The announcement took the social media circles by storm. Most people hailed the effort as timely and supportive towards the "Indian youth", but there were a few people who found it appalling. On the company's Facebook page, which got 800,000 likes within a span of an hour, a certain Ritu Roy commented "A Finnish company making something like this? C'mon guys is this what we have become?". However, within 3 minutes, her comment was bombarded with replies calling her a 'Kangressi', 'Congi' and 'educated illiterate' among other things. We tried to contact her but she has now deleted her Facebook profile.
We later got in touch with the company asking why they chose to release an add-on like this, targeted at Indian consumers when the company calls itself a Mobile Apps developer, Mr Juhani Katainen, CEO of Crowd Tech, replied "Start-ups have a tough time cutting into the market, you need investors, you need to build an image and for that you have to grab attention, we just can't waste our time having a conscience. We studied Google search trends for a while, we realised that the Indian audience was huuge. I mean Justin Beiber and Lady Gaga might have some following, but we needed some real numbers."
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| Click to enlarge: This development model is a success |
We decided to seek help of an ardent NaMo supporter who goes by his Internet alias "I hate sickiluars" , a techie in a reputed software company, to put to test this add-on which has since gained over 847k users, at the time of writing this article and has in a matter of hours climbed to the top of "Most popular" and "Top rated" sections of the Mozilla add-ons page.
"This is a work of art. It has so many features. It can detect any opinion article on any media and tt has such a huge list of abuses starting from ones like 'congi', 'sickular' etc to serious ones like 'Italian b**ch', 'Go back to f***istan you f***ing ISI spy' all vetted with asterix symbol to avoid profanity filters." says our friend with a twinkle in his eye. "It also seems to have a bit of AI as it suggests '1984' if the article contains '2002' anywhere, 'pappu' in reply to any comment that says 'feku', 'CoalGate/corruption/scam' etc if the article contains 'malnutrition'".
"I think the crowning feature is the auto-comment, where the user doesn't even have to be involved. It leaves a short and crisp 'Paid media' in the comment section of all articles. Sometimes, it leaves this comment on pro-modi articles also,but I'm sure its a bug that will they fix soon.". Crowd Tech did confirm that they are working on this as a priority.
When asked if he wished for any additional features he was very quick to point out a few "To begin with, it should be 'kangressi' and not 'congressi', the later sounds too polite IMHO. Secondly, it should allow multiple usernames because sometimes we have to leave contradicting comments, like blaming the west, saying they don't understand India, when they call NaMo communal or violent, but embracing articles where they support him by saying things like 'SEE SEE EVEN AMREEKA LIKES HIM'", but he sums up with "A lot of people are losing their jobs everyday because they are spending too many office hours searching and commenting on anti-Namo articles, Crowd Tech is doing a really noble job by reducing that time, saves a lot of jobs, I would like to see more add-ons like this".
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| "Vikas Purush" |
Meanwhile, a source from inside Crowd Tech tells us that they are making a mobile app that helps users to write open letters to Pappu, every time he opens his mouth. The last we heard, Chethan Bhagat was very keen on its development. Let's just say that Mr.Modi is 'Vikas Purush' indeed, inspiring such brave new (software) development and not just within India.
