Lighthouse Insights

Myntra Gets Creative On World Telecommunications Day With #DialForStyle On Twitter

2013-05-22T14:46:28Z

The 17^th of May was World Telecommunications Day and who would have thought that a brand associated with fashion would make the most of it on Twitter! Well, Myntra.com, the ecommerce platform for fashion and lifestyle products blended telecommunications and style for a fun engagement on Twitter, on the occasion of World Telecommunications Day. Twitter users were invited to find phones with alpha-numeric keypads, so they could participate in the activity. Winners were rewarded with Myntra gift vouchers.

#DialForStyle: Unique, Creative, Fun

Myntra conducted a Twitter quiz consisting of 10 questions using the hashtag #DialForStyle. Though the questions tested one’s fashion knowledge, it also required them to work on the clues provided. A total of 10 clues were provided every 10 – 15 minutes with a set of numbers accompanying each clue. These numbers, when typed using an alpha-numeric keypad, would actually spell out a word related to fashion!

Participants also got an example to start with, so there would be more clarity on the contest:

How to play – The style bible for many: 86483. When you type in these numbers in your phone message box, you get ‘Vogue’! #DialForStyle

— Myntra.com (@myntra) May 17, 2013

The hashtag #DialForStyle began trending within a short time, with the contest being appreciated for its sheer creativity and uniqueness. Myntra.com added more than 50 followers and crossed 8000 followers during the contest.

@myntra A fun n innovative contest this. Must say, Myntra’s contests r always delightful

— Aditya (@Aditya_J6) May 17, 2013

Team @myntra always brings out their creative best with such innovative contest concepts.Take for example their running #DialForStyle

— Sneha Sen (@sensneha) May 17, 2013

Myntra and Twitter innovation

Undoubtedly, this is a cool campaign on Twitter, especially when every other brand is hell-bent on getting their messages/hashtags trended somehow, without being bothered about the amount of spam created. Myntra has always been innovative in its Twitter contests, even if it is a ‘Replace Movie With’ one! Earlier this year, Myntra had launched a Twitter contest using the much overdone #ReplaceMovieTitlesWithSale, but added an element of creativity as participants had to also describe the products in the year end sale, if it were made into a movie. Last year on Children’s Day, the brand had created #BachpanStyle contest, inviting Twitter users to share their childhood photos. These were later pinned onto a Pinterest board.

Innovative contest that created fun and engagement for the fans, while adding onto Myntra’s Twitter growth. However, for a contest on Twitter, why not rope in your existing Facebook community to participate. Myntra has close to 1.3 million fans on Facebook and they could have also been encouraged to participate in the Twitter contest.

I loved the mix of telecommunications and style in #DialForStyle, what about you?

Online Social Learning Platform LurnQ Partners With Plancess. Takes The $2 Billion Engineering Test Preparation Market Online

2013-05-22T12:00:18Z

LurnQ, the online social learning and teaching product from Technium Labs has announced its partnership with Plancess, India’s first company to provide study material for engineering entrance examinations prepared by top hundred IIT-JEE rankers. The partnership will help Plancess to leverage LurnQ’s technology for running engineering test preparation courses online.

The engineering test preparation industry which is currently estimated at $2 Bn in revenues and growing at 15 – 20% CAGR (CLSA analyst report on Indian Education Sector) is going to witness an engaging experience from the LurnQ platform. The social learning platform that we have reviewed earlier stays away from being called as the Indian Quora. The platform’s simple features and its outcome driven learning model is going to help students. Subsequently, the adoption from the country for the online medium has been supportive. According to the latest facts, India is the second largest country participating in online courses offered by the likes of Coursera.

Tarun Mitra, the CEO and one of the co-founders at LurnQ had expressed the desire for LurnQ to unify the learning experience on the Internet, while talking to us about the startup, that has been backed by SeedFund. Sharing his thoughts on the latest partnership, he stated that the social functionality of LurnQ which helps in engaging users with multiple options to learn collaboratively, will give students the classroom experience making it a success.

Even Nitesh Salvi, Director and co-founder, Plancess believes that video teaching could be boring at times. Video lectures have been one of the ways how the company has been interacting with students for quite some time now. Now Nitesh feels that the student community needs to be engaged in more interactive ways and LurnQ’s ability to integrate media types like text, videos, documents, images, etc. into a single platform, will provide learners a unified experience by offering learning in a personalized and structured format.

With this partnership, LurnQ, in the true sense, is evolving into a future-ready learning platform that is interactive, driven by community and makes learning fun.

