In December 2013, final year B.Tech student Anurag Kambampati opened a twitter account to share information on Hyderabad. He called this handle @WeLoveHyderabad and drew eyeballs when he began sharing old photographs of the city, street food joints and new developments in the city. Twitter users were enthused by photographs that captured tank bund, Abids, Moula Ali and Old City 100 or 200 years ago. The photographs were thanks to his friend who boasts of a treasure trove of old photographs.
Today, the account, renamed as @WeAreHyderabad, has more than 6,600 followers. “Earlier, I managed a facebook page called ‘I love Hyderabad’ which had around 25,000 likes. Soon I felt bored with the page and wanted better interaction with Hyderabadis and switched to twitter,” says Anurag, 22, now a software engineer with an MNC.
@WeAreHyderabad now functions as a RoCur or ‘Rotation Curation’ account managed by a guest curator each week. The Rotation Curation concept began in Sweden in 2011 when the official account @Sweden was handed over to a new Swedish person each week to bring in fresh perspectives.
Anurag took a cue from this method, now followed across nations, and turned the Hyderabad account into a RoCur one a month ago. “Aditya, Harshit Jain, Sangeetha Kodithala managed the account for a week each and now Pallavi Ruhail is curating it,” says Anurag.
A google document available on the @WeAreHyderabad twitter page allows a user to apply or nominate a friend to curate the account. “A curator needs to be active through the day, post at least 10-12 tweets per day, sharing information they know about the city or from third party sources. A curator can choose areas he/she would like to focus on — sports, food, politics, social issues, news updates, travel, photography, IT, technology and humour among other areas,” says Anurag. The rotational curation will continue like a chain reaction.
Over the months, Anurag has remained in the background, letting the city be in focus. “It took around six months for people to notice and follow us. Today, this account ranks next to Delhi and Mumbai in terms of city accounts. My intention was to use this account as an information portal and share updates on start-ups, help reach blood donors, share road safety and traffic updates and introduce followers to nooks and corners of the city they may/may not have visited,” says Anurag.
Anurag plans to have merchandise — t-shirts, mugs et al — echoing the essence of Hyderabad. “In the last one year, we managed to trend #BeingHyderabadi, #WeAreHyderabad and #JustHyderabadithings at a national level,” he says.
