What are you doing on Facebook?
Yousuf Bashir Qureshi is not busy - he is engrossed. And he is not
engrossed with one specific idea - he is actually immersed in all of
them, simultaneously.
Qureshi, a designer and the founder of the Commune Artist Colony in
Karachi, has been trying to connect art and artists with the local
Karachi community through various events which are held at the Commune.
Men taking a break from the protests in Tahrir Square, Egypt.
Recent events in the world, the uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia,
have the future prospects of social media and its’ effect in the
spotlight. While real uprising and demonstrations spread across
the region like an epidemic; only rumours of such protests have
spread through the grapevines in Pakistan. - Reuters Photo |
“Every Friday, movie night,” said Qureshi. “We have food, drinks,
sheesha, and a good movie - Ashraf, is it on Facebook, already?”
“Already done,” Commune Artist Colony Director Ashraf Kalim Ahmed
said. “We have put some choices up for movies and given everyone a
chance to vote on it.” “We have almost 130 people ‘attending’ on
Facebook so that basically means 40 will actually show and that’s a
pretty decent crowd.” “It will go up,” said Qureshi, as he gestures with
his hand raised in the air and draws a cost curve in the air. “Then it
will go down, afterwards it will steady out.”
But it is not the first time the Commune has used Facebook for
promoting its’ events, nor will it be the last. As any story goes -
there are two sides to everything. As time-consuming social media seems
to be, it has grown rapidly in the past year among people, businesses,
and in politics of the small population of netizens in Pakistan.
Facebook was officially launched in 2004 and Twitter was launched in
2006. Facebook has an estimated 500 millions active users and 70 percent
of their users are outside the United States. In 2010 alone, there were
7.9 new Facebook registrations every second across the world.
“Facebook started getting popular in 2008 and 09 where the user base
shot up from 300,000 to 1,500,000. It grabbed the general public’s
attention when it got banned last year which brought it to mainstream.
Though a small percentage boycotted it but at the larger scale, people
were more intrigued to know about it and joined it,” said Faisel Khan,
the general manager at The Next Big Thing (TNBT), a digital media agency
that specializes in digital media strategies and solutions.
“At the other end, Twitter still isn’t popular in Pakistan and a
specific genre prefers to use it ie: bloggers, politicians, hippies,
marketers. The reason being, it doesn’t give the freedom to the user to
do as much as Facebook and they find it complicated as well. But Twitter
has a user base of 450,000 which ramped up more when Facebook got
banned.”
In
May 2010, Facebook was banned by the Lahore High Court due to the
blasphemous page, “Let’s Draw Muhammad Day” on the social media site.
However, the ban brought more attention to the social media site - in
the last six months Pakistan’s Facebook population has grown by over a
million.
“Facebook is a very significant part of our lives now. It’s not just
a website but an activity,” mentioned Khan. Currently, there are an
estimated 3.8 million active Facebook users and almost 450,000 Twitter
accounts - 2 percent of the Internet population in Pakistan, according
to Socialbakers.com, the leading website on Facebook statistics. So what
are Pakistanis doing on Facebook?
“Facebook in Pakistan is used for sharing, stalking and gaming
mainly. People share videos the most, while sitting at offices - most of
the offices in Pakistan have even banned Facebook. Social gaming is
another area where people compete with their own friends and peers. I’ve
even heard of people waking up in the middle of night just to plough
their farms in order to gain points,” said Khan.
As the sixth most populous country of the world, the current Internet
user population in Pakistan is an estimated 20 million - 9 percent of
the total population in Pakistan. “There has been a positive side as
well where local netizens have started their businesses online from
selling cookies to customized t-shirts which I think is where the big
brands are missing out on this opportunity,” said Khan. “(But) stalking
is the most common activity which started getting more famous when
Facebook opened its content to search engines. This is turning Facebook
into another Orkut, where anyone can access any content, if the privacy
policies don’t get stiffened.”
There have been different Facebook pages that have taken storm in
Pakistan - besides the Facebook pages of the entertainment and fashion
industries. “Unlike any other form of media, services such as Facebook
and Twitter allow users themselves to report, and to participate in, the
documentation of events. To some extent, this capability has resulted in
people being able to organize themselves for social causes, some
serious, and some relatively trivial,” Pakistan Software Houses for IT
and ITES Association president Jehan Ara said (P@sha), who recently
merged with Bytes for All to Take Back the Tech! in Pakistan, an
international campaign that uses information and communications
technology (ICT) to raise awareness about violence against women.
Recent events in the world, the uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia, have
the future prospects of social media and its’ effect in the spotlight.
While real uprising and demonstrations spread across the region like an
epidemic; only rumours of such protests have spread through the
grapevines in Pakistan.
Facebook pages in Pakistan are not any different from those in other
countries, where the pages can range from a variety of topics like
Inqilaab-e-Pakistan, a group that has organized a protest for change
with over 23,000 fans attending, to the wannabe Gossip Girl page
Scandalous Islamabad, which openly names and gossips about everyone,
except ‘boring people.’ If you need a cake or maybe a decent
photographer - Facebook provides that information quickly and at the
users’ convenience.
“With freedom comes great responsibility. Social media is no
different. We have to practice the same principles, ethics and values in
using social media that guide us in our everyday lives and in our normal
interaction with people,” explained Jehan Ara.
About 81 percent of the Facebook population age ranges between 18-35
and almost 68 percent are men in Pakistan. “At the moment our generation
is living through the largest increase in expressive capability but it
seems as if it is not being utilized to the fullest. Our people should
voice their opinion in a manner that it actually drives social,
political and financial change rather than just discussing Veena or
Meera,” said Faisal Khan from TNBT.
“For businesses, it’s a platform where they (can) manage their
reputation by letting their consumers know that they’re heard and mould
their business economics for social media exclusively. Globally search
tools are being applied by governments to gauge citizens’ sentiments and
being a country where every citizen is a political analyst, discussions
on social media should be brought to mainstream and given their
importance.”
The Dawn |