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Quick Summary: In Mumbai? On Twitter? Register for the first Mumbai Twitter Meetup. Not on Twitter? Find seven reasons why you should sign up for Twitter today.

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If You Are in Mumbai & on Twitter, Attend the Mumbai Twitter Meetup

Yesterday, when I tweeted about wanting to do a Mumbai Twitter Meetup —

Blog meets are so passe. I want to do a Mumbai Twitter meet. Anyone interested? (Twitter)

– I received half a dozen responses within seconds.

Within the hour, I had set up a @MumbaiTwit Twitter account, a dozen people had started following it, Aalaap Ghag (@aalaap) and Kapil Bhatia (@kapilb) had posted about the event and Aalaap had set up a Mumbai Twitter Meetup event on Facebook. Phew!

So, if you are in Mumbai and on Twitter, let’s meet up for the first Mumbai Twitter Meetup.

When? 5 pm, Saturday, December 29, 2007.

Where? Flat No A/65, Sea Lord, Cuffe Parade, Mumbai.

If you are planning to attend, here are a few things you should do in the run up to the event –

- Register for the event by following @MumbaiTwit on Twitter, joining the Mumbai Twitter Meetup event on Facebook, or leaving a comment below. Better still, do all three!

- Promote the event by tweeting about the event, or posting about it, or displaying the event poster or the event logo on your blog. Do remember to include a link to @MumbaiTwit on Twitter and the Mumbai Twitter Meetup event on Facebook in your post.

- Evangelize Twitter and get five interesting people — and I mean really interesting people — who aren’t yet on Twitter to sign-up for Twitter, then invite them for the event. If you want, use this post to explain to them what Twitter is and why they should sign up for it.

- Tweet your ideas for cool things to do for the event. I’ll collect them and put them up for voting. The best idea will get a surprize. Do remember to include a @MumbaiTwit in your tweets for me to track them.

For the event itself, here are a few thoughts to start you off –

- The venue of the event is my house. If more than 30 people sign up for the event, we’ll put our heads together and tweet up a new public venue. This, however, looks unlikely, as of now.

- The event is totally free. I’ll arrange for snacks, beer and wine and we can order pizza for dinner. You don’t need to pay anything, or bring anything, but I’ll not say no to a nice bottle of wine.

- I only have jazz, classic rock and ghazals on my iPod. If you want to listen to something else, bring your own iPod. If enough people being their iPods, we can take turns at playing music and even do an impromptu contest and give a surprize for the ‘Best iJ’.

- Wear all blue. Twitter is blue and my living room curtains/ cushions/ rugs are also blue. All of us in blue against my blue curtains will make for an interesting group photo op. We can even have a surprize for the person whose blue clothes are closest shade to the Twitter blue.

- If one of you can arrange for a projector, we can tweet during the event from our mobile phones and project the tweet-stream on a wall. Once again, we can have a surprize for the best tweet during the event.

So, what are you waiting for? Go register now.

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If You Aren’t Already on Twitter, Sign Up For Twitter Today

If you aren’t yet on Twitter, you probably don’t know what Twitter is (otherwise, you would have been on Twitter). It’s difficult to explain Twitter to someone who hasn’t used it first hand, but I’ll explain it by drawing analogies with seven other services you might have used. Then, I’ll give you seven reasons to try it out today.

Seven Analogies to Describe What Twitter Is

- #1 Twitter is Like a Blog: The most obvious comparison, of course, is with blogging (in fact, Twitter is basically a micro-blogging platform). Think of Twitter as a blog in which your posts can only be upto 140 letters long. Like blogs (Technorati), Twitter has its own hierarchies, and top 100 lists, (Twitterholic and Tweetboard). What’s more, like blogs (Google Blog Search), Twitter also has its own search engine (TweetScan).

- #2 Twitter is Like a Social Network: If you haven’t ever blogged, you have probably used a social networking site. If you like Orkut — and who in India doesn’t — think of Twitter as your scrapbook, only better, because it not only shows what your friends are saying to you and you to them, it also shows what they are saying to each others and to total strangers. If you like Facebook, think of Twitter as your news feed, only better, because it not only shows what your friends are doing, it also allows you to tag them using @username and have conversations with them.

- #3 Twitter is Like a Chat Room:If you haven’t used either blogs or social networks, you would probably have used a chat room. If you like chatting, Twitter is perfect for you, because Twitter becomes like a chat room when you have a few hundred friends who are also friends with each other.

- #4 Twitter is Like a Feed Reader: If you are obsessive about staying on top of news and read hundreds of feeds on your feed reader, you’ll love Twitter because news and blog posts get shared on Twitter faster than anywhere else.

- #5 Twitter is Like a Forum: If you have a few hundred friends, Twitter becomes a forum for topics related to technology, marketing and social media. If you have a problem, or, if you need some advise, you send our a tweet, and a few dozen people would reply to you immediately.