Image courtesy: lindsayolson.com

Social Media Manager And ORM Manager Required At ConceptPR [Job]

2013-05-22T13:37:17Z

About Concept PR: Concept PR is an integrated PR agency with full service spectrum covering PR, Social Media and BTL Activities.

Job Description

Position: Social Media Manager

Responsiblities:

Manage & implement social media campaigns and day-to-day activites. Duties include online advocacy, writing editorial, community-outreach efforts and team management
Manage presence in social networking sites including Facebook, Twitter, and other similar community sites, posting on relevant blogs, and seeding content into social applications as needed
Monitor effective benchmarks for measuring the impact of social media programs, and analyze, review, and report on effectiveness of campaigns in an effort to maximize results
Monitor trends in social media tools, trends and applications

Requirements:

Strong project management or organisational skills
In-depth knowledge and understanding of social media platforms and their respective participants (Facebook, Pinterest, Youtube, Twitter, Flickr etc.) and how they can be deployed in different scenarios
Ability to effectively communicate information and ideas in written and verbal format, and build and maintain relationships
Good team leader
Good technical understanding and can pick up new tools quickly
Have a good knowledge of principles of SEO
Public relations, Marketing, Sales, Community Management experience, a plus

Posiiton: ORM Manager

Experience - 1 year and above

Key Accountabilities:

Be the agency’s lead resource for ORM
Guide team in ensuring efficient ORM practices
Quick thinking ability to effectively manage crisis situations

Person Specification:

Good analytical and technical skills
Have handled ORM tool(s) in the past
Proficient in MS Word, Excel and PowerPoint
Excellent communication skills (written and verbal)
Able to manage a team

Email at contact@conceptpr.com

Watched The IPL? Now Find And Tag Yourself In The Stadium With Vodafone Fancam

2013-05-22T12:02:54Z

An experience can be relived through memories and photographs really help. For all those lucky souls who have had the good fortune and time to watch key IPL matches at the stadium, you have been captured no matter where you were sitting in the stadium. Telecom service provider Vodafone, the official partner of the IPL6 and the creator of the adorable Zoozoos has launched an amazing 360 degree ‘Fan Photo’ initiative, with its agency Maxus. Fan Photo or Fancam captures the live stadium scenes from the IPL matches, and allows you to tag yourself and your friends in the photo.

The Vodafone Fancam

The feature has been enabled on a dedicated website ‘Vodafone Fancam’ where you can revisit the match day experience on the next day. The page welcomes you with the matches that are available for ‘fancam-ing’. Right now you have the Mumbai Indians vs. Rajasthan Royals match that played out at the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai on the 15^th of May, and the other is the one between Royal Challengers Bangalore and Chennai Super Kings at the Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bangalore on the 18^th of May.

The experience will continue for all further matches till the finals. Though the qualifier 1 match that was played yesterday between Mumbai Indians and Chennai Super Kings at the Feroz Shah Kotla stadium in Delhi is not available as yet, while I’m writing this.

At top left, you have buttons to share and invite from Facebook, Twitter and email. Tag yourself enables you to find and tag yourself at the stadium, after you select a tag and authenticate with your Facebook, Twitter or email. Below is the navigation guide, you can pan across the entire stadium and zoom in or out wherever you wish.

At top right are more interactive stuff for fans who have not been at the match. ‘Wish you were here’ allows you to place your picture in a frame and add yourself to the crowd. Take a new picture from the webcam or upload one from your system. ‘Send a free postcard‘ enables you to send a postcard to your friends by capturing a piece of the view. Download the postcard or send it through email addresses. There is also a treasure hunt game ‘Find & Win’ where you need to find the hidden Zoozoos in the crowd and you could win Vodafone hampers. The volume is the key – the louder the song, the closer you are to the Zoozoos, find and click on him!

I found an empty seat after a long struggle and fixed myself there. Even made a postcard of it! But, finding the hidden Zoozoos is a matter of pure luck, I clicked on many Zoozoo caps worn by the spectators, but nothing happened. And, this is how close you can zoom in, the below is a picture taken right below the large screen:

Experience the stadium, relive the experience!

An amazing concept! The Vodafone Fancam not only helps create a memorable experience for the ones who were at the stadium, but also succeeds in engaging others. With the social tagging feature, you can share this event with your friends, and invite other Facebook friends to experience how the entire match was as seen from your eyes. The gamification by way of a Zoozoo hunt in the stadium with gift hampers as incentives, adds to the fan experience.

