Internet.Org Summit kicked off in India this week in the presence of Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook and other influential leaders in the internet space. For a market of more than 1.25 billion people, India is one of the places that is expected to witness the explosive growth in the use of internet, and mobile data services.
The event saw Mark emphasizing the importance of content as the driver for higher usage of internet especially in a geography such as India where multiple languages are spoken yet online content in these languages is often very limited. The Internet.Org Summit highlighted how local content will drive not only penetration of internet, but will also enable communities to reach out to the rest of the world, acquire knowledge and skills and have access to better content and services.
Around the globe, content providers including application developers have played the critical role of igniting the internet culture including the use of mobile internet. Applications such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google Plus, as well as other online apps including gaming, video, music streaming and ecommerce apps pushed many users to access the internet on a daily basis to conduct daily transactions, keep in touch with their family and friends and find a wide array of infotainment content.
The Internet.Org is an initiative spearheaded by Facebook and other industry leaders including Ericsson, MediaTek, Nokia, Opera, Qualcomm and Samsung and is aimed at increasing the global use of internet. The Internet.Org Summit in India is one of the many programs run by the initiative which in recent months saw collaborations with mobile operators and the launch of the Internet.org application that allows free access to internet.
"Today, more than 80% percent of the content on the internet is in just 10 languages. So, for developing countries, especially in Asia and Africa, a lot of the people just aren’t well represented online, especially in their local language. In India, there are 22 official languages and 11 scripts, and there are hundreds of other unofficial languages. But, even though a lot of people speak these languages, there isn’t a lot of content online in these languages. Most of the services that people use are just available in English and a few other languages. But if we want to connect everyone in the world, then we really need to build services that reflect the languages in the way that people speak and communicate.”
- Mark Zuckerberg, CEO, Facebook
