Mind your tweets or face the wrath!

MUMBAI, INDIA: Twitter, the microblogging site is enjoying growing popularity and acceptance in India. It is no longer popular only among individual users but a new section of people who belong to the high-profile class are also adopting it.

Key driver for its acceptance and growing usage is the ease and simplicity. It allows users to express views, thoughts, opinions and share pictures and videos in an interactive way that is highly accessible to public.

And it is this fast way to grab attentions and initiate conversation or a dialog is what attract people from all walks of life — be it film celebrities, sports personalities, media persons, top bureaucrats or even politicians — to join Twitter. And a few like Sherlyn Chopra had created storms too in a hot way!

Congressman Shashi Tharoor, Bharatiya Janata Party's Sushma Swaraj, Jammu & Kashmir's Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, India's foreign secretary Nirupama Rao, film actress Bipasha Basu, Aussie cricketer Shane Warne, media personalities like Barkha Dutt and Rajdeep Sardesai are among the high profile people who are active on the microblogging site.

Twitter, a part of social media such Facebook and Orkut, however, has a flip side too, which can easily lead the user into all sorts of troubles such as public criticism and outrage, leak of confidential organizational information, exposing the difference of stance between a group and its representative and lots of unwanted and unwarranted controversies.

Congressman and Kerala MP Shashi Tharoor has enjoyed the status of being “too social”, thanks to his highly controversial tweets such “cattle class”on Twitter that even had put his own party and UPA Government in an awkward and embarrassing situation, which found his disgraceful exit as the State Minister for External Affairs.

Tharoor's tweets fall under classic category, where a high-profile individual representing a large political group, voices personal views that are not aligned or endorsed by his group's ideology or policies.

Apart from “cattle class” remarks, the former minister has been busy tweeting on range of subjects — government's foreign policy, railway budgets, cricket and so forth. Tharoor's popularity and his coziness with Twitter can be gauged by the 947,230-odd followers he got in a year's time.

Following his foot-steps, BJP's Sushma Swaraj also has gained over 20,000 followers in just over 3 months' time since she joined Twitter, all thanks to her controversial tweets like, “I appreciate the statement of the Prime Minister owning responsibility for the appointment of CVC which has been quashed by Supreme Court” and “I think this is enough. Let matters rest at this and we move forward”.

Swaraj's latest tweets have really given her own party a major jolt and weakened BJP's stand against the UPA Government in the ongoing issue of CVC's appointment, after she endorsed the Prime Minister's remark owning responsibility to the CVC issue.

Interestingly, Tharoor and Swaraj had to face a lot of criticism from their respective parties and leaders too.

Aussie leg-spinner Shane Warne's tweet prediction on India-England World Cup match to be a tie, which did happened so, now has come up for scrutiny following Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) chairman Ijaz Butt's demand for an inquiry by ICC in Warne's tweet prediction of the match.

But it's not just the tweets that can land you into trouble; even posting pictures could become a point of criticism and unexpected allegations.

Bollywood actress Bipasha Basu recently had such a bad experience, when she posted a picture of “two young girls tie her shoes laces.” Because of the picture, Basu was accused of child labour and was strongly criticized for her act, which later forced her to go-off from tweeting further.

Clearly, such incidents are sort of good learning lessons to large number people, particularly younger generations, on how to use the social media and control behaviors in the virtual world.

Tweet it, but with care!