This article reports that Hindustan Times, a major Indian newspaper is changing it’s look and reporting style to cater to India’s youth population.

Sanjoy Narayan, editor-in-chief, HT, “Relationship and the people’s approach to consumption of news has changed. They get news faster from television, Internet, mobile phones (through SMS alerts), social media networks and newsletters. The reader wakes up in the morning not to know ‘what’ but ‘why’. While we deal with this ‘why’, it has lead to the overall restaging of the product.”

Interesting….is it only HT or other newspapers are taking the similar route???

Agency faqs reported how RK Misra won the lead India contest by Times of India by using MyToday SMS service:

MyToday is a free SMS subscription service started by digital evangelist Rajesh Jain in India, which sends out daily message alerts on news, cricket, the sensex, jokes, religion, Bollywood and astrology to its three million subscribers.

Are there any other SMS based news service or cell phone news alerts services in India?

SMS is taking over our lives. It provides instant communication. Yet, when I read this article, on how young people are using SMS lingo in exam papers, I found it hilarious as well as shocking. On one hand, there is non-english speaking Indian population, that is learning English through mobile phone usage. On other hand, there are english-medium educated students who are using SMS language in exam papers.

I am sure the trend is not only limited to India, but is also there in other countries.

SMS (Short messaging services) are not only changing the way people communicate, but are also impacting the literary world. In India, you can buy a variety of books on SMS:

Not only are these books a collection of SMS but are categorically divided as well. Take for instance. Shayari SMS, Romantic SMS, Lovely SMS, Hot SMS, Santa Banta SMS, Latest collection of 2006 SMS, Spicy SMS, SMS for all occasions, Hilarious SMS are just a few to mention.

Not only this, people reading Hindi are not neglected as these books are available in Hindi as well like Chulbule SMS and Hindi SMS.

So now you don’t have to rack your brains and rely on your penmanship if you want to send a heartfelt message, just like everything else, you can buy them readymade…..

In her paper, Personal Portable Pedestrian: Lessons from Japanese Mobile Phone Use, Ito (2004), describes how mobile phone adoption and usage among the Japanese is embedded in a set of social – technical – cultural contexts. According to her, a “technosocial” framework provides a better approach to study technologies in society, because technologies and their usage patterns are determined by the technosocial ecologies in which they are evolving. Using the example of text messaging among young Japanese women, she explains, that the practice was not only adopted by the larger Japanese population, but also led to design innovations in technologies. Therefore, it was the social popularity of text messaging and the cultural value associated with it, which gave rise to the technical innovation. Further she explains, that the “urban ecologies” characterized by densely populated streets, public transportation and crowded living conditions have also resulted in people being more comfortable in exchanging messages rather than making voice calls.

I recently came across this article, which states that camera phone market is growing in India and youth is driving this growth. In my research on mobile phone usage among Indian youth, all the young people I interviewed, said that they would like to have a camera in their mobile phone. This may not really be an innovation in technology, but it certainly is an example of how the demand for camera phones is promoting the makers to add features and new capabilities to the mobile phones.

The above two examples of text messaging and the camera phones describe how the social and cultural value placed on social networking through text messages and owning a camera phone has led to evolution in technology within a particular context. I am interested in collecting any examples of such innovations in technologies particularly mobile phones which have grown out of the social and cultural value placed on it.

This article in Asia Times by Sultan Shahin, reports on how short messaging services (sms) on mobile phones have been embraced by Indians and changing communication behavior and practices. It reports, that on an average, 60 messages are sent out per phone everyday. This means minimum of 2 messages in an hour. SMS is being used to flirt, bypassing the cultural rules and also for greeting people on special occassions such as festivals. People are writing love poems and these short messages are arousing people. One would think that these short messages won’t affect people who are already bombarded with so many advertising messages. But probably intimately crafted messages do have an effect on people. And words do have an effect on people more than we may assume.