The experience left me absolutely in awe of the technology used, how could an entire stadium packed with nearly 40-45K people be brought alive digitally? Intrigued and amazed, I digged into the Fancam website to know more at the ‘How we do it’ page. Here’s a little text that explains how a panoramic view is built through Fancam:

“The FANCAM is a composite image, created by ‘stitching’ together hundreds of overlapping ‘zoomed in’ images. We use normal high-end DSLR cameras with telephoto lenses on very normal tri-pods. The magic lies in the method we’ve developed to use these instruments, as it finds the perfect balance between precision and speed .”

Cool stuff! And, it appears that this is the first time a brand has used this in India. Do tag yourself if you were at the said matches and let us know your experiences.

Chinese Messaging App WeChat Now Has 50M Users Outside China. Bets Big On India

2013-05-22T06:58:26Z

Asian countries are being taken over by mobile messaging apps. Along with the local countries, these apps are now proving their mettle in international waters too. WeChat, the mobile messaging service from the Chinese Internet giant Tencent has revealed that the global overseas number has now touched to 50 million registered users (News Source: Tech In Asia).

The mobile messaging service that has more than 300M users had also revealed recently that the app is witnessing 190M active users each month. The latest numbers of active users came at a very interesting time when WhatsApp had credited itself to be bigger than Twitter. Speaking at the All ThingsD Dive Into Mobile conference, WhatsApp CEO Jan Koum revealed that with 200 million active users, the messaging app sees an average of 8 billion inbound, and 12 million outbound messages per day.

But then the recent figures don’t highlight the active numbers on the app across the borders of China. And the numbers are not a bigger threat to other competing apps like Line, WhatsApp. WhatsApp has a more international dominance and Line approximately has 105M registered users outside of Japan out of its 150M base.

In fact Line has been working on its international expansion and it is aiming China and US. It has also started working on censoring specific keywords on its China specific service. A move that is quite obvious in order to do business in China otherwise one has to be prepared to feel the burn. Last year, Sina Weibo, a Twiter like service had to suffer a similar action from the Chinese government when its commenting system was shut down for three days after it was adjudged to have been slow in responding to coup speculation that had emerged on its platform.

The Indian push by WeChat

Nevertheless, the international numbers of WeChat has to be credited to its ongoing push in the Indian market along with the markets like Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Indonesia. To target the Indian youth, WeChat had integrated with recent Bollywood movies and endorsed latest Bollywood heartthrobs Parineeti Chopra and Varun Dhawan.

The marketing initiatives have been broadened in the country as the app will have to compete with home grown players like Bharti Softbank’s app Hike which has crossed 5 million users globally and Nimbuzz, which claims to have 150 million users. Partnership with Cafe Coffee Day, Big Bazaar, Goibibo, Yahoo Cricket, Tradus and Santa Banta have been made but a monetization model has to be still put in place, commented Dennis Hau, GM, international business group at Tencent, while speaking to TOI.

“We will first look to get as many users as possible and then move on to getting commercial alliances in place,” added Hau, who is also interested in tying up with telecom operators for bundled services going forward. A move that was recently endorsed by Hike which has partnered with Nokia to preload the messaging app on selected devices such as Lumia 510, Lumia 720 and all Nokia Asha full touch phones sold in India. WhatsApp had also recently partnered with Asha 201 to have a dedicated WhatsApp button on the handset.

Social Media News From India And The World [22nd May 2013]

2013-05-22T03:58:17Z

India News Headlines

1. Use social media to reach out to youth, Modi: Attending his first meeting of the BJP’s parliamentary board after being re-inducted in the central team, Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi Tuesday suggested using social media to reach out to the youth. Read more here.

2. Facebook Marketing shares Penguin India’s success story as first case study of 2013: Facebook Marketing India has released its first case study of 2013. Published last week, it details how Penguin India used Facebook to increase awareness and attendance for its flagship Spring Fever 2013 book festival. Read more here.

3. Young India says social media will impact next elections: survey: A survey of urban Indian voters spread over 12 cities, executed by research firm, GFK for CNN-IBN, shows that young Indians believe social media will play a big role in the next elections. A majority of the respondents believe that the virtual platform will play a key role in building public perceptions about politics and politicians. Read more here.

World News Headlines

1. WeChat Now Has 50 Million Users Outside of China: Early last month we mentioned that WeChat, the China-made messaging app, had 40 million users outside of the country. Tencent tells us that this global overseas number has now risen to 50 million registered users beyond China’s borders. Read more here.

