WHAT IS SOCIAL MEDIA? This is an intentionally broad definition, as even the simplest online communities, when well executed, are inherently ‘social.’ Social media refers to the content itself: user-generated information, opinion, video, audio and multimedia that is shared and discussed over digital networks. This definition assumes that truly social services get more useful, relevant or valuable as the number of users grow beyond a small group. It also differentiates social media from primarily ‘one-to-one’ communications, such as basic mobile text messaging, and more than a suite of communication tools. The opportunity for asymmetric communication—’one-to-many’ vs.
‘one-to-one’—has already proven a potent vehicle for social and political revolution, for example. It also can provide an undeniably powerful means of producing, crowdsourcing, curating, re-packaging, and disseminating online content. Social media enable people to create, publish, share, collaborate, discuss and network through a wide range of new, mainly digital, formats and platforms. Different types of Social media: Blogs, Microblogs (Twitter), Conversational threads, Social Photos, Social Networking (Facebook, LinkedIn), Video Sharing (YouTube). Social media refers to the means of interactions among people in which they create, share, consume and exchange information and ideas in virtual communities and networks (Wikipedia, 2012) Kaplan and Haenlein (2010) define social media as “a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0 and that allow the “creation and exchange of user-generated content.” Social media are web based tools of electronic communication that allow users to personally interact with others individually or in groups for the purposes of exchanging, sharing thoughts and opinions, influencing and facilitating decision-making by creating, storing, retrieving and exchanging information in any form (text, pictures, video, etc.,) by anyone in the virtual world (Suchiradipta and Saravnan, 2016).
Social media are computer-mediated technologies that facilitate the creation and sharing of information, ideas, career interests and other forms of expression via., virtual communities and networks. The variety of stand-alone and built-in social media services currently available introduces challenges of definition; however, there are some common features: Social media are digital networks that are used to share and discuss user generated information – opinion, video, audio, and multimedia (Andres and Woodard, 2013). The term ‘social media’ is loosely applied to Web 2.0 tools that herald a more informal and personal approach to information-sharing with the potential to shift from a top-down and corporate-based communication process to a more individualized, participatory and democratic approach whereby the users is creator, consumer and repeat innovator of the web content (Ashley et al., 2009; Kietzmann et al., 2011) Social media is a type of online media that expedites conversation as opposed to traditional media, which delivers content but doesn’t allow readers/viewers/listeners to participate in the creation or development of the content. Social media is the internet-based software and interfaces that allow individuals to interact with one another, exchanging details about their lives such as biographical data, professional information, personal photos and up-to-the-minute thoughts. “Social media are works of user-created video, audio, text or multimedia that are published and shared in a social environment, such as a blog, wiki or video hosting site.” – Capilanou University.
Social media as “An umbrella term that defines the various activities that integrate technology, social interaction, and the construction of words and pictures.” – Anvil Media ” Social media as a Software tools that allow groups to generate content and engage in peer-to-peer conversations and exchange of content (examples are YouTube, Flickr, Facebook, MySpace etc).” – Bottle PR Social media refers to the internet-based digital tools for sharing and discussing information among people. It refers to the user generated information, opinion, video, audio, and multimedia that is shared and discussed over digital networks (Andres, D. and Woodard, J. 2013). A definition that focuses on the interpersonal networking dimensions (e.g.
Facebook) We define social network sites as web-based services that allow individuals to (1) Construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system (2) Articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection (3) View and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system. The nature and nomenclature of these connections may vary from site to site (Mayfield, A. 2008). Social media is the most recent form of digital communication and it is a great place to start conversation, connect with both the young and old generation alike, and get people excited. It has changed the topography of personal communication and taking on the world of professional communication as well. The advent of social media has revolutionized the way people communicate worldwide.
Aided by mobile phones, social media is spreading fast across the world. Accessing news through social media by using mobile devices is also gaining popularity. Social media is the recent addition to find news and information on fingertips of people who use ICT?s (Information and Communication Technologies) services. Social networking sites, Blogs, Socially integrated messaging platforms, Forums, discussion boards and groups are the different types of social media platforms.
Social media sites gained their popularity not only because they connected friends and family but the huge potential of communication was rapidly realized and it started finding its use in professional communication. It is difficult to classify these social media in a strict category as evolution of social media platforms depends on user?s preference and integration of new features makes them fit in more than one category at times (Italie, H. 2015). Social media constitute a new social operating system that is greater than the sum of its parts. Coupled with the decreasing cost of mobile and personal computing hardware, social media tools have helped to democratize the creation and dissemination of information. For the first time in human history, billions of individuals are now able to self-publish their own content.
To further extend Gibson’s distribution reference, as this mobile technology disburses, we may be entering a period of relative ‘evening out’. Regardless, huge differences remain in the way different populations experience the internet and the social media tools supported by it. Economic and social barriers have very real implications. Although much of the developing world is focused on obtaining the most basic mobile technologies, advances in social tools and platforms for modern smartphones routinely stretch our imaginations. Understanding those continuing technological gaps is critical to the success or failure of social media-based agricultural communication initiatives (Andres, D. and Woodard, J.
2013). WHY SOCIAL MEDIA? Social media has become a powerful tool that connects millions of people globally from the comfort of our homes, social media is revolutionizing the way business is carried out bringing new ways of communication and exchange of information across the globe. Social media is now a mainstream form of communication around the world, and continues to grow in popularity with the increase in the number of smartphones, and the ease of use. Social media is becoming a very important tool in farming because it has the ability to connect with farmers and agribusiness people from around the world over large geographical distances.
The benefits of this can be as large or as small as the farmers choose, depending on how much time we wish to spend on it. Social media plays a very important role in enhancing interactions and information flows among different actors involved in agricultural innovation and also enhance capacities of agricultural extension and advisory service providers. The power of social media is in the features that allow it to be applied to a whole range of applications that involve interactions between people. It also has removed the limitations of geographical distance from users, which enables a platform that shares knowledge and culture, and can play a part in the economic and political power, businesses and organisations direct access to consumers and their genuine thoughts, giving up to date and relevant information on trends and preferences (Chui, et al., 2012). Social media has become so popular because it taps into one of humans most basic natural needs – forming groups and sharing information, providing entertainment and communicating.
In a sense, it goes back to the days of storytelling, where everyone in a group has the opportunity to add to the story or share another point of view, except now you can do that globally (Gakuru et al., 2009). Social media technologies were available in the early 1990s. but weren’t popular because there were fewer platforms which limited use to early technology adopters. However, the increase of mobile computing social media platforms.
For example, Facebook began as a social media platform in 2004, Twitter in 2006, ResearchGate in 2008 and Instagram in 2010. Disruptive technologies are affecting many industries and have altered what is possible. It established technology and shakes up the industry, or a ground-breaking product that creates a completely new industry (Christensen, C.M. 1997). The revolutionary dimension of social media is its enhancement of communities and networks that underpin mass innovation as more ideas are being shared by more people (i.e.
as individuals but also as communities of interest and communities of practice, societies and nations) than ever before. Social media has an amazing growth within few decades. It has become part of everyday life for most people in the developed and developing countries. At present social media is the world?s largest communication network. It is the simplest and fastest way for sharing information such as file, photos, videos etc.
