As the tech capital of the country and a city that takes pride in finding tech solutions to everything, Bengaluru emerges on top of the pile in most things to do with social media trends and technology.
This seems to be the case in the realm of rotation curation as well. The >@wearebangalore twitter handle with upwards of 5,000 followers is one of the widely followed city-based rotation curation handles in the country.
Rotation curation is the concept of rotating the curator (the person who is handling the account) on a social media account at a specific interval. In this case, the project involves a different person or group from the city or a voice from Bengaluru who will tweet each week as
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It all began when software professional Jeroz Nishanth Coelho and a group of friends decided to start a handle for Bengaluru inspired by Sweden’s official Twitter account, @Swedento, that is managed by a different person every week to showcase the diversity of Sweden.
Jeroz tried to create a new handle, but discovered that >@WeAreBangalore was already taken.
“I found that the handle was not very active. I kept on tweeting to the handle, asking them if we could work together. After a few days, the person who held the account, Sandeep Saini responded and we decided to run the account together. We had Tinu Cherian, a popular twitter personality and RJ Pallavi to curate for the first couple of weeks.”
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Jeroz says, “Our follower count went up immediately. Many of the hashtags the curators started, trended worldwide. We decided to bring Tinu and Pallavi onboard as administrators as well. We did not expect to be this popular when we started off. Having six admins on board makes it easy to manage the handle. We take all decisions together.”
Digital media professional Tinu contends, “The basic idea was to give a larger platform for a new voice every week. The curator is introduced to a wider audience, who may otherwise tweet only from their personal account which may have less influence and reach. Our curators are decided well in advance to ensure that there is no confusion and that the person handling the account is trustworthy.”
The account has had a range of diverse curators ranging from musician Raghu Dixit, Kargil war veteran Major D.P. Singh, stand-up comedians Praveen Kumar and Utsav, writer Jeena R. Papaadi , RJs Vinayak Joshi, SudeshBhat, Mayur, bloggers, fashion enthusiasts, foodies etc. apart from initiatives/organisations such as Citizen Matters and Bangalore Football Club.
The handle saw four cricket enthusiasts curating and providing live analysis during the India-Pakistan cricket match, while the union budget was analysed by four financial experts on the handle. Discussions range on most things related to Bangalore, with the awful traffic and awesome weather and food drawing most attention. Civic issues result in heated discussions and debates.
One of the curators, Laxmi Hariharan, author of The Many Lives Of Ruby Iyer , curated on the behalf of the character from her book says, “Ruby is the protagonist of my five-book series. She is an angry young girl, and doesn’t hesitate to say what is on her mind. When @wearebangalore approached me, Ruby said she wanted to curate instead as this was her first visit to Bengaluru. She found it a fascinating experience. There was a lot of discussion about the traffic in the city, how it has changed over the years, the call-centre economy, pubs to hangout, books people liked to read, music and movies too... But the discussion that was the most heated was around food. It led Ruby to conclude that Bengaluru is a place of food lovers – they especially love biryani. For a Mumbai teen like Ruby who normally lives on chai and fresh air, it was quite an eye-opener. She loved the experience and can’t wait to visit Bengaluru again.”