2. MavenSay Enjoying Sudden Popularity In Social Media-Hungry Indonesia: MavenSay, a social recommendation app, just got a surge of unplanned downloads coming from Indonesia, and its founders are moving quickly to include Southeast Asia in its expansion plans as a result. Read more here.

3. Flickr, Vimeo could see deep integration with iOS 7, claims report: Apple’s iOS mobile operating system gained integration with Twitter and Facebook in recent years, and a new report from 9to5Mac claims that the next version of the platform will likely add similar integration with Flickr and Vimeo. Read more here.

IPL On Social Media Week 6: #CSK Lead On Facebook While #RCB Dominates On YouTube

2013-05-21T14:46:27Z

The Indian Premier League’s matches are drawing to a close and these 6 weeks we have seen IPL franchises like Chennai Super Kings and Mumbai Indians having a good response to Social Media. However, we have also seen a co-relation of on field performances (or the lack of it) transferring to their online performance as well (Read Pune Warriors India and Delhi Daredevils). With the IPL being in the news for all the wrong reasons in the last week for the spot fixing scandal, did it affect the team’s sentiments on social media? Let’s find out the team performance on social media for the 6th week (8^th May – 14^th May 2013) using Unmetric.

IPL teams on Facebook

In terms of Fan growth rate, Sunrisers with the help of paid activities have attained the highest Fan growth rate of over 6% WoW with the addition of more than 35K new fans in week 6. Chennai Super Kings and Mumbai Indians lead the engagement front in week 6 on Facebook while Delhi and Pune are still the least engaged pages on Facebook.

Chennai Super Kings who has been consistently leading the other IPL teams on Facebook again is the most active on Facebook in terms of posting activity. And I am also not afraid to say that their fans are the most enthusiastic and active fans on Facebook. In terms of Interactions per Thousand Fans, CSK occupies 60% of the posts in the top 10. Below are the top 5 posts of Week 6 with the highest amount of interactions per 1000 fans:

Post	Team	Applause Rate	Conversation Rate	Amplification Rate	IPM
SRK loves CSK	CSK	3.0%	0.1%	0.8%	40
Adam Gilchrist lead us to a sweet win against RCB	KXIP	2.4%	0.2%	0.2%	28
Namma team is back in Chennai	CSK	2.4%	0.1%	0.2%	27
We have reached Jaipur..	CSK	1.8%	0.0%	0.2%	20
Kieron Pollard a very Happy Birthday!	MI	1.7%	0.2%	0.1%	20

SRK’s confession that he might own KKR but his favourite team is CSK has created quite a bit of conversations for the southern IPL team with the post being shared more than 18K times. Kings XI have also stirred up their conversations from the past 2 weeks (post David Miller’s blitzkrieg) and with Adam Gilchrist playing his last edition of IPL, the fans have surely started discussing about the legend on their page.

In terms of responses, no IPL team is still focusing on giving out responses to fans on their wall posts. The IPL franchises feel Twitter is more suitable for one to one conversations and don’t use Facebook for those conversations. And with the spot fixing scandal in the news, the IPL brand and especially the Rajasthan Royals have got a task in their hand to curb the negativity around their fans.

IPL teams on Twitter

On Twitter, we do get a more even competition with all the handles having a consistent follower growth along with fair bit of conversations. However, Kolkata Knight Riders and Pune Warriors seem to fall behind in terms of follower acquisition which might be owing to their low activity in week 6.

Pune Warriors did not reply to any tweet in week 6 and may be have slowed down on their social efforts owing to their team’s dismal performance in this edition. Sunrisers took the highest response time with an average reply in 4 hours while Sunrisers and Rajasthan seem to reply within the 10 minute range.

Rajasthan Royals invited participation by running #MyRoyalHero contest on Twitter and got a fair bit of response from the RR followers. The contest generated more than 700 tweets with more than 160 contributors (Source: TweetBinder). Mumbai Indians also came up with their own ‘Spot the Ball’ contest on Twitter which CSK was conducting on their Facebook pages successfully for the past 2 weeks.

The RCB team in order to pledge their support for a greener planet donned a green jersey against their match with Punjab. The twitterati were keen to jump in on the #RCBGoGreen initiative and pledged their support to RCB in a positive manner. There were more than 2,000 tweets with the hashtag and a potential reach of over 1.6 million on Twitter with over 800 contributors tweeting with the hashtag (Source: TweetBinder). It was a good initiative on behalf of Vijay Mallya’s team to unify and spread awareness among the people for a greener planet within the spirit of cricket.