Social media is not only a tool for reaching large audiences; it is also an opportunity to develop relationships. The study shows that the young generation is highly involved in using social media also the old generation is interested to know how to access social media (Wenger et al., 2009). New media: Consists of a number of technologies that facilitate interactions among stakeholders using a variety of web- or mobile-based tools and technologies. Web 2.0 and social media? are umbrella terms that encompass the various activities that utilize digital technologies, social engagement, and content delivery. Such activities involve many technologies and communication methodologies including, but not limited to, blogs, photo and video sharing services, social networking, geospatial mapping tools, discussion forums, and wikis. These technologies may enable social tagging and bookmarking and mobile messaging.
Most technologies described as “new media” are digital, often having characteristics of being manipulated, networkable, dense, compressible, and interactive. Some examples may be the Internet, websites, computer multimedia, video games, CD-ROMS (Compact Disc Read Only Memory) and DVDs (Digital Video Device). Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia, is an example, combining Internet accessible digital text, images and video with web-links, creative participation of contributors, interactive feedback of users and formation of a participant community of editors and donors for the benefit of non-community readers. Facebook is an example of the social media model, in which most users are also participants (Andres and Woodard, 2013). The introduction of social media has changed communication more virtual than physical. Information and Communication Technology has an immense power in developing sectors.
Communication is becoming more and more dynamic each day. Platforms like Facebook and Twitter have 1.18 billion and 316 million active monthly users as of 2015. The use of social media is picking up in rural areas of developing and least developed countries as well. Moreover, it is clear that after a short period of time, social media will shape the way people interact, share information, form opinions and also lead individual and collective actions. Approximately 500 million tweets are sent every day.
YouTube is the second largest search engine and third most visited site on the web. The major activity on social media was searching for news and events and sharing information. A major impeding factor for social media use was the lack of authenticity of information shared online. Linked by social networks, online discussion forums, and content sharing sites, people are now readily and iteratively sharing information about their lives and experiences in complex ways using social media. Although this behavior has hardly bypassed agricultural development, most efforts have yet to fully capitalize on this new era for numerous reasons.
Increasingly these social tools supplement and intermingle with in-person communities built around family ties, geography, or solidarity networks. Not only do they facilitate interpersonal connections, they augment and in some cases, replace, the face-to-face human experiences of previous eras (Italie, H. 2015). With a smartphone in an unfamiliar city, Facebook’s mobile app can help us stay connected with our faraway relatives, while Google Maps provides turn-by-turn walking directions. A social music sharing service can suggest local sounds for our listening pleasure, while we browse a restaurant app to find a discounted lunch time meal. These tools would have almost certainly looked like science fiction a generation ago.
It highlights a larger point that often goes unrecognized in our narrow views of social media. Increasingly, our lives are being augmented by internet-based services, instead of conveniently sorted into ‘online’ and ‘offline’ experiences. The list of rapidly emerging and involving technologies that will ‘socialize’ everyday experience is too numerous to list here. As a global population, social media engagement is moving from an activity of the privileged few to a different phase in the technology cycle. By 2017, at least a third of the planet will be engaged regularly through social media. In places with a legacy of robust communications infrastructure, the body of research into online engagement and behavior is extensive.
But in places just coming online, there are very little reliable quantitative and qualitative data (We are social, 2017). The power of social media—for those who have access— is truly remarkable. Globally, nearly one in four people connect to social networks on a monthly basis. More than one billion accounts are registered on the single most popular social network, Facebook. These numbers continue to climb every quarter as populations in developing nations increasingly come online.
For agricultural development practitioners, social media tools can expand the reach of your community, strengthen partner relationships, support programmatic initiatives, and provide a vital means to increase the visibility of your public profile and engagement. The quote above from Gibson, noted science fiction author and the man who coined the term ‘cyberspace,’ is especially apropos because of its timing. In 2003, Skype and LinkedIn—two of the largest and most successful existing social services—were founded. Today, in the robustly eMarketer. “Social Networking Reaches Nearly One in Four Around the World.” (Blog post published: 28/06//2013).
Social media consists of a suite of dynamic online communication tools. The variety of tools available provides individuals a choice as to which tool to use depending on audience, purpose, or personal preference. These tools are easily accessible and often free of charge. They have become a source for news, events, market updates, and conversations. With the development of “apps,” these tools have become popular for use on mobile networks, enabling communication and dissemination and receipt of information almost anywhere.
Therefore, educators have a lot of flexibility to choose tools based on their audience, personal preference, and intended use. There exists a social media tool to accommodate everything from an in-depth description and explanation of a particular issue to the sharing of a photo or a shortened link to an online resource.The accessibility of social media tools and the ability to share across platforms creates an environment primed for quick and widespread distribution of posts. This results in a sort of snowball effect wherein one post can theoretically be spread worldwide and viewed by millions within minutes, if not seconds. For Extension, this is valuable because our work, events, and resources can be simply, easily, and quickly shared with audiences with whom we don’t have traditional connections (Sarah Cornelisse et al., 2011).
IMPORTANCE OF SOCIAL MEDIA IN AGRICULTURAL EXTENSION Is Is social media important to agricultural extension ? While many outsiders would never think to associate farmers, dairy farmers, animal keeper with Facebook and Twitter, they actually represent on a large group of active users on both of the social networking sites. According to some farmers and tech savvy scientists, social media is an indispensable communication tool for farmers to connect with each other and educate others about their industry. It is important that rural people should overcome these challenges by creating informed communities. By adapting and making use of ICT helps to improve agricultural progress and everyone benefits from the union of these sectors. ICTs have been used in Agriculture Advisory Services for facilitating communication among farmers and agriculture experts, stakeholders, and various applications. Social media gives an opportunity to connect and interact with one?s audience in agriculture, educate them and helps to know more about the industry.
It makes promotion of extension programs easier, allows real time interaction with clients, helps extend outreach to new audiences, and promotes development of relationship among actors in AIS (Agricultural Informaiton System) (Nelson, et.al., 2009). The organizations can create effective social media pages to share information, engaging farmers and stakeholders through conversations. Social media is a platform of engagement where agriculture is the content and for agricultural producers, the major reason for using these platforms is mass influence (Cornelisse, et.al., 2011). It gives farmers a voice and an opportunity to directly connect with their customers, which can help in direct marketing and increased profits alongside facilitating mass-personal communication (Varner, J. 2012). Farmers don?t need to depend on a single source for information anymore and with increased contact with peers, tried and tested information at the right time can prove to be a very important input.
To agriculture as an industry, the key values of communication that social media provides are peer to peer networking, farmer – industry networking, consumer engagement, and crisis communication (Carr, C. T., ; Hayes, R. A. 2015). Social media provides agribusinesses and agri-entrepreneurs the opportunity to connect with consumers and build relationships they ever had.
Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Whatsapp encourage high interaction among users benefiting everyone involved. Twitter has numerous accounts related to agriculture by global organizations, agriculture ministries of different countries, development organizations (profit and non-profit based), agribusinesses and farmers. These large numbers of likes for pages, members of groups, followers of accounts and subscribers of channels indicate the growing space of agriculture in social media and increased popularity of farming among the non-farming community as well. This provides a unique opportunity for extension to reach an increased number of audiences in lesser time and with reduced resources. A further probe about the followers?/?members of these groups shows the increasing number of users from developing countries too. A recent study shows there has been 100 per cent increase in the past year in rural social media users in India and many reported going online only to join social media (Kaggere, N.
