Doha
Keeping pace with the rapid advancements in the IT sector, Gulf Times has re-launched its website and social media platforms that have become a huge hit with the audience.
The largest circulated and oldest English newspaper of Qatar today is Numero Uno among English dailies in the realm of social media too.
About 71,000 fans on Facebook and 12,000 followers on Twitter are indeed modest figures for a national daily, but the overwhelming surge within a few months has made us write this note of gratitude and appreciation for our ever supporting, loyal audience.
It was by the end of October last year that Gulf Times re-launched its social media pages.
And see how wholeheartedly the audience welcomed it:
It only took less than 150 days for the number of Facebook fans to go up from a mere 4,560 in late October to more than 70,700 at present.
The average daily reach of the posts rose from 3,000 in October to 200,000 in March this year.
And many posts reached more than 300,000 visitors in no time.
The leap in the number of Twitter followers too was something equally reassuring as the number of the followers jumped from 1,000 to 11,900 in the same period.
The Gulf Times online group has turned out to be a well-tuned and hyper sensitive musical string.
Just one brief post or a little tweet- and the response would always be spot on and quick.
And the response always reflected the overall feelings of the society-- be it the working conditions of labourers, the agony of motorists on overcrowded roads, the thrills of a sporting event.
They liked, shared, favourited, re-tweeted and commented.
And the comments were what we cherished most. See this one on road accidents, for instance: “Actually all peoples are hurry every time without any reason. We can waste many hours on shopping malls, beach, watching movies ,etc, but on roads we are not saving time by driving fast but we increase risk for us and others.” (Muhammad Younis Khan:Facebook).
As it happens always for groups, some faces in the crowd have become more familiar, with the passing of time.
Many comments, instant sharing, consistent re-tweeting... the social media team now knows by heart the names of many of our 'frequent commentators" or “frequent interactors" -- like Kevin King Fernandes , Mahin Kundara, Rashid M.U.M, Jaya RK, ajit kelachandra-AJ, Adam L. Hamsoon, Rachel Morris, Mannan khan and Eduardo.
And the GT team even misses them if some fail to appear for days on end!
The diversity of this online society was something almost enchanting. The fans and followers come from almost every country on the face of the earth.
They are from stunningly varied backgrounds , their professions too are widely different, they speak diverse languages. Yet, they do have their interest in something common. That is Qatar.
And that supersedes all the differences.