Get #RCBGoGreen trending in support of @rcbtweets initiative. Also, the @twitter handles on jerseys is so cool twitter.com/IPL/status/334…

— IndianPremierLeague (@IPL) May 14, 2013

IPL teams 0n YouTube

On YouTube, Royal Challengers has been a consistent performer in terms of it’s content as well as gaining eyeballs. The RCB franchise has added more than 440K views this week along with 2,000 new subscribers. The content uploaded again has Gayle at the centre stage with after match party contents and some behind the scenes footage which I am sure the RCB fans love to get a sneak peek in to. Rajasthan has also been quite active this week with 15 uploads and garnering more than 73K new views. The content strategy for all the teams on YouTube has been around the same theme (Interviews/Candid talks and after match facts).

And the most viewed video in IPL in Week 6 goes to:

Although CSK and MI have a pretty strong holding as far as their Facebook community is concerned, RCB is also doing a good job overall and exceeding other teams as far as YouTube and Twitter is concerned. Although this week, no one team has been consistently performing on all the platforms, one thing for sure is that the bottom three teams (KKR/DD/PWI) still continue to lag behind in content strategy as well as activity.

And for the overall community size of all the IPL teams, here is a week over week overview:

Disclosure: Unmetric is an advertiser at Lighthouse Insights.

Japanese Messaging App Line Planning To Censor Politically Sensitive Phrases In China

2013-05-22T06:01:13Z

The word ‘Censorship’ has been synonymous to the Chinese Government. Social networking companies like Facebook, Twitter and the search giant Google have been legally blocked in the country due to their support to free speech. In fact allowing a phrase related Tiananmen Square massacre got the location service Foursquare blocked in China. However, the Japanese Messaging App Line which has more than 150 million users is working on a mechanism to restrict use of certain phrases on its dedicated China service – Lianwon (News Source: TNW).

The planned change was noticed by Twitter user @hirakujira who highlighted in his tweet that the app has a way to detect selected phrases considered to be ‘bad words.’ The below tweet hints the change been made.

Besides this @hirakujira has also obtained a list of 150 words that the company has planned to raise a red flag once any user uses them. The entire list which is in a local language could be found here. However, the planned monitoring has not been executed (TNW did carry out some tests with the blocked keywords but it had no problems) but Line will be monitoring the conversations globally despite being blocked only in China.

The news comes at a time when Line is focusing on its global expansion other than its local market Japan. China definitely is a lucrative market for the messaging app which had launched itself in December 2012. However, it has been a known fact that internet services can flourish only if you bow down to the subjects like censorship otherwise get ready to be punished severely.

Last year, Sina Weibo, a Twiter like service had to suffer a similar action from the Chinese government when its commenting system was shut down for three days after it was adjudged to have been slow in responding to coup speculation that had emerged on its platform.

Earlier this year Tencent-owned WeChat, a dominant mobile messaging app with more than 300 million users, came under fire for censoring ‘sensitive’ topics that its users were discussing. Though Tencent apologized for its WeChat censorship, which affected users worldwide, but referred to the issue only as “a technical glitch.” But, the damage was done.

Line which recently recorded a whopping $58 million in revenue during the first quarter of 2013, is strongly focusing on its international expansion in countries such as China and US. But the revelation of its supporting censorship could apply brakes on its expansion not only in China but globally too.

Take Catches And Save Runs With ‘The Great Indian Catch’ By Pepsi India

2013-05-21T11:15:29Z

Pepsi India has indulged in a whole lot of online campaigns that bring alive the magic of cricket in this season of IPL6. ‘The Great Indian Catch’ is another of the beverage brand’s endeavour to engage its fans, just as its bat-tweeting one with Pepsi Tweet20. While Tweet20 enabled users to play online shots through Twitter, ‘The Great Indian Catch’ brings alive the experience of fielding along with real batsmen and bowlers. And yes, there are Pepsi VIP Box tickets to be won!

The Great Indian Catch

“Catch kahin bhi aa sakta hai’, so the whole of India is your playing field. The application game that is hosted at a dedicated microsite uses Google maps and Facebook check-in functions. A participant has to give access to the application to action Facebook check-ins to different cities on the map of India. ‘The Great Indian Catch’ involves six pools of two matches each with a total of 12 matches. The top scorer of every pool will be eligible for the grand prize, hence the game will have 6 grand prize winners!