2015). Farmers are becoming more and more innovative in using social media and photographs, selfies or farming selfies trending across social media platforms, Farmingselfie.com (http://farmingselfie.com/). These shows the increasing interest and number of users of social media platforms in agriculture from the grassroots but more important than that, it shows the increasing audience for agricultural information throughout the globe. The use of social media platforms is dependent on the users, region and economic status as internet enabled devices and data usage are still costly affairs for many, but with increased reach of internet and increased use of social media platforms, the opportunities for new agricultural applications are huge too.
Lack of skills and usage of extension services compared with traditional communication system social media is a new communication medium to connect people globally. Even though more and more young people are using them, the online presence of the older generation is still low, especially in rural areas of developing countries. In India, women and older men constitute 27 per cent of the social media users in urban India and in rural areas, the trend is lower (Valsamidis et al., 2013). Basic skills in using social media can be easily acquired by anyone with regular use of these tools. Proper physical infrastructure is needed for getting better access to social media and utilization of information in farm life.
Generic infrastructural issues in developing countries leave very little scope for rural community to practically implement them. Popularizing social media needs awareness and training for each farmer and stakeholder. Understanding the incentives of communicating through social media first hand can play a critical role in increasing its use. At present, an important force that is stopping more people at rural level from using social media are psychological barriers and concerns that arise due to lack of knowledge about how social media works. So proper trainings, workshops, and awareness programs should be given to the farmers, stakeholders, extensionists and other actors to make them understand and use social media better. Encourage this positive attitude and behavior towards social media at individual and institutional level (Carr, C.
T., ; Hayes, R. A. 2015). As an agricultural development community, we are still experimenting with services and feeling around in the dark for data. This is officially the experimentation phase and tries to responsibly extrapolate from the more connected areas of the world to draw broad conclusions for what may be coming next to the primarily rural places where agricultural livelihoods predominate in the developing world.
Globally, according to online research firm e-Marketer, total social media users are forecast to grow everywhere, but the most explosive growth over the next few years is expected to occur in the Asia-Pacific region (including China, India, and Indonesia), Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa. As users in these regions join in these technologies, rural agricultural users will likely to gain a new pathway to information and social connections (Arévalo, D. 2007). The way the world communicates now has changed dramatically, therefore, every industry has had to battle with how it now impacts their business. There are huge opportunities and risks to engaging in these new avenues of communication, all of which must be explored to adapt appropriately in the new world that we live in.
Word of mouth is now the marketer’s best friend with opportunities to connect directly to people who others trust. But it doesn’t stop here, if communication has changed this much in 20 years, what does the next 20 years hold for us? If we don’t adapt and change to the current environment, how will we cope in the future? What is the value of utilising social media in the agricultural industry? If there is value, where do we begin and how do we get started? Social media has a great potential to be used as a tool of communication and networking for benefits of farming community. Infact, many of them have recognized the fact and started using the same (Diekman et al., 2009). Traditionally, agricultural information exchange has been dominated by industrial media such as newspapers, television and magazines. In recent years, however, technology awareness, computer literacy and usage of smart phones and internet are increasing across all demographics in India. It is staggering to believe that in little as two short decades, the evolution of the Internet and social media has taken place right before our eyes.
It was only in 1991 that the World Wide Web became public, only around 17 years since Google was created and only a decade since facebook was invented. We now live in a world where wondering about the unknown is often followed by the phrase “Google it” and people feel as though they have lost their right arm if they don’t have their cell phone at the other end of it. Compared with agriculture sector in developing countries, agriculture is becoming increasingly knowledge intensive. As agriculture systems become more complex, farmers’ access to reliable, timely and relevant information sources becomes more critical to their competitiveness. Information must be relevant and meaningful to farmers, in addition to being packaged and delivered in a way preferred by them (Diekman et al., 2009).
Farmers constantly manage and adapt their farm businesses in order to remain competitive in a changing world. This is done by among other ways, fine tuning existing practices and technologies or by adopting innovations, such as novel products, technologies or practices. Where there are a number of alternatives, it is necessary for the farmer to choose which innovation or suite of innovations, will provide the most benefit and best meet the needs of the farm business. Complex decision undertaken by farmers requires the collection of a range of information from a number of sources that individual farmer have their favored information sources which they can access depending on the specific information being sought. Most people use the internet for personal communication through email, e-commerce and access to information.
The internet and the World Wide Web are a remarkable invention that allows access to an almost infinite storage of information. After initial skeptism some leaders of media industries proclaimed the internet to be the universal information highway and were bullish on its development. They imagined the benefits of interactivity as an unparalled platform for delivering their content (whether information, entertainment, opinion or advertising) almost effortless and without the costs associated with printing and broadcasting. The new media would be interactive, with instant feedback from consumers as well as a constantly updated treasure trove of information (Dennis & Merill, 2006). Communication for innovation in agriculture and rural development involves interactive and multi-stakeholder approaches that mobilize ideas and resources from the public and private sectors as well as civil society.
Digital tools broadly referred to as Web 2.0 technologies and in particular, social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Blogs and Webinars are allegedly channels of communication for innovation. These tools potentially offer support for collective learning processes and co-creation of knowledge. There is little evidence, however, to substantiate that new media are enabling innovation by and among stakeholders of agri-food and rural systems and diverse agri-food producers, rural entrepreneurs, scientists or researchers, community-level volunteers and public servants interacting more effectively in Web 2.0 environments (Heeks, Richard 2008). According to Ogungbameru (2004), when there is difference or gap between actual performance and what is needed or expected, productivity suffers. Training can reduce it if it does not completely eliminate this gap.
The training is to improve the means of disseminating information through the use of social media. The rate at which technology is increasing is overwhelming and social media as a part of technology improvement is growing day by day. Integrating social media into extension work for disseminating agricultural information to farmers will elicit easy access to innovations and invariably improve agricultural production. However, the use of social media is not yet maximized by professionals in Nigeria and as such makes it difficult for farmers to get necessary information to solve their problems. In the recent time, extension service, service providers and extension clients are experimenting with new digital opportunities that can be effectively used to exchange process, manage and communicate information to help rural farmers to effectively utilize any agricultural information received. Therefore, It suggests that competent and well-trained extension agents are needed if adoption of new technologies required to achieve Millennium Development Goals (MGDs) hope to be achieved in 2015.
Social media will provide quick and easy way to build relationships and interact with people in agriculture. Social media creates a much broader agriculture community, so obstacles like physical distance and isolation are issues of the past (Sanusi et al., 2010). One of the major roles of social media in extension is its ability to facilitate effective linkage between extension workers and farmers and also between farmers and research a study conducted on cyber Extension found that the web could be effectively used to facilitate extension work, appropriate forum for educational outreach and cost-effective means to reach extension agents, educators and opinion leaders who will transfer the knowledge gained to their clientele. While traditional ICTs were the weak ties for diffusion of innovation, modern day ICTs are bringing vast amount of informationto rural communities.
But among these, social media are unique because of the potential they provide for forming both strong and weak ties in communication. The society – the rural people, the field level extensionists, farmers – do not read journals; they read blogs, watch YouTube and use Facebook and Twitter and these are the mediums that reach them effectively. These platforms provide incentives to every actor to communicate online forming networks and initiating development (University Based Extension Based Project for Agricultural Research). Empowered by mobile technology, social media has a huge potential to revolutionise communication but its success depends, to a large extent, on the innovativeness and grassroot level organizations.
