Be it the loyal fandoms that are extremely active for south Indian actors, musicians and sportspersons, Twitter said the South had seen massive growth.
“Audio has resonated with southern audiences on the service,” said Cheryl-Ann Couto, head of partners (India). “Whether it is voice tweets from artists or Twitter Spaces — which has been the medium of choice for the southern entertainment industry to connect with their audiences since its launch last year.”
In fact, Couto said Twitter Spaces has been received well by southern Indian audiences, especially with the Tamil audience.
“Owing to the popularity that Twitter Spaces enjoy among Tamil audiences, a dedicated #TamilSpaces emoji was launched in August 2021 to encourage and surface conversations in the language,” she added.
Interestingly, Tamil happens to be the third most used language on the service and mentions of Kollywood (informal term for the Tamil film industry) have gone up by 14% in the last two years, the company said.
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Filmmakers like PA Ranjith and actors like Vikram and Suriya have all hosted massive Twitter Spaces conversations to connect and engage with their fans.
Even voice tweets have been extremely popular in the South, like for instance, Tamil superstar Rajinikanth’s voice tweets on the 15th year anniversary of his film Sivaji.
Twitter will continue to innovate its audio products to make the listening experience as seamless and hassle-free as possible.
“As part of our goal to make Twitter the home for audio, we recently launched an experiment that showcases an all-new and reimagined Spaces Tab, which integrates podcasts and gives people a more personalised listening experience via new audio hubs curated just for them,” the company said in a statement.
Further, the increased focus on the South is because southern Indian audiences are clued into what’s happening in sports, entertainment, music, poetry, food and the like and play an instrumental role in shaping culture, conversation and communities, all in real-time, it said.
“When it comes to Indian entertainment, southern Indian cinema has steadily grown and captured the zeitgeist over the last couple of years and nowhere is this more clear to see than on Twitter, which mirrors the public conversation,” Couto said.
Southern Indian entertainment on the service, especially Telugu, Tamil and Kannada, is a vibrant ecosystem with celebrities and fandoms interacting seamlessly with one another on the platform.
This also explains why Tamil actor Vijay’s tweet unveiling the first look of his film Beast was the most liked tweet in entertainment in 2021 or why Telugu actor Mahesh Babu’s tweet about resuming work for Sarkaru Vaari Paata was the most quoted tweet in entertainment in 2021.
