Chetan Bhawani

While we are seeing an influx of Indian celebrities on Twitter, I won’t call them celebs here. They are mostly to just gain more followers other than their offline ones, but the actual twitter celebs would be those who have been here for long, and built a great network around. One of those who I earlier interviewed was Hariharan Natarajan, and now one more person whom I admire and respect for what he is, Shakthidharan!

As his twitter profile explains about him -

Bio: Blogger, Writer, Indi-llectual. Twitter addict, Physically Challenged but mentally alive and kickin!! Blogs at Shakthisoft.net

Shakthi Sir is a great person at heart, always there and has a great network with a good recognition on twitter. One can easily find out that with the number of followers i.e. 31,000+ and he follows them back, not just as a favor but also to interact with many of them. I have been inspired of his good work on building his network and extended friendship with the big bunch of people around.

Here goes the twitinterview with Shakthi, a good one to spend some time reading!

1. Introduce yourself briefly?

A guy who started to tweet about blogging and ended up blogging about tweeting Not a single serious bone in my body. Some of my friends are actively searching for any evidence that I have a brain in that body. So far, they haven’t succeeded. My aim in life is to defy definition and define defiance.

A dad, an old man, a fat man, a desparate tweep are the various things that I have been called. Yes! Sometimes people also call me a joker and I remind them what a headache that guy gave the Batman

I am a Software Techie, I have a physical challenge in the form of a totally paralyzed right leg and right hand. But trust me, my mind and my tweets more than make up for it!
I love writing in any form and hence I love tweeting too!

2. Since when are you tweeting and what do you tweet about more frequently?

Jan 2009 is when I joined twitter. Mostly I tweet links about social media and the World Wide Web. Some humor tweets and my take on the contemporary happenings. I aspire to be a chronicler of our times.

3. Which other social networks/microblogging sites do you use apart?

Facebook for friends and Orkut for fraands!

4. How many accounts do you have on Twitter?

Used to have three, but deleted the other two and now just the one (@v_shakthi)

5. You feel Twitter has a good future or its going to be a spam-bay like Myspace?

Twitter will not go the MySpace way (hopefully), but that is going to take a lot of responsibility and sense from all of us users. The stalkers and spammers and bots and sellers have to stop and let us make this powerful platform a practically useful one too. The constructive benefits that can come out of twitter outnumber the many problems it has. But anything is as good as its use and users, hence it is upto you and me to keep in going in the right direction.

6. Have you made real-life friends from Twitter? And met them personally?

This is one of the key plus points that twitter has given me, my twitter friends have stood by me and helped me out of many a crisis. I am ever grateful to twitter for adding such quality to my life. There have been times when all else has failed and my twitter friends walked in with a smile and helped me out. Really invaluable to me.

7. How can you say one’s addicted to Twitter?

When you are stuck/locked out somewhere and the first thing you do is tweet about it! I have seen many who do that. Believe me!

8. Which Twitter clients do you use? Which is your favorite?

Tweetdeck for PC, Tweetdeck for Iphone, Tweetdeck is my fav!

9. What’s life for you without Twitter?

That is like “Murder” without Mallika Sherawat, totally unimaginable!! and useless!! and pointless!!

10. Do you tweet first or check mails or read the newspaper when you wake up?

Actually I brush my teeth and bathe first ( I hope @mad_nad is reading this ! ) Jokes apart, I check twitter before everything and after everything daily!

11. Do you worry if someone unfollowed you?

Initially I used to take it as a personal failing if someone unfollowed me, but as time passed by I understand that everyone has his / her own way to using twitter and I respect that. Hence, no hearburn at all!

12. Do you think, celebrities can take social networking to the next level, or they are just for self-promotion?

EVERY celeb on twitter (the Indian ones) is here with an agenda and they stick to that. I don’t think they care about social media at all. They are the most “unsocial” tweeps if you ask me. My sincere recommendation to my friends is not to waste time and energy following them. They all suck to the core. I mean it!

13. Who are the 5 best tweeps you suggest to follow?

Not five, there are 249! Look at this list.

14. What efforts did it take to the current count of followers and friends you have (30000 followers)?

• Tweet more interesting and quality stuff
• Followback everyone who is not a spammer or a bot
• Interact as often as possible
• Help people out whenever I can

15. Do you like to share your thoughts and views on developing network of Indians on twitter?

1. Get them on twitter
2. Make them realize the potential of twitter
3. Keep them on twitter

That should do it. Right now the number of serious Indian Twitter users is relatively disappointing. The “follow the celebs” brigade should be converted to serious tweeps first.

Thanks to Shakthi for the awesome interview. It was indeed a good read, and quite funny and informative too!