Mobilising actors in AIS to use social media needs to be addressed first and raising awareness is a big challenge. Moreover, without infrastructure, only information can do very little. Further research into actual impact of social media on rural development and then scaling up are needed at local and global level. Extension is not just about communicating but bringing behavioural change thus mere sharing posts and social media activism is not going to change much without practical actions. A multi-level approach and initiatives at institutional and individual level together is needed to make social media a reality in every sphere of agricultural extension and advisory services.Good Practice Note on Social Media for Rural advisory services, a ready reference for social media use in extension services targeted mainly for extensionists (Heeks, Richard, 2008).
Social media has become part of everyday life for most people in the developed world. But it has created a lifechanging experience for many people in rural areas who have come to use it. Agricultural organizations are using a range of social media and find it effective on farm management. Study on social media in agricultural extension helps to understand about the social media preferences and the interest of people using it. Social media is the fastest way to communicate worldwide. Facebook is the most preferred social media platform by a large majority followed by Whatsapp, Google Plus, Twitter, Blogs and YouTube.
Social media platform for agricultural extension is widely used by the people of developing and developed countries, also used by underdeveloped countries. The intensity of use of internet is different among developed and developing countries due to the availability of infrastructure and economic condition (Sanusi et al., 2010). A recent study about how farmers use media found that 42% of farmers who use Facebook and Twitter are using it every day. Farmers are making their presence on social media for sharing personal stories or using the sites as news sources online. YouTube is the most popular social media platform for agriculture professionals about 51% of farmers that use the site.
Farmers are more likely to be found on social media in the early morning hours or in the evening. Personal mobile phones were the most used device to access social media followed by personal laptop and personal computer. Globally, it is reported that an individual spends about 2.4 hours a day on social media. To facilitate innovation, communication and interaction among stakeholder organizations and institutions is important and social media have the potential to provide the platform in agricultural sector. Defective internet connection and unproductive use of time were considered as the major drawback in using social media. Internet connections are infrastructural issues should be looked into by the service providers and governments, personal constraints and privacy concerns can be easily taken care of with awareness creation and learning to better use social media through trainings and workshops, if needed (Zanello, G & Maassen, P.
2009). People are aware about the importance of social media in agricultural extension services. Social Media In India, almost has the world?s second largest Internet user base by December 2015, overtaking the US, according to a report, “Internet in India 2015? Report released by the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI). India will have 317 million internet accessed users by October 2016. One out of every six Indians accesses the internet through mobile phones. In Urban India, the mobile Internet user base grew by 65 per cent over last year to reach 197 million in October 2015 or else in Rural India, the mobile Internet user base is expected to reach 87 million by December 2015 and 109 million by June 2016.
Internet in India took more than a decade to move from 10 million to 100 million, and three years from 100 million to 200 million, it took only a year to move from 300 to 400 million users. It is clear that; today internet is the mainstream communication channel in India which helps start-ups, small businesses and digital India (ET tech, 2016). Social media tools are compatible with most smartphones, allowing producers to stay in touch wherever they are. Many agribusiness companies have Facebook pages to communicate with their clients. Also many organizations have developed websites and mobile application for agriculture extension.
Farmers use mobile based agro advisory services, with its reach among all the members in a farm family, sharing photos, videos and audios have also gained popularity among the farmers. The increasing number of apps for crop and weather information and alerts compatible with Apple, Android and Windows operating systems indicates the increasing use of high end smartphones among the farmers of developing countries and more importantly, their awareness about the utility of the devices in farming (Diekman et al., 2009). Social Media In Kerala According to TRAI (Telecom Regulation Authotity of India) the urban subscriber base as on March 31, 2015 stands at 73.69 million and the rural broadband internet subscriber base stands at 25.51 million. Kerala is the second highest number of broadband users in rural area at 2.52 million and 89.7% of people use Smartphone, thus the use of social media also increased. People live in the era of social media, for information sharing and opinion building across the world.
Dr. P Rajendran, Vice Chancellor, Kerala Agricultural University stated that a large number of educated youth are taking interest in conversations around agriculture on social media platforms such as WhatsApp and Facebook. The most important factor for using social media in agricultural extension is engaging the rural community continuously. Ease of use, continuous advisory support, sharing information etc. will engage people involving in social media. Also the frequency of use and comfort level on the platforms can increase the involvement of social media (Bhargava, Y.
2015). . TYPES OF SOCIAL MEDIA USED FOR TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER IN AGRICULTURAL EXTENSION FACEBOOK Facebook is an American for-profit corporation and an online social media and social networking service based in Menlo Park, California. The Facebook website was launched on February 4, 2004, by Mark Zuckerberg, along with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes. The founders had initially limited the website’s membership to Harvard students; however, later they expanded it to higher education institutions in the Boston area, the Ivy League schools, and Stanford University. Facebook gradually added support for students at various other universities and eventually to high school students as well.
Since 2006, anyone who claims to be at least 13 years old has been allowed to become a registered user of Facebook, though variations exist in the minimum age requirement, depending on applicable local laws. The Facebook name comes from the facebook directories often given to United States university students (Encyclopedia, 2007). Facebook may be accessed by a large range of desktops, laptops, tablet computers, and smartphones over the Internet and mobile networks. After registering to use the site, users can create a user profile indicating their name, occupation, schools attended and so on. Users can add other users as “friends”, exchange messages, post status updates and digital photos, share digital videos and links, use various software applications (“apps”), and receive notifications when others update their profiles or make posts.
Additionally, users may join common-interest user groups organized by workplace, school, hobbies or other topics, and categorize their friends into lists such as “People From Work” or “Close Friends”. In groups, editors can pin posts to top. Additionally, users can complaint about or block unpleasant people. Because of the large volume of data that users submit to the service, Facebook has come under scrutiny for its privacy policies. Facebook makes most of its revenue from advertisements which appear onscreen, marketing access for its customers to its users and offering highly selective advertising opportunities.( Chaba, A.A. 2015).
Facebook held its Initial Public Offering (IPO) in February 2012, and began selling stock to the public three months later, reaching an original peak market capitalization of $104 billion. On July 13, 2015, Facebook became the fastest company in the Standard ; Poor’s 500 Index to reach a market cap of $250 billion. Facebook has more than 2 billion monthly active users as of June 2017. As of April 2016, Facebook was the most popular social networking site in the world, based on the number of active user accounts.
Facebook classifies users from the ages of 13 to 18 as minors and therefore sets their profiles to share content with friends only. Facebook is the world’s most popular social networking website as it makes it easy to connect with family and friends and share pictures, websites and videos. It allows users to create a profile, add friends, send messages and join common interest groups (We are social, 2017). Simply put, Facebook is the most comprehensive social platform on the internet. With over one billion profiles globally, Facebook enables its exceptionally active user base to freely share information about their lives, particularly through pictures and video. Users access a wide array of functions, including phone, chat, payment, and login to meaningfully connect both through Facebook’s website and across the internet via plugins on other websites.
There is a large variety of ways to access the site, via desktop, tablet, smartphone, and increasingly mobile phone. Facebook offers a text only version called Facebook Zero and a Java-based app for feature phones called Facebook for Every Phone, which works on 3,000 phone models. Both of these are proving to be particularly popular in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, where these less data heavy versions can save precious phone credit (Ghoshal, S. 2012). Facebook is betting heavily on the future of its platform on mobile phones.
Once a desktop only experience, Facebook apps are increasingly replacing the website as the public’s favorite way of checking in. This is especially true in places without widespread desktop computing resources. The site also gives preferential exposure to different types of content. but this preference is fickle and often changes without warning.
