CTP: @13:14 One Lorry breakdown at 100ft Rd near Hilton hotel towards Vadapalani Vehicles moving slowly.
Necessary action was taken by Inspector of Police, Tambaram traffic, on the facebook complaint sent by Pon Jeyaraj. In this connection Mofussil bus parking place has been shifted 100 meters before Tambaram Railway station entrance and newly allotted to mofussil bus parking place in that area.
Snappy traffic updates warning motorists of clogged roads. Commentaries of action taken against violations reported by the public. Contrary to what is expected of any Government page on the Internet, the Chennai City Traffic Police’s Facebook page is alive and up to date. The page ( >http://www.facebook.com/chennaitrafficpolice ) has nearly 30,000 followers and it is yet to complete a year.
In August 2011, Inderjit Vasudevan Moorthy, a 29-year-old social media services expert, approached Sanjay Arora, Additional Commissioner of Police (Traffic), Chennai, and offered to turn around the Facebook page that was noticeably lacking in colour and substance. Arora warmed up to the suggestion and provided a team that would work with Inderjit. “Besides working on the page, my job entailed training the team to be able to handle the page without any outside support. The effort took a month,” says the young man.
With the dedicated staff shouldering the major responsibilities, Inderjit chips in by posting official updates. “Once, I was woken up by a beep on my cell phone at 2.30 a.m. — it was an SMS from ACP Arora informing me about a tree fall on Radhakrishnan Salai.”
When designing CCTP’s FB page, the youngster was guided by a theory that a Facebook page has to be imparted a unique anthropomorphic character. “The CCTP page sounds like a cop. It states events with matter-of-fact directness and does not appear to get swayed by the emotions that go with them,” explains Inderjit.
The Chennai Metro Rail’s FB Page, also designed by him, is compared to “a diplomat immersed neck-deep in a work of immense importance to the citizens of a land and, therefore, stays aloof and provides only the necessary information.” He, however, adds: “It contains information and updates on the project that the public can not access elsewhere.” The page ( >http://www.facebook.com/chennaimetrorail ) was created only three months ago and has over 6,000 followers.
A sense of social responsibility drew Inderjit to these two projects. As managing partner of ia Consulting, he provides social media solutions to commercial entities and also runs a page I love (heart symbol) Chennai (http://www.facebook.com/mycitychennai) that has been a runaway success. Created in May 2011, the page has drawn around 1,30,000.
“For the content, I refer to newspapers and magazines for all that is happening in the city. I post the information with due credit to the original source,” says Inderjit. “At ‘I love (heart symbol) Chennai’, we focus on the positive side of living in Chennai. There are so many others who talk about what’s wrong with the city. Let them do their job, and we’ll do ours.”
