A response to the open letter

My previous blog post "Open letter to the media" got me heartening email response from far away. Publishing it here with the writer's permission:

Dear Vimoh,

First of all I hope you are doing well considering the circumstances Mumbai is in at the moment.

I read your "open letter to the media" and it touched me, somehow I wanted to let you know this. I am Dutch and working in an international company with many expats. The Mumbai attacks have shocked us all, especially our Indian colleagues and friends. When I read your letter out loud to my colleague/friend who sits next to me, she's from South America, she became very quiet. A few moments later she said it was so right and so true. In the meantime colleagues from all over the world have read your letter and no matter where they are from, what they do or who they believe in; we all agree.

To be honest I don't really know what to say, but I just wanted to let you know that you are not the only person who feels like this about terrorists. We all feel like this, it's universal. I hope that the thought of you not being alone with these feelings can be a bit of support - it's all I can offer you.

All the best,
LM

Thanks for the kind words LM. Appreciate it! Gladder still to see someone from so far away understand the fact that living in a secular democracy is a privilege we can't take for granted.

Open letter to the media

Dear mass media of my country.

I know you are analytical & highly educated people, and have my best interests at heart. But you are also blind. Allow me to explain.

A band of murderers pops out of nowhere and kills a whole lot of everyday folks (just like me) and then send you a letter (or a video, or an email) telling you who they would like to be known as and who they represent and what they want.

You then, in your great wisdom, read their lies to the whole nation aloud (with flashy lights and exciting music in the background for added effect).

Please stop doing that! It is fucking irritating!

I, and many others like me, can do without their lies. And it irritates to see you repeat their lies for them.

Can't you tell?

I don't care what they are called. I don't care where they are from. I don't care who they think they are doing this for. They killed people - they are murderers.

Stop calling them Islamists or Hindus or activists or outfits. Words like 'criminal' and 'murderer' work just fine.

If they need to kill people to get the governments' attention, then they don't deserve ANY attention. In fact, I would go so far as to say that murderers don't deserve freedom of speech.

I would love for them to be nameless and uncategorised. The whole lot of them undesirables. I would like them to be put away for life, with no one ever seeing them again, or hearing of from them, or hearing of them and their so-called 'cause'.

Update: I received an email in response to this post. Read it here.

All about iTwote and TwitterGuru

Since its launch last night, iTwote.com has received great attention and response (mostly positive). I think it would be a good idea to explain some of the underlying ideas behind it.

First a recap of the process:

We are out to find who the most popular Twitter user in India is. Mostly because we think the value a user provides to his followers (fun, information, news, whatever) can't be measured by looking at the number of tweets they have made or the number of followers they have.

We thought the most logical way of finding that out was through a vote in which users come out and actually say who they like best.

So we set up a process like this:

Those interested in participating in the poll must first follow @itwote on Twitter.

Then you must tweet your nomination. If (for reasons known only to yourself) you wanted to vote for me (@vimoh), you will tweet:

@itwote #twitterguru @vimoh

The more such nominations a user receives, the more points he/she builds up till the day of the nomination counting. The nomination process is open till November 12, 2008.

A few points to remember though:

1. You can only nominate one person.
2. If you nominated for someone and then changed your mind, you can nominate again. Only your last nomination will count as valid.
3. Your nominated twitter user must be from India.
4. You cannot nominate yourself (Sorry, but we have to mention this).

The 5 users with the most nominations go into the final round of actual voting that happens on November 13, 2008. On that day, you will have to vote for one of the 5 finalists and the one with the most votes will be declared TwitterGuru.

Some users have raised questions and objections to the idea. I will try and answer some of the recurring doubts here.

I think it is a pointless exercise and proves nothing.

Ans: Perhaps you are right. But then you have to wonder if any kind of voting counts as anything. There are always those who don't vote and those whose votes end up invalid. That doesn't mean the fault is in the process.

What's with the seven day nomination period?

Ans: Some users don't on a daily basis and might miss out on the updates. In any case, Twitter is just too noisy a place for a message to come across without potentially being lost among other messages first. The week-long nomination period will help more users take note of the contest and will hopefully invite more involvement.

How come you are allowing nominations to be changed? Serious elections don't work that way.

Ans: We understand that. But please note that real elections don't allow regular folks to nominate candidates on as immediate a level as we are doing.

Also, real elections are preceded by issues that need solving. Candidates step forward to solve them. People hear their proposals out and make their choice.

Hear we are only looking to find who people like most (for whatever reasons). There is a great difference!

But then what's the point behind this? Why do this at all?

Short answer: Because we want to.

Long answer: I see iTwote.com as a social experiment. Blogs don't come with an audience attached, Twitter (potentially) does. If you have something to say, it won't take you long to find yourself in the middle of a community that wants to hear exactly what you have to say.

It is not just the physical format that separates Twitter from other platforms. I have gotten a lot of people to start blogs. But they quit soon ("nobody comments on my blog") in the absence of connection. A big part of the Twitter experience is to connect and converse.

We think it is a good idea to harness the conversations and harvest opinions out of them to gain (however blurry) a picture of things. TwitterGuru is merely our first baby experiment to test this system. What we can do with it in the future, I leave to your imagination.

And this conversation is not over. I invite comments, complaints, abuses (umm... maybe not), and suggestions. The comment form is open.