The home page welcomes you with a video on how to play the game and steps involved. Below is a leaderboard featuring the top scorers in the previous pool match, the batsmen for the day along with pitch and weather conditions, and the bowlers for the day. You can begin by clicking on ‘Play now’.

Login with Facebook and see the whole of India’s map on the playing field with Pepsi crowns at certain places. These are the places where you can position your fielders. You can play a total of 20 out of 90 balls in one day and save maximum runs or take catches!

Navigating stepwise, the app will help you go about the ‘seemingly difficult’ game, so that you can position your fielders appropriately.

Begin with selecting 3 of your friends to field along with you, with a different quality to every fielder – Runner, Catcher, Thrower and Diver. Depending on the batsmen at the crease, you can make your judgement using the given information on his favourite shots and IPL stats. Fielding skills can be increased by sending Pepsi IPL merchandise to your friends and earning points. Besides, the app provides a way to increase or decrease your fielder’s skill.

The app provides the pitch and weather conditions of the day. There is a scorecard with points scored, balls left, catches taken and rank in the game. There is also a countdown which tells you when the next ball will arrive.

Then there are the upcoming balls of the day. Bowling information gives the current bowler stats and his bowling style. Based on the ball type, you can choose your fielding formation, by reading the length and line of the ball and taking into consideration the batsman’s favourite shots.

The fielding capability of your fielders can be seen by the toggle button ‘see field’.

The location of the bowling pitch on the map is described too. All these help in making your fielding judgement, while you play indoors!

How cool is it?

Like I stated earlier, ‘The Great Indian Catch’ comes across as a ”seemingly difficult’ cricket game, but it is not. The credit goes to the numerous instructions along the way, that together with the video tutorial and explained steps, help make it easy to grasp. For a non-player like me, it was very helpful indeed, though it takes some time to get a good hang of the game. The concept of engaging cricket fans through an online game is impressive too.

Besides having a neat layout and design, the app works smoothly, gives ample amount of instructions and provides for a good experience for a cricket enthusiast. For a game like ‘The Great Indian Catch’ which involves careful judgement and decision making prior to a move, the app succeeds in providing all the required information to a fielder. But, the one thing I feel needs an alteration is the duration between two balls; 300 seconds to set a fielding position is too long. Perhaps, the brand wants participants to stay hooked, while at work!

It comes as no surprise that the app has been designed by Digivaasi, a creative led digital agency that recently won an award for ‘Best use of social media’ for Pepsi Tweet20.

The Great Indian Catch is indeed a cool idea that has been well executed. Do share your experiences with the app, in case you have given it a shot.

Senior Police Officer Amitabh Thakur From Lucknow Files An FIR Against Facebook

2013-05-21T08:27:23Z

Filing of FIRs against Facebook seems to be on the rise in India. The latest to join the list of the pending FIRs is the FIR filed on Monday by senior police officer Amitabh Thakur (News Source: FirstPost). The world’s biggest social network has been booked for a Facebook group that exhorts people to slaughter cows.

The complaint that has been filed at Gomtinagar police station in Lucknow by Thakur alleges that Facebook group “Aao mil kar kaaten Gaay” (Let us come together and slaughter cow) openly exhorted and glorified cow slaughter. However, I did a search for the group but the social network failed to drive any results.

The FIR was registered under Indian Penal Code’s sections dealing with provocation with intent to cause riot, public nuisance and intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of peace, and Section 66-A of the IT Act.

In his complaint, Thakur said that the group has extremely abusive and dirty words by various users against Hindu and Islam religion and also against the Prophet Mohammad and Hindu Gods and Goddesses. These insults could lead to breach of peace added Thakur, who has previously filed four more FIRs against the social network.

Holding Facebook responsible for Facebook groups that are being opened on the platform by individuals or a group of people, is naive. One could always report abuse for the content that is being shared. However, dragging Facebook into legal implications in a country where it is just having a sales office is really not showing any results. We recently reported how US government had rejected the request of serving summons to the US companies such as Facebook, Google, etc. since it implicates free speech principles.

Furthermore, the US authorities have also made a point that they will not be able to assist with the execution of the request without additional information being provided to them. However, the US authorities have also said that if there are other facts like information indicating a risk or threat to Indian lives, that have been pertinent to this case and have not been provided, then they are ready to help.

Under such situations, filing FIRs wouldn’t be the immediate solution but reporting such incidents or taking in Facebook India in confidence would be a better approach.