Minister Shashi Tharoor: How many followers are fake?
By Sumir Singh

By any measure, Indian Minister of State for External Affairs, Shashi Tharoor, has had a successful career at the United Nations and is an outstanding performer in the current Government.  Shashi Tharoor is a prolific Twitter user and his account has more than 530 thousand followers on this micro blogging platform.

American website Fauxlowers was started by computer programmer and internet marketer Antone Toundy to detect ‘Fauxlowing’.  According to Antone, people Fauxlow others “hoping they’ll follow you back and read your tweets.  Is it effective? Sure, because you can do it for free (or to be more precise, Twitter foots the bill for you), so what do you have to lose?”

One of the main reasons for Fauxlowing is to market a person, goods or services.

A fauxlower (say "FOE lower" - from the French "faux" or "false") is a Twitter user who "follows" so many people that they can't skim, much less read, all their tweets.

Surprisingly, the verified Twitter account for President Obama follows about 750 thousand Twitterers.  The British PM’s office Downing Street follows about 490 thousand Twitterers.  Tech guru and recent NASSCOM guest (see article below) Guy Kawasaki follows 208 thousand Twitter users.  As you can see, politicians are misusing Twitter to promote themselves. Who has the time to read more than 50 Twitter accounts a day?

According to Fauxlowers, as many as 24 percent of any successful Twitter user’s followers have no intention of reading them.

Shashi Tharoor recently told the Pune Mirror that many people had congratulated him on his reaching the 500 thousand Twitter followers milestone.

All the evidence points to the fact that while Shashi may be a great public servant and Minister, he does not have 500 thousand Twitter followers.

I checked out a number of random blocks of 100 people who follow Shashi Tharoor. At least 5-10 percent seem to be Fauxlowers and/or spam.

The only way Shashi Tharoor can find out how many of his followers are actually fake is to logon to the American website which will sort out the wheat from that chaff.

(Techgoss had published the following on Oct 30, 2009)

NASSCOM: relevant speech?
By Pulkit Sharma

NASSCOM organized a Product Conclave 09 in Bangalore on Oct 27-28, but by all accounts it was a great success. NASSCOM has invited a host of reputed speakers from India and overseas - Silicon Valley, Europe and Israel - to share their insights on issues concerning the software products industry.  The speakers include Tech guru Dr. Guy Kawasaki, IT visionary and former President NASSCOM, Mr. Kiran Karnik, Israeli VC Dr. Orna Bery, Oracle VP Mr. Rajesh Hukku and Chairman, Symphony Technology Group, Dr. Romesh Wadhwani. And many more.

So, who is Guy Kawasaki? According to his bio: “Guy Kawasaki is a managing director of Garage Technology Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm and a columnist for Entrepreneur Magazine. Previously, he was an Apple Fellow at Apple Computer, Inc. Guy is the author of nine books including Reality Check, The Art of the Start, Rules for Revolutionaries, How to Drive Your Competition Crazy, Selling the Dream, and The Macintosh Way. He has a BA from Stanford University and an MBA from UCLA as well as an honorary doctorate from Babson College.”

Guy is very well known in USA, but his fame and achievements are mainly restricted to the tech industry in India.

In the past, blogs and bloggers invited to such star studded NASSCOM conferences generally wrote positive articles. The old media always had written pieces ranging from neutral to positive.  Very few rocked the boat by critically analyzing important people and events at such conferences.  Some did and still do, but most prefer polite commentary. India, like much of Asia, has a system and one is expected to work within it.  If you look at NASSCOM itself, you see the same group of companies and people juggling the top jobs between themselves.

But things are changing.  Some new media in the form of reputed blogs like Pluggd.in are asking some hard questions backed with reasoned argument.

Popular blog Pluggd.in has just done an article titled ‘Why Kawasaki at the Nasscom Product Conclave?’. After listing all the positives of the NASSCOM conferences, it asks

“
Guy Kawasaki – as a keynote speaker and twitter specialist – added the superstar touch for many folks. Guy’s a great speaker with ready wit and humour, and very, very approachable. He’s also a persistent marketer.

However, I do think he wasn’t the best choice for the keynote. Also, the session he conducted was as much a distraction from the theme of the event as it was an attraction for many. Why do I think so?

The keynote presentation above was not the most relevant to the ground reality in India. At all.
We do NOT get people for free here – not that much of a recession after all.
We also are awesome “value” creators and it often makes sense for a large chunk of startups (especially as they learn about business) to start in the lower right quadrant – a small chunk of startups can shoot for uniqueness, and especially building a business around it. Execution, value hold they key to getting a shot at stage 2.
Twitter as a marketing tool in India ? Hmmm. I’d almost say a large chunk of active Tweeters were actually in that room  I exaggerate, but you get the idea.

……….
“

This plugged in article is recommended reading.