Modi, Sandberg talk Facebook governance
NEW DELHI: Weeks after an election victory that was marked by an aggressive social media campaign, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg on Thursday exchanged ideas on how to the world’s number one social network could be used for better governance and digital diplomacy.
With 100 million Indians already on the site — a number expected to multiply on the back of cheap Facebook-enabled smartphones — commuications and IT minister Ravi Shankar Prasad in a separate meeting asked Sandberg to add more Indian languages to the nine for which the social media site is enabled. After the meeting, Modi’s Facebook page had this status update: “Being an avid user of social media myself, I talked about ways through which a platform such as Facebook can be used for governance and better interaction between the people and governments. I also talked about how Facebook can be used to bring more tourists to India.”
Sandberg stressed that India is very important for her compa- ny, in view of the high number of active Facebook users in the country. “Digital diplomacy can change national and international dialogues, and that is why Modi plans to champion the free and open Internet on the world stage,” she wrote in her post. Sandberg met Prasad later in the afternoon. Prasad told her Facebook has an enormous potential to grow in India in areas such as education and healthcare. “We wish to work together. Facebook is there in India in nine languages and I have requested them to add more languages,” Prasad told reporters after the meeting.