The platform once favored video, but now seems to favor images (but not images of text or documents). Facebook is well known for making dramatic changes in site behavior overnight, making it a strategy on a project’s ability and willingness to be responsive. Facebook provides a number of useful features for community building. First, it is an extremely helpful tool for meeting new people, especially ‘friends of friends’ who may be interested in connecting by association. Communities can be grown via Pages, Events, and Groups. Though fluid, pages are typically used to showcase specific ‘brands,’ while the functionality of Groups better supports discussion and community.
Events are a useful and easy way to gain attention for your community happenings. Coupled with Facebook Ads, which can drill down into very specific demographic slivers and affinity groups within virtually any population, it is relatively simple to grow you audience on the site. But the question then becomes: How do you engage with those folks in meaningful ways and what will keep them engaged when you stop your ads spending? Many projects are finding it increasingly difficult (Wikipedia, 2012). FACEBOOK IN AGRICULTURAL EXTENSION Facebook can be part of Communication in Extension activities, program implementation, education and marketing. Facebook can help extension professionals develop connections between individuals and the community, enhance educational efforts, marketing programs. This allows professionals to build social networking capacity with their clientele online.
Facebook interactions can help in enlarging the network of supporters of local program goals. Educational efforts can be enhanced through the use of Facebook Groups and Pages. Groups can be created around specific topics and allow information sharing. The use of Facebook allows extension professionals to reach a larger and more diverse audience in a cost-effective way in a manner that is easily accessible and timely.
Facebook can be used to: farmers, and application of technologies. exhibitions, conferences, seminars, training programs and meetings related to agriculture, opportunities for farmers and consumer preferences, other groups, organisations pages and connect with agricultural officers, other farmers and groups. Agricultural Organisations and Professionals on Facebook Recognizing the potential of this tool, almost all major agricultural organisations and professionals across the world are sharing information on their activities on Facebook (Nalaka Kasunsiri, 2014). . Facebook is the most used social media platform in the world with more than 1.87 billion monthly active users on the site and this means an immense potential for extension professionals.
A few examples where Facebook is being used as an extension tool by individuals, professional networks and extension organizations. Staying current on the features and capabilities of Facebook is very important if you’re going to use it as a marketing tool for your agricultural business. Luckily there are quite a few resources that you can turn to for up-to-date information on changes and additions to Facebook. www.mashable.com is one such resource. Their staff of techies is right on top of the latest changes to Facebook as well as other social media, publishing short articles every day (We are social, 2017). SOME POPULAR FACEBOOK SITES FOR TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER IN AGRICULTURAL EXTENSION ?????? ?????? ?????????? ?????????? ?????? ?????????? Madhu Balan added 4 new photos.
24 April at 07:02 • See more 1. www.facebook.com/vivasayam karkalam Creating Awareness on Technologies on Facebook Shri Madhu Balan, an Agriculture Officer from Dharmapuri, Tamil Nadu, during his field visits, studied practical difficulties faced by farmers and decided to create awareness in 2012 to cater to the information needs of farmers. He shares information on different aspects of farming, from sourcing seeds to marketing, in the local language. Farmers also share their experiences and problems on the platform. The group is popular among farmers and students and has 16,000 members. Members exchange information on improved farm technologies, discuss with other farmers and extension personnel, share information and photos on best practices, government schemes, etc.
Content is mostly in Tamil. Shri Balan also shares information on progressive farmers with contact details so that users can contact them directly. Through Vivasayam Karkalam farmers also learn about the market requirement which helps them to plan the cultivation of crops. He posts the requirements of his Facebook friends and has created an interactive portal where marketing has also become a little easy for farmers. Under his guidance, millet growers in Dharmapuri have started a federation to market their items. Through the Vivasaya Karkalam pages, successful farmers have become popular and increased their business.
2. FAO (Food and Agriculture Organisation) United Nations: https://www.facebook. com/UNFAO/?ref=mf 3. ICRISAT (International Crop Research Institute for Semi-Arid Tropics) https://www.
facebook.com/ICRISAT 4. www.facebook.com/groups/ Livestock.TN (Tamil Nadu) This is a Facebook group created by Livestock Information and Market Centre and the members were livestock farmers, extension personnel, scientists, local leaders, market functionaries, and consumers in the state of Tamil Nadu to share information related to livestock production and management, marketing, etc.. The members of the group nearly doubled in 2 years (increased from 49,483 in December, 2014 to 93,955 in March 2017). It is a very unique example of how various stakeholders in livestock sector can work together, share important information, and influence change.
5. https://www.facebook.com/ mkulima.young/ This community page is an information sharing platform started by a young farmer to attract other youths towards agriculture and to communicate with each other. With above 102,824 followers in March, 2017 (39,082 in December, 2014), it mostly discusses about agro-advisory and market information. 6. https://www.facebook.com/agriGoI/ The Department of Agriculture, Cooperation and Farmers Welfare and Department of Animal Husbandry, Dairying and Fisheries, are created the Facebook. 7.
https://www.facebook.com/DOAHDF/ Sharing information on schemes and programs of Dept. of Animal Husbendary, Dairy and Fisheries (DOAHDF). 8. CGIAR (Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research) shares developments and research updates at https://www.facebook.com/CGIAR-270424969671619/.
9. https://www.facebook.com/National-Institute-of-Agricultural-Extension-Management-258224801187342/ MANAGE (National Institute of Agricultural Extension Management) has been regularly sharing information on training, programs and schemes. 10. https://www.facebook.com/groups/610069809167737/. Users on Facebook can create groups or Join a group of like minded professionals and share knowledge and connect with other groups and organisations.
MANAGE Agricultural Extension Network (MAEN) is a group on Facebook created to share training information, research updates, publications and enable sharing of extension innovations, best practices and facilitate development dialogue among MANAGE Faculty, extension professionals, farmers, researchers, agripreneurs, farm input suppliers and other agricultural development stakeholders. 11. https://www.facebook.com/groups/428431183848161/ AESA (Agricultural Extension in South Asia) is a portal on Agricultural extension in South Asia which facilitates sharing, learning and networking for building effective and efficient extension and advisory services. Its group page on Facebook, posts links to publications on extension and advisory services, announcements of workshops and conferences, major policy decisions on extension, reports of meetings and workshops, examples of good practices, cases, tools and frameworks relevant for extension personnel.
The group has around 18000 members. 12. https://www.facebook.com/groups/gfras/ The GFRAS (Global Forum for Rural Advisory Services) aims at enhancing the performance of advisory services so that they can better serve farm families and rural producers. Their group page provides space for advocacy and leadership on pluralistic, demand-driven rural advisory services. 13.https://www.facebook.com/Turmeric-Farmers-Association-Of-India-24263890989811/ Turmeric Farmers on Facebook: When turmeric prices dropped due to oversupply, it became a difficult situation for turmeric farmers in Sangli, Maharashtra.
Then, one of the local farmers created a group on Facebook about.overview to connect to other turmeric farmers. They discussed the situation and decided not to participate in the local auction. The news spread on social media and 25000 turmeric farmers of Sangli stayed away. A protest that would have earlier taken months to organize now occurred within 10 days.