- #6 Twitter is Like a Search Engine: Because Twitter works so well as a forum for topics like technology, marketing and social media, some people even use it as a people powered search engine. And, trust me, for some terms, Twitter almost works as efficiently as Google.

- #7 Twitter is like a SMS Service: Finally, even if you aren’t the online sort of person, you are probably as much into SMSing as everyone else. Twitter works brilliantly well on mobile phones and you can send and receive updates from your mobile phone, either through WAP or through SMS.

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Seven Reasons You Should Sign Up For Twitter Today If You Already Haven’t

Now that I have explained what Twitter is, here are the seven reasons you should join Twitter today, if you already haven’t –

Reason #1: Twitter is many things in one — it is a blog, a social network, a chat room, a feed reader, a forum, a people-powered search engine and an SMS service all at once. What more can you ask for?

Reason #2: As influential early adopters are spending more time on Twitter, conversations are increasingly shifting to Twitter, especially conversations about web 2.0, technology and marketing.

Reason #3: Twitter is a great place to promote ideas amongst these early adopters. Although I have never actively promoted my blog on Twitter, more than 10% of my traffic comes from Twitter.

Reason #4: Twitter is a great place to make new connections, and not only with people who are on Twitter. Yesterday, a Twitter friend in the US introduced me by e-mail to a blogger-marketer in India who isn’t even on Twitter.

Reason #5: Twitter allows you to decide if you want your updates to be public or private. So, you can use it as a public document or as a private diary.

Reason #6: Twitter works brilliantly as a scrapbook for developing a thought thread. I do it so often that I have started a separate category on my blog for Twitter Threads.

Reason #7: The most important reason for joining Twitter is also the one reason for not joining Twitter — it is very very addictive. But when has that stopped us from doing anything?

So, what are you waiting for? If you aren’t already on Twitter, go sign up Twitter, then start following me @Gauravonomics and register for the Mumbai Twitter Meet by following @MumbaiTwit. Then come to the event, make a bunch of new friends, and get dozens of followers.

End of post/ pitch. I’ll see you on Twitter.

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Update: December 30, 2007

Had fun at @MumbaiTwit last night. Nine people turned up, several more SMSed, called, tweeted, registered but didn’t finally make it. (link)

In order of appearance at @MumbaiTwit: yours truly, @ranjanvarma, @vulturo, @kapilb, @aalaap, @adityamishra, @namithaj, @zynx & @rochit. (link)

We drank wine & talked about social graph portability, Facebook application spam, the right format for barcamps, web2.0/ mobile startups… (link)

was in & out of the kitchen & made a dozen plus dishes. Everything I cooked was finished, so I’m assuming it wasn’t a disaster. (link)

Then @Vulturo & I sat up till 3 am & chalked up the business plan for our “why hasn’t anybody else thought of it yet?” startup. (link)

So, I had a great time at @MumbaiTwit, met some old friends, made some new friends, ate, drank, talked. I hope others had a good time too. (link)

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Update: January 8, 2008

Namitha has written a story about the @MumbaiTwit in LiveMint –

Pocket-sized social networking

Twitter is the latest social media platform to catch the fancy of users worldwide, and allows a person to post real- time updates called “tweets”

Mumbai: India had its first Twitter meet last Saturday, when a bunch of working professionals met up at an apartment in uptown Mumbai to talk about their love for the Web application that lets you tell the world about your life and thoughts in 140 characters.
Twitter is the latest social media platform to catch the fancy of users worldwide, and allows a person to post real- time updates called “tweets”, via mobile and instant messaging on its website, which can then be shared with other users. In turn, a user tracks tweets posted by others.

Gaurav Mishra, who hosted the meet, likes to follow everyone who posts on Twitter. For half an hour every day, on weekdays, Mishra reads all the latest updates on the site.

Twitter, which began as a research project within San Francisco-based start-up Obvious Llc. in late 2006, picked up users rapidly in the months that followed. That Twitter is in its early days in India is evident—only nine people turned up for the meet.

Mishra estimates there are less than 2,000 users in India. Most users have been early adopters of social media platforms in the past. Almost everyone at the meet had paid for their own websites long before blogging became free and mainstream.

Discussions revolved around the Twitter ratio, which is a ratio of the number of profiles you track to the number of people who track you. The more popular you are in Twitter circles, the bigger the following. The group also spoke about the charm of Twitter—it is a tool people either love or hate. Each update in itself is trivial, but regularly tracking topics or profiles gives the bigger picture.

Recommended Reading:

• Updated: Mumbai Twitter Meetp: In Mumbai? On Twitter? Let’s Meet Up! (7)
• Three Dimensions of Differentiation for Indian Social Networking Sites (7)
• What’s Wrong With Indian Social Networking Sites? (17)
• The Long Tail of Pain (13)
• Google’s Social Networking Plans: OpenSocial is Not About Facebook (2)