on twitter as prayer to God and thanked all his fans. Below is the very first tweet of Rajnikanth.

Salutation to the Lord. Vaṇakkam aṉaivarukkum !! A big thank you to all my fans. Excited on this digital journey http://t.co/79ea6MrDe3

— Rajinikanth (@superstarrajini) May 5, 2014

Rajnikanth after his first tweet replied to his followers by giving posters of his upcoming movie and thus justifying the reason why he has joined the Twitter. Rajinikanth till now have got more than 60k followers which within few hours.

"I decided to start with Twitter because I felt that the platform is abuzz with all the news and the trends that happen across the globe and I'm told that this is where all the best Rajini one-liners are," the 63-year-old said in a statement.

Rajinikanth's joining of twitter now had become the top trending topic of Twitter in India region, people are welcoming their superstars. One of the fan tweeted -"Has Rajinikanth joined the Twitter or Twitter joined the Rajinikanth".

Rajinikanth has also launched a video on his social media debut, notably Rajinikanth don't even have profile on facebook etc. so his joining of Twitter is social media debut. Rajinikanth said - "I am happy to connect to my fans through social media, starting with Twitter."

In september last year, first video trailer of the highly anticipated Indian Tamil film 'Kochadaiyaan', starring south India's superstar Rajinikanth was unveiled on Youtube which within 60 hours got more than 2 million views.

Tweet goes Viral of NDTV Faking Videos Using YouTube

A recent tweet made over a popular news channel NDTV become a news itself over social media channel - Twitter, the tweet says that NDTV is using forged/ doctored videos and used a Youtube video posted 2 years back to use in recent coverage of  flood aftermath in north India. Apparently as seen in the picture tweeted, it shows NDTV indeed doctored the whole video with fake one picked up from Youtube.

The tweet has been made by Anurag Paranjape today's morning and soon became talk of Indian Twitosphere.

@NDTV NDTV caught red-handed CHEATING!!!!! @BDUTT @vikramchandra @mediacrooks @sureshnakhua pic.twitter.com/iSvsq87FAl

— Anurag Paranjape (@unurag) June 19, 2013

This reminded me of a movie - 'Spiderman 3' where hero of the movie exposes his rivalry photographer Eddie Brock working for a newspaper Daily Bugle, who used to make doctored photographs showing Spider-Man as a criminal for later got fired.

The tweet has mentioned Barkha Dutt of NDTV as well, who was also went through controversy in year 2008 when she along with NDTV sued a blogger Chyetanya Kunte for criticizing NDTV and Barkha Dutt for playing irresponsible role as journalist in the Mumbai attack  and the way she reported terror attack had "tactical implications" and might have worked to the advantage of the terrorists. The blog by the blogger however is now no more after NDTV got public apologies from the blogger.

If all this is true then, there is underlying agony in the revelation of this tweet , that if reputed news channel like NDTV can doctored the YouTube videos for using in news coverages than it raise a question of credibility and authenticity of news channels.

Earlier even Times of India published on it news website where it exaggerated a relatively cheap website and call its maker as - Mark Zuckerberg of India which then criticized by Indian blogosphere.

The role of mainstream which has now gone 3 times, in number of news channels in India in last 5 years so has always been matter of tiff between blogosphere and mainstream media.

Picture Credit - https://twitter.com/unurag/status/347237078062473216/photo/1