Photo/Video sharing kills Facebook & grows Twitter

In one of my posts in last October titled  "Facebook "Share" button is going to be the next big thing" I explained how Facebook strategically gave more prominence to Photo&video shares through the timeline view. In a recent post titled "Is engagement higher for Facebook photos?" i proved with stats how this has made sharing of a photo or a video get higher engagement than a text update.

Outcome of this strategy was heavy sharing of images which resulted in the emergence of photo sharing Facebook pages such as "Trust me,Im an Engineer", "Ads of the world", "Kajuwaththa eksath"(Local) , "Loweth ne" (Local) and the culture of edited photo sharing in the form of memes.

This has also made the data consumption higher for Facebook usage and the requirement of certain minimum speeds to access Facebook (Some android phones will need long Facebook app load times). But the most important and a vital result of highlighting photos is the negligence to text based updates.  As given in the post "Is engagement higher for Facebook photos?", Facebook users are three times less likely to respond to a text only update now.

We have passed the era of text status updates of good and bad moments of life and getting dozens of comments from Friends and Family. Now a text status update in Facebook receives very low attention. This outcome is killing Facebook by driving users to microblogging platforms like Twitter where even a text based update can make a lot of impact. Do you think this can kill Facebook? Will Facebook understand the consequences and try to rectify it? Please feel free to comment your opinion below...

Why Yoshitha Rajapakshe on FB SLmemes page is so significant?

Whole Sri Lankan online community was talking about one thing yesterday. President's son and his girl friend commenting on a meme in Sri Lankan Memes Facebook page about them.

The meme was about an astrologist predicting the president that his about to become a grandfather, MR saying his kids dont even have girlfriends & then showing pics of Yoshitha,his girlfriend, some baby. Its a superb meme anyways. (If anyone wants to see the meme,pls comment below i will send the link)

Within few minutes President's sons girlfriend has commented phrasing the meme (in the meme language), followed by Presidnets son himself commenting saying "HILARIOUS". This was a first time that we noticed a highlevel VIP personally commenting on a public forum. Both of them commented in a very light way, showing the PR qualities of the President.

This isn't something that we have seen in Sri Lanka so far. But is a common phenomenon in other matured internet markets like India or even US where celebrities & VIPs comment, tweet like normal people in the communities. I assume one of the reasons why India has a huge followership in Twitter than Sri Lanka is because their celebrities are actively on Twitter. I know certain Sri Lankan girls who have joined twitter,just to follow their bollywood celebrities in India and some of them have even got replies from the likes of Shah Rukh Khan on Twitter (Do you see the pas coming out? #IfYouKnowWhatIMeanMeme)

This kind of celebrity/VIP participation on social networks can lead to increase in community members for Sri Lanka - my point is that after hearing the news

• More people will want to join Facebook and 
• More people will want to be active on this pages to interact with their celebrities
• Will encourage more celebrities/VIPs to come on board social media and interact with their fans

for e.g.Increase in Facebook and specially an increase in Twitter users since celebrities in Twitter are easily reached than in Facebook.  Such an increase would mean better internet atmosphere with much more local content around the web. Will Yoshitha commenting on Facebook meme be the turning point of Sri Lankan celebrities/VIPs in social communities?

Next up : "Cold war between popular Sri Lankan Facebook 'share' pages"

Meme's used in Sri Lankan protests against UNHRC

It's amazing to see how online world influences the physical world since it is expected the other way around. Recently Sri Lankan protestors against UN human rights commission has used  meme's as slogan boards. See below

It says USA - Y U NO TABLE RESOLUTION ON YOURSELF?

I predict pretty soon we see them in Lipton square, In Cricket matches and in every other demonstration in Sri Lanka held for different reasons. 

Meme culture hits Sri Lanka

With the likes of 9GAG meme's had been the talk of the day in other online markets. Usually all trends come to Sri Lanka late but meme's have really been faster - probably because of faster internet growth these days. I would also blame the Sri Lankan expats for accelerating meme arrival in Sri Lanka ( @Binku xD)

An internet meme is an idea that is virally propogated through the internet. It can be a hyperlink, picture, video or even a small word or phrase. The spread is through social networking sites, blogs, email.etc,.Most popular being photo memes since they are easily shareable. Currently there are many meme generators with commonly used memes to which you can put a caption. One is http://memegenerator.net/.

One of the most popular memes this days are "LOTR Boromirs - One does not simply", "Success baby meme", "Obama - Not bad meme", "Facebook girl meme", "Barney Stinson - True story meme" .etc. Some of them are directly taken from famous movie,TV shows. For .e.g. Boromir saying "One does not simply walk in to Morodor" in Council of Elrond in Lord of the Rings.

Internationally meme sites of likes of 9GAG are very popular. Locally we have only the "Sri Lankan memes" FB page but its growing quite fast. 6000 fans in mere 3 weeks is quite astonishing without any kind of commercial advertising. A barrier i see for Sri Lankan memes to reach mass internet population in Sri Lanka is that certain movie & TV show memes' are better enjoyed when one has actually seen the feature. For e.g. If you assume 20% of internet users in Sri Lanka have seen Lord of the Rings, its less than 1% who have seen How i met your mother - so memes of that origin might not be enjoyed by many.

Despite all that, Sri Lankan meme FB page is really happening these days, specially on Cricket match days. Admins are doing a great job with all the filtering & coordination. Hats-off to anyone doing the page.

So - start memeing if you haven't already! Feel free to share your thoughts on meme culture in Sri Lanka by commenting below....