A Social Media Experiment

Yesternight (May 31, 2011) me and a couple of friends took part in a so-called  "Social Media Experiment". Here are the results of our experiment.

Objective - To create a Trending Topic on the Twitter.

Participants - @kcgadiyar, @ajay_prasad, @NishantSKumar

Background

"Kuch Kuch Hota Hai" was trending worldwide. Now why it was, was a mystery. This was the issue raised by one participant. After a bit of research work turned out the title song had been sung on some singing contest (some Indian Idol type show somehere). Inspired and motivated by this piece of info, the 3 particpants decided to create a trending topic of their own.

Search for a Topic

Suggestion to make "Ringa Ringa" video trend worldwide was immediately shot down. #dialoguesfrom80smovies was ignored (sample line - "main tera khoon pee jaaonga"). Search continued. Events happening in the world were closely examined. 

Rohan Bopanna & Aisham ul Haq Qureishi were playing in French Open  Quarter-Finals against the top seeded Bryan Brothers. A pretty close fight going on (currently tied at 5-5 in the deciding set when bad light stopped play).

So there it was, our search was over. And we found our trending topic (or rather the topic we planned to trend). It was going to be the #indopakexpress.

Process Steps

1. Use the tag in whatever tweet we made & tweet as much as you could. (Score updates; abuse Star Sports for not showing the match live; put streaming links for the match)

2. Retweet each other.

3. Ask celebs to tweet about the match.

4. Contact people using the same hashtag.

Observations

1. Search for hashtag #indopakexpress & timeline began resembling each other.

2. Aman Ki Asha fellows got involved.

3. Post midnight, celebs are not online.

Inferences

1. Limited twitter base (Ok one fellow did ask me about the streaming link, I should count that as a success)

2. Doubles tennis (Mens) does not make for a very exciting topic even though 2 countries are involved.

3. Post midnight is not the time to attempt to create a trending topic.

4. Live events need to be publicised beforehand to make them trend.

Random Observation

Today Sania Mirza is playing her doubles semi-finals while the indopakexpress vs bryanbros resumes. Now making Sania trend shouldn't be really diffcult.

Result

Attempt not successful but to be persisted with.