When the farmers resumed selling their produce, the prices doubled from Rs 4 per kg to Rs 8 per kg. (Ghoshal, Sutanuka, 2012). BLOGS The term “weblog” was coined by Jorn Barger on 17 December 1997. The short form, “blog”, was coined by Peter Merholz, who jokingly broke the word weblog into the phrase we blog in the sidebar of his blog Peterme.com in April or May 1999. Shortly thereafter, Evan Williams at Pyra Labs used “blog” as both a noun and verb (“to blog”, meaning “to edit one’s weblog or to post to one’s weblog”) and devised the term “blogger” in connection with Pyra Labs’ Blogger product, leading to the popularization of the terms.
“Blog” is an abbreviated version of “weblog,” which is a term used to describe websites that maintain an ongoing chronicle of information. A blog features diary-type commentary and links to articles on other websites, usually presented as a list of entries in reverse chronological order. Blogs range from the personal to the political, and can focus on one narrow subject or a whole range of subjects. Many blogs focus on a particular topic, such as web design, home staging, sports, or mobile technology.
Some are more eclectic, presenting links to all types of other sites and others are more like personal journals, presenting the author’s daily life and thoughts (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog). A blog (or web log) is an easy-to-publish web page where contributors can post news, thoughts, regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or Features One can create Posts and upload or embed photographs, video. Entries in a blog are usually displayed in reverse-chronological order with the latest entry at the top. More authors can be added and the blog can be collaborative.
ings can make a blog public, private or select few for viewing. There may be different kinds of blogs like personal blogs where bloggers express their thoughts, ideas, reflections; project blogs where project team members can share frequent updates on a an event; thematic blogs for sharing thoughts, ideas on a thematic focus area. Blogs are an effective way for organisations and individuals to share stories from the field, opinions and experiences. How to use Blogs for Agriculture everyone, one can publish news to a blog other professionals. Regular blog posts can complement newsletter and website and sharing news on a blog would be faster than the time it takes for it to be published in a newsletter or a video and posting that in their blog with a short summary.
Different users have different access rights. There are some free blogging platforms, like Blogger (www.blogger.com), WordPress (www.wordpress.com). These allow one to create, edit, publish posts, photos, videos. Blogger uses Gmail account and allows an individual to create upto 100 blogs on an individual account. Creating a Blog on Blogger.com at http://www.blogger.com with a Google account or click button and register for a Google account of someone else and suggest alternatives address and choose a template before content, set whether the blog is open to the Public, Private or only select readers.
Creating a Blog on WordPress at https://wordpress com/ and click on the out the online form. Type the proposed web address for your blog. The service will look up if the name is available or will display available alternatives. One can choose one of those options or try a different domain name. link and then sign into WordPress with username and password on the theme and fill in the fields on the General Settings screen (Valsamidis et al., 2013).
They are mostly personal web logs but are increasingly being used by corporate houses to reach their clients. Media richness is high in blogs but not so much in vlogs. Blogging is one of the best Blogs allow you to keep your customers up-to-date on company news. They allow you to have conversations with your audience. They serve as platform elements for professionals looking to build exposure and gain a solid reader base. Blogs contain detailed information on specific topics.
They create and facilitate in-depth discussion on any issue through comments from the readers. With increased popularity, many blog competitions are also organized worldwide for rural youth to encourage them start a discussion about farming. Blogs are efficient platforms in agriculture for personally connecting with clients and peers and sharing stories, opinions, and experiences aided by interactivity with audience at an individual and organizational level. For research and extension organizations, they also provide the opportunity of opinion mining to understand farmers concerns, their problems and opinions, and evaluation of their attitudes towards agricultural aspects (Stanley, Sophie.
2013). There are many different types of blogs, differing not only in the type of content, but also in the way that content is delivered or written (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog). 1. Personal blogs The personal blog is an ongoing online diary or commentary written by an individual, rather than a corporation or organization. While the vast majority of personal blogs attract very few readers, other than the blogger’s immediate family and friends, a small number of personal blogs have become popular, to the point that they have attracted lucrative advertising sponsorship.
A tiny number of personal bloggers have become famous, both in the online community and in the real world. 2. Collaborative blogs or group blogs A type of weblog in which posts are written and published by more than one author. The majority of high-profile collaborative blogs are based around a single uniting theme, such as politics, technology or advocacy. In recent years, the blogosphere has seen the emergence and growing popularity of more collaborative efforts, often set up by already established bloggers wishing to pool time and resources, both to reduce the pressure of maintaining a popular website and to attract a larger readership. 3.
Microblogging Microblogging is the practice of posting small pieces of digital content—which could be text, pictures, links, short videos, or other media—on the Internet. Microblogging offers a portable communication mode that feels organic and spontaneous to many users. It has captured the public imagination, in part because the short posts are easy to read on the go or when waiting. Friends use it to keep in touch, business associates use it to coordinate meetings or share useful resources, and celebrities and politicians (or their publicists) microblog about concert dates, lectures, book releases, or tour schedules. A wide and growing range of add-on tools enables sophisticated updates and interaction with other applications. The resulting profusion of functionality is helping to define new possibilities for this type of communication.
Examples of these include Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr. 4. Corporate and organizational blogs A blog can be private, as in most cases, or it can be for business or not-for-profit organization or government purposes. Blogs used internally and only available to employees via an Intranet are called corporate blogs. Companies use internal corporate blogs enhance the communication, culture and employee engagement in a corporation. Internal corporate blogs can be used to communicate news about company policies or procedures, build employee sprits and improve morale.
Companies and other organizations also use external, publicly accessible blogs for marketing, branding, or public relations purposes. Some organizations have a blog authored by their executive; in practice, many of these executive blog posts are penned by a ghostwriter, who makes posts in the style of the credited author. Similar blogs for clubs and societies are called club blogs, group blogs, or by similar names; typical use is to inform members and other interested parties of club and member activities. 5.
Aggregated blogs Individuals or organization may aggregate selected feeds on specific topic, product or service and provide combined view for its readers. This allows readers to concentrate on reading instead of searching for quality on-topic content and managing subscriptions. Many such aggregation called planets from name of Planet (software) that perform such aggregation, hosting sites usually have planet subdomain in domain name (like http://planet.gnome.org/). 6.
By genre Some blogs focus on a particular subject, such as political blogs, journalism blogs, health blogs, travel blogs (also known as travelogs), gardening blogs, house blogs, book blogs, fashion blogs, beauty blogs, lifestyle blogs, party blogs, wedding blogs, photography blogs, project blogs, psychology blogs, sociology blogs, education blogs, niche blogs, classical music blogs, quizzing blogs, legal blogs (often referred to as a blawgs), or dreamlogs. How-to/Tutorial blogs are becoming increasing popular. Two common types of genre blogs are art blogs and music blogs. A blog featuring discussions especially about home and family is not uncommonly called a mom blog and one made popular is by Erica Diamond who created Womenonthefence.com, which is syndicated to over two million readers monthly. While not a legitimate type of blog, one used for the sole purpose of spamming is known as a splog. 7.
By media type A blog comprising videos is called a vlog, one comprising links is called a linklog, a site containing a portfolio of sketches is called a sketchblog or one comprising photos is called a photoblog. Blogs with shorter posts and mixed media types are called tumblelogs. Blogs that are written on typewriters and then scanned are called typecast or typecast blogs. A rare type of blog hosted on the Gopher Protocol is known as a phlog. 8.
