Twitter India announces testing of new Cricket tab as IPL 2022 fever rises in the country: All you need to know
Twitter India: Keeping in mind the passion Indians have when it comes to cricket, Twitter India has decided to test an India-only Cricket Tab on the Android app. The microblogging platform said that of the Twitter users in India, 75% identify as fans of cricket, with 58% of Indian Twitter users also playing the sport. Giving more perspective into this, Twitter said that between January 2021 and January 2022, Twitter saw 4.4 million Indians sharing a whopping 96.2 million tweets about the sport.
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Accordingly, Twitter has decided to test a Cricket Tab on the Explore page of the Twitter for Android app in India, and this week, the feature would be rolled out on an experimental basis to a few people in the country. The tab would act as a single point for catching up with and discovering all things cricket on Twitter, along with exclusive, relevant as well as Twitter-first content, the company said.
Twitter India Director of Product Shirish Andhare, in a statement, said that in India, cricket fan bases went beyond just the home stadiums of the teams, and therefore, Twitter has been a great tool for fans to catch up with the matches that they cannot be present at. Andhare said that with this new feature, the microblogging platform hopes to provide users with a one-stop solution for relevant and engaging content, including latest updates and scores, while also encouraging conversations among people.
Several formats would be available for people to access the content, like events page so that the most recent tweets and updates can be found at the top of the cricket tab on a dedicated page. Live scorecards would make it easier for users to track the match progress, and it would be available on both the events page and in the tab. Interactive team widgets would also be available in the tab so that fans can access content widgets like team rankings and top players, along with the latest scoop about their favourites. What’s more is that the social media platform would be tying up with creators and broadcast partners so that users can get customised video content around cricket.
Moreover, as IPL is underway, Twitter has also announced that fans would be able to cheer for their teams by using dedicated hashtags for their teams in English as well as seven other regional languages, including Bengali, Hindi, Marathi, Kannada, Punjabi, Telugu, Tamil and Gujarati. This would activate custom team emojis on the platform, Twitter said.