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Mallrats to Twitterati
From shopping at malls to tweeting, the decade’s created internet junkies out of the best of us.
From shopping at malls to tweeting, the decade’s created internet junkies out of the best of us
2000 The mall revolution
Remember how people used to go to bazaars or markets back in the day? Until 2000, even urban India could only go to shopping complexes, if they were too stuck up about bazaars. But in 2000, the first few malls sprouted up in the country. It was a haven for the middle-class Indian, who had only just come to know the joys of a supermarket. Urban India also loved the revolution, as it saw thousands of foreign brands come down to India. Coinciding with the ‘multiplex movie’ revolution, malls saw an unprecedented rise in number – reaching over 600 in 2009. And India shopped like never before.
2001 Music piracy boom
In July 2001, Napster, the face of music piracy on the internet had to close shop, after it was sued by Metallica and Madonna, for illegally distributing music. In October, Apple launched the iPod, that could “carry 1000 songs in your pocket.” With the only source of downloading free music shut down, but the additional ability of carrying music around, music pirates went on an overdrive, and hundreds of websites and file sharing services started popping up all over the internet, offering free mp3 downloads. In one year, the music industry lost out on sales – but gained on audience.
2002 Cell phone generation
In February, Cellular Operators Association announced that the ownership of mobile phones in India had rocketed by 75 per cent over the year – the highest increase in the ownership of phones than any of the years previously. Cellular providers were quick to cash in on this, and slashed rates on STD calls and SMSs, cell phone companies started coming out with phones specifically targeted at the lower middle-class segment and PCOs started losing business. More companies entered into the industry and suddenly, everyone had a ‘handset’ in their pockets.
2003 Harry Potter
The Boy Who Lived’ in 2003, proved that he was also the boy who sold - like nothing else. When the fifth Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, hit the shores in June, Indians – who had never been known as voracious readers – lined up outside book stores at dawn, to be the amongst the first few in the world to get a hold of their copies. The books sold out across India in the first week of its arrival, book pirates had a festival of sorts with the books selling like hotcakes and the franchise’s merchandise was a huge hit amongst the children. ‘Magic’ was the keyword.
2004 Five Point Someone
For the average Indian non-reader, who gave up after the first five pages of Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things and was daunted by the thickness of Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy, Chetan Bhagat’s Five Point Someone was a gift from a fellow commoner, who could communicate with them in a language they understood. Bhagat’s book became a bestseller, spawned an entire genre called ‘campus fiction’, and put the focus on the pressures of the education system in the country. But most of all, Bhagat gave the non-reader ‘literature’ to discuss over tea, as well as the comfort in that they could, in fact, read.
2005 Sudoku
Within an year from relative obscurity, 2006 saw the phenomenal rise of Soduko, as an international morning routine. It started in 2004, when The Times, UK, published it, and within a year, Sudoku was turned into a television competition, a computer game and spawned several books. In India, its importance in conditioning the mind led it to be taught in classrooms, with mathematics professors recommending it to their students in schools and colleges alike. The country found a new timepass – and the old crossword was passé.
2006 Networking junkies
It was in 2006, when the entire lot of lonely, frustrated middle-class single men, of all ages, realised that Orkut was a minefield of attractive, available women. And that they could ‘make fraandship’ to them. Women across the country started getting ‘scraps’ on their profiles from men who actually believed in a romanticised world of cyber sex. Ironically, most of those attractive, single ladies realised what a hazard the network was to their privacy, and in the same year, most of them slowly migrated to Facebook. In the end, networking sites won the most friends!
2007 Of six packs and size zero
In 2007, we realised the power of a bikini-clad ‘size zero’ Kareena Kapoor and a topless Shah Rukh Khan, in all his six-pack glory. Couch potatoes were inspired to get off their butts and go to the gyms, because if a 40-plus Khan could do it, so could they. Bikini’s were back in vogue, and everyone who had the body to flaunt it, strut around in it. Health columnists increased in papers across the country, fitness instructors hiked their fees, and the ‘size zero’ obsession became a debate on prime time in news channels. India suddenly became a health-conscious nation.
2008 Blogathon
When Bigadda roped in Amitabh Bachchan to blog on their newly launched blogging-cum-social networking website, they probably didn’t expect him to become addicted. But 617 days later, Bachchan still blogs every single day, without fail – with each blog making news in some media community in the country. Aamir Khan had already been blogging on-and-off until then. So when their biggest superstars blogged, India followed. In 2008, the number of bloggers in India almost doubled, and today, almost half a million people express themselves on the world wide web, every day. Doesn’t matter if no one’s reading them, or if the blogs were created only to comment on other blogs – as long as they share a platform with the stars, isn’t it?
2009 Twitterati
It took a London-born, Kerala-based Member of Parliament and a controvery, now known as Twittergate, to make India the third-biggest user of the micro-blogging service, Twitter, in the world. When Shashi Tharoor, India’s Minister of State for External Affairs tweeted about travelling in a flight in the ‘cattle class’, it created such a huge media uproar, that his twitter followers increased upto 500,000 in three months. Gul Panag may not be the most prolific actress, but her regular tweets have got her a following of over 30,000. With the glitterati of Bollywood, from Imran Khan to Abhishek Bachchan now connecting with fans over tweets, the Twitterati can only grow leaps and bounds.