By device A blog can also be defined by which type of device is used to compose it. A blog written by a mobile device like a mobile phone or PDA (Personal Digital Assitant) could be called a moblog. One early blog was Wearable Wireless Webcam, an online shared diary of a person’s personal life combining text, video and pictures transmitted live from a wearable computer and EyeTap device to a web site. This practice of semi-automated blogging with live video together with text was referred to as sousveillance.
Such journals have been used as evidence in legal matters. 9. Reverse blog A reverse blog is composed by its users rather than a single blogger. This system has the characteristics of a blog and the writing of several authors. These can be written by several contributing authors on a topic, or opened up for anyone to write.
There is typically some limit to the number of entries to keep it from operating like a web forum. SOME POPULAR BLOGS SITES FOR TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER IN AGRICULTURAL EXTENSION 1. https://www.digitalgreen.org/blogs/ Susan Thomas, Manager, Communications share this blogs. Mobile App makes farm to Market Linkages easy. The first time she sold her vegetable produce through Digital Green’s new. Under Loop farmers sell their produce through village level agricultural extension workers, who function as aggregators.
2. https://blogs.worldbank.org/ This is a very important source of information for any development practitioners with informative discussions on various issues in the domain of rural development. Archived since June, 2005, hundreds of blogs are submitted each month related to a diverse range of topics and having a wide readership all over the world. The bloggers themselves come from diverse sectors with varying range and level of experience and expertise, making them a rich resource for the development communities across the world. 3. https://blogs.worldbank.org/ Agri insurance/ This blog was functioned from 15 sept 2015.
It discussed about.the roles of the public sector and of the private sector on agricultural Insurance needs. Investing in public assets for agriculture insurance programs, making the products more affordable for farmers. The subsidy could be in the form of paying for agriculture data, as done in India. 4. https://extension.psu.edu/ This blog was initiated from Aug 8, 2017.
Blogs are meant to be more like a conversation with the reader, thus entries are usually more informal than press releases and other print media share information and stories about your business and products/services; share the farm experience; allow customers to get to know the business owner(s). 5. https://blog.gfar.net/. This Blogs started from May 3, 2016. It is discussing about the research and extension infrastructure for agricultural development in India. It also revealed the shortcomings of extension activities in India.
6. http://www.seametrics.com/blog Top farm-blogs initiated in Feb 23, 2015. This blog is a partnership between The Great Plains Center for Agricultural Health, University of Missouri, and Farm Safety for Just Kids and aims to provide farmers with a platform for sharing their opinions on farm safety and health. The blog offers information, tips and stories to get the conversation started.
7. http://blogs.cornell.edu/ This blog started from Jul 1, 2011. It highlights the Governments, NGOs, (Non Governemnt Organizations) aid agencies and extension workers have long known that the success of any project depends, in part, on whether farmers adopt the offered technologies and if they do, whether those farmers adopt the technologies in an ideal combination and for the proscribed length of time needed. 8. http://blogs.worldwatch.org/ This blogs started its function from Feb 18, 2012 .
This blogs discussed about the government’s agricultural extension service and TOT (Transfer Of Technology) services to the farmers in Uganda. It also highlights the lacuna in the functioning of Dpt.and shortage of staffs. 9. AESA blogs This blog explores the possibilities of social media in agricultural extension with examples from around the world about how it is currently being used.
Available at http:// www.aesa-gfras.net/Resources/ file/Saravanan%20Final%20 blog%2042.pdf. A network of agricultural extension professionals, the AESA blogs (http://www.aesagfras. net/blogs.php) regularly encourages rich discussion among the professionals about extension methodologies, farmers’ plight, to increased attention to extension education at the college level for overall development of professionals. This blogs provide a very well depicted insight to the different issues pertaining to agricultural extension in South Asian countries. 10.
TNAU Blog (http://agritech.tnau.ac.in/ blogs.html): A unique blog was initiative by the TNAU (Tamil Nadu Agricultural University), the blogs in TNAU Agritech portal are one of the earliest examples of social media use and impact on farming community. This blogs are by farmers mostly, but contributions from extension professionals are also there. A varied range of issues are covered in the blogs pertaining to agricultural situation in Tamil Nadu and are available in both English and Tamil language. 11. http://blog.helvetas.org/ In this blog post, presented the work of the Local Agri-business Network (LAN) project in Bangladesh that facilitated the improvement of public extension services for farmers, in particulary smallholder and poor farmers, through establishing better access to information and improved technologies, as well as to quality input and output markets. 12.
http://www.e-agriculture.org/blog/ In this Blog e-agriculture activities carried out in the Afganisthan farmers and also discussed about the price of agricultural inputs and produces in the market in daily forcast. 13. http://www.ifpri.org/blogs The IFPRI (International Food Policy Research institute) has a number of blogs at related to various projects and current developments. 14. http://www.iied.org/blogs The IIED (International Institute for Environment and Development) blogs on a range of topics related to their work. TWITTER Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams and launched in July of that year.
The service rapidly gained worldwide popularity. In 2012, more than 100 million users posted 340 million tweets a day and the service handled an average of 1.6 billion search queries per day. In 2013, it was one of the ten most-visited websites and has been described as “the SMS (Short Message Service) of the Internet”. As of 2016, Twitter had more than 319 million monthly active users. On the day of the 2016 U.S.
presidential election, Twitter proved to be the largest source of breaking news, with 40 million election-related tweets sent by 10 p.m. (Eastern Time) that day. Twitter (/?tw?ter/) is an online news and social networking service where users post and interact with messages, called “tweets.” These messages were originally restricted to 140 characters, but on November 7, 2017, the limit was doubled to 280 characters for all languages except Japanese, Korean and Chinese. Registered users can post tweets, but those who are unregistered can only read them. Users access Twitter through its website interface, SMS or mobile device application software (“app”). Twitter, Inc.
