The Fake Blessings of The Dalai Lama on Twitter

The web and later the print media got very excited with reports that His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama has jumped the social media bandwagon with an official twitter account. And if the news reports confirming that the account was in fact a fake you would realize the impact the news had, with almost all the major publications reporting the bit.

So what exactly happened?

Reports started coming in that the Dalai Lama’s office has setup a Twitter profile over the weekend. Most centered around the news that the Dalai Lama’s Twitter feed — twitter.com/ohhdl — was launched on Saturday. OHHDL stands for the Office of His Holiness the Dalai Lama. And “Welcome to the official Twitter page of His Holiness the Dalai Lama — administered by The Office of His Holiness the Dalai Lama,” was the first message by the team.

The news covered by a lot of high profile online publications and blogs, which perhaps pushed a lot active users to follow the account. In the two days that the account enjoyed the freedom of being considered real it got nearly 20,000 odd followers.

However, the Twitter guys perhaps out of the excitement of having a more customized profile rather than caution got in touch with the office of the Lama who in turn denied using the service. Yes, the account turned out to be fake. Acting swiftly and quickly (for what reason I don’t know) they deactivated the fake account, and the blogosphere went abuzz again crying hoax and fake everywhere.

Apparently the fake Lama is back claiming that he is fake and not part of the official setup of the office of Dalai Lama on the Twitter bio and still linking back to the official website of the Lama.

Why did both bit of news receive so many online content space and is that of any consequence?

Blogs, the flag bearers of social media need to promote their tribe and the growth of social media directly relates to their growth. Influential personalities joining social media helps them gather traditional buzz and help get on board newer breeds and flock on to the tribe, who in turn come back to these blogs to graze and debate. And hence, all kinds of press for anything that can go beyond the realms of debates will foster varied discussions and posts and debates. The more social medium talks the more other media talks about social media, and then social media talks about other media talking about the social medium. And the cycle continues thus. This post of course is one such as well.

The question is, given the response they got, will the real office of His Holiness the Dalai Lama consider joining Twitter?