Twitter, which has been called as “The Web Equivalent of Democracy”, has recently crossed the historical figure of 100 million active users. Twitter has announced that it would now be supporting 17 different local languages, including Hindi – The national language of India.
This means that now you all can play with Twitter in Hindi and can send your favourite tweets in Hindi. This was only possible before this by using services of Google like Google Transliteration.
According to Twitter official blog –“For many, getting the most out of Twitter isn’t only about tweeting: 40 percent of our active users simply sign in to listen to what’s happening in their world.
Twitter’s global reach gives a voice to people around the world and as far away as the International Space Station. After launching Hindi, Filipino, Malay and Simplified and Traditional Chinese in the coming weeks, Twitter will support 17 different languages.”
Twitter may be the first major Social Network to start support in Hindi, but has been many localized precedents. One question that is really bothering is whether this initiative by Twitter will bring them new users. This is so as there are hardly any users who do not know English and use computer and internet in India.
But given the reach that it can be accessed through mobile devices, Twitter would soon rise to Tier-II and Rural population of the country so there is no reason as to why such a social network should be limited to English only.
There may also be some sort of rural innovations which might be discovered because of Twitter going into local language support. What do you think about this move by Twitter?