is based in San Francisco, California, United States and has more than 25 offices around the world. Similar to blogs that allow users to create and share content. Media richness is high as in blogs. Use of hashtags (#) for highlighting content, mostly used in micro blogs helps in indexing of content and makes them easily searchable by other users. Microblogging site Twitter is one of the most popular social media platform globally. On a social context, it has been one of the major catalysts used for creating public opinions and for organizing people into groups. In agriculture too, it is one of the most used platform (Seetherman, Deepa, 2016). Twitter http://www.twitter.com is a microblogging platform. It is a web and mobile phone based short messaging system that allows users to send and receive short text messages (Tweets) in 140 characters (including spaces and punctuation). Twitter is being used for social reporting. A group of participants at an event can interactively and jointly report through tweets, in text, photos, images or video. Microblogging of events To set up an account, one can go to www.twitter.com and sign up, giving basic details, choose a user name and start following organisations and people you want to get updates from features. The Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare, Govt of India. – post searching, which brings together tweets on a particular topic who follows you and vice versa. want others to see the messages included in a tweet. There are also URL (Uniform Resource Locator) shortening programs (bit.ly, tinyURL) which shorten the URL so that it can be included within the message. At the beginning of 2013, it was widely reported that Twitter was the fastest growing social network in the world and is available in 25 languages, including right to left languages like Arabic, Urdu, Farsi, and Hebrew. The service enables users to send short 140-character messages (“tweets”) to each other along with linked and images. Twitter was created in March 2006, and today it claims to have 500 million registered users, with some 288 million active users, generating over 400 million tweets daily. Roughly a quarter of those messages are re-tweets, where one user shares another’s message with their own followers. This is a unique feature set of Twitter the ease with which favorite content can spread virally outside the immediate circle of ones’ followers. Tweets are generally public, with non-registrants being able to read them on the web-based platform, unless user private preferences ‘lock down’ an account for approved followers only. Twitter is the go to place for breaking news (and unconfirmed rumors) around the world, accessible by searching specific event or topic-specific hashtags, which ‘trend’ as they grow in popularity. In the agriculture and development communities, Twitter has taken on a special role as a ‘town square’ of sorts; where connected users need not be bi-directional ‘friends,’ but can instead opt to ‘follow’ each other in a one-way fashion (Andres, D. and Woodard, J. 2013). SOME POPULAR TWITTER SITES FOR TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER IN AGRICULTURAL EXTENSION 1. https://twitter.com/agrigoi It is the official Twitter Handled by the Department of Agriculture, Cooperation & Farmers Welfare, Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare, Government of India. The department is sharing news and updates about schemes and programs on this platform. 2. https://twitter.com/e_agriculture E-Agriculture is a global community of practice, where people from all over the world exchange information, ideas and resources related to the use of ICT for sustainable agriculture and rural development. The twitter is used to share information in real time to the 38,900 followers as of March 2017 and catalyst for institutions and individuals in agriculture and rural development to share knowledge, learn from others and improve decision making about the vital role of ICTs to empower rural communities, improve rural livelihoods and build sustainable agriculture and food security. 3. https://twitter.com/YPARD YPARD (Young Professionals for Agricultural and Rural Development) is an international movement. It is a global network of professionals connected through online platforms encouraging young professionals to have a stronger voice and contribute to agricultural development individually and collectively across the world. The twitter handle provides a very active platform for the members to connect and share information and experiences. 4. https://twitter.com/agchat It was started in 2009 by a group of American farmers is used in USA, UK, Australia, New Zealand and Ireland for facilitating discussions of industry issues between farmers and agribusinesses. AgChat Foundation is a community of volunteers with collaborative mission of connecting consumers and producers to help initiate a better understanding of the farming process and the farmers’ condition. The foundation thus helps farmers gain a better outlook of consumers’ choices and cater to the market needs more efficiently. The twitter handle is an extension of the same work in social media to engage producers and consumers. Weekly chat sessions are held on different topics related to farm and food. AgChat has given the farmers a voice and a platform to share their stories in their own words. 5. https://twitter.com/ingenaes?lang=en The latest Tweets from INGENAES (Integrating Gender and Nutrition within Agricultural Extension Services) (@INGENAES) to empower women and engage men in improving livelihoods in USA. 6. https://twitter.com/icarindia It is the twitter handle by the ICAR (Indian Council of Agricultural Research), Ministry of Agriculture, Govt. of India. 7. https://twitter.com/infogfras GFRAS provides information related to advocacy and leadership on pluralistic, demand-driven rural advisory services on Twitter for extensionists, development practitioners, researchers, policy makers. 8. https://twitter.com/USDA U.S. Department of Agriculture shares latest news, events, videos and information in agriculture with farmers, extensionists, development practitioners through this Twitter. WIKIPEDIA Wikipedia was launched on January 15, 2001, as a single English-language edition at www.wikipedia.com and announced by Sanger on the Nupedia mailing list. Wikipedia’s policy of “neutral point-of-view” was codified in its first months. Otherwise, there were relatively few rules initially and Wikipedia operated independently of Nupedia. Originally, Bomis intended to make Wikipedia a business for profit. Wikipedia gained early contributors from Nupedia, Slashdot postings and web search engine indexing. By August 8, 2001, Wikipedia had over 8,000 articles. On September 25, 2001, Wikipedia had over 13,000 articles. By the end of 2001, it had grown to approximately 20,000 articles and 18 language editions. It had reached 26 language editions by late 2002, 46 by the end of 2003, and 161 by the final days of 2004. Nupedia and Wikipedia coexisted until the former’s servers were taken down permanently in 2003, and its text was incorporated into Wikipedia. The English Wikipedia passed the mark of two million articles on September 9, 2007, making it the largest encyclopedia ever assembled, surpassing even the 1408 Yongle Encyclopedia, which had held the record for almost 600 years. Citing fears of commercial advertising and lack of control in Wikipedia, users of the Spanish Wikipedia forked from Wikipedia to create the Encyclopedia Libre in February 2002. These moves encouraged Wales to announce that Wikipedia would not display advertisements and to change Wikipedia’s domain from wikipedia.com to wikipedia.org. Though the English Wikipedia reached three million articles in August 2009, the growth of the edition, in terms of the numbers of articles and of contributors, appears to have peaked around early 2007. Around 1,800 articles were added daily to the encyclopedia in 2006; by 2013 that average was roughly 800 (Wikipedia, 2014). Play media A promotional video of the Wikimedia Foundation that encourages viewers to edit Wikipedia, mostly reviewing 2014 via Wikipedia content. Milestones In January 2007, Wikipedia entered for the first time the top-ten list of the most popular websites in the U.S., according to comScore Networks. With 42.9 million unique visitors, Wikipedia was ranked number 9, surpassing The New York Times (#10) and Apple (#11). This marked a significant increase over January 2006, when the rank was number 33, with Wikipedia receiving around 18.3 million unique visitors. As of March 2015, Wikipedia has rank 5 among websites in terms of popularity according to Alexa Internet. In 2014, it received 8 billion page views every month. On February 9, 2014, The New York Times reported that Wikipedia has 18 billion page views and nearly 500 million unique visitors a month, “according to the ratings firm comScore.” On January 18, 2012, the English Wikipedia participated in a series of coordinated protests against two proposed laws in the United States Congress—the SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and the PROTECT IP (Intelectual Property) Act (PIPA)—by blacking out its pages for 24 hours. More than 162 million people viewed the blackout explanation page that temporarily replaced Wikipedia content. Loveland and Reagle argue that, in process, Wikipedia follows a long tradition of historical encyclopedias that accumulated improvements piecemeal through “stigmergic accumulation”.On January 20, 2014, Subodh Varma reporting for The Economic Times indicated that not only had Wikipedia’s growth flattened but that it has “lost nearly 10 per cent of its page-views last year. That’s a decline of about 2 billion between December 2012 and December 2013. Its most popular versions are leading the slide: page-views of the English Wikipedia declined by 12 per cent, those of German version slid by 17 per cent and the Japanese version lost 9 per cent.” Varma added that, “While Wikipedia’s managers think that this could be due to errors in counting, other experts feel that Google’s Knowledge Graphs project launched last year may be gobbling up Wikipedia users.” When contacted on this matter, Clay Shirky, associate professor at New York University and fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Security indicated that he suspected much of the page view decline was due to Knowledge Graphs, stating, “If you can get your question answered from the search page, you don’t need to click (Wikipedia, 2014). By the end of December 2016, Wikipedia was ranked fifth in the most popular websites globally.Editors in good standing in the community can run for one of many levels of volunteer stewardship: this begins with “administrator” privileged users who can delete pages, prevent articles from being changed in case of vandalism or editorial disputes, and try to prevent certain persons from editing. Despite the name, administrators are not supposed to enjoy any special privilege in decision-making; instead, their powers are mostly limited to making edits that have project-wide effects and thus are disallowed to ordinary editors, and to implement restrictions intended to prevent certain persons from making disruptive edits (such as vandalism). Fewer editors become administrators than in years past, in part because the process of vetting potential Wikipedia administrators has become more rigorous. Wikipedians often have disputes regarding content, which may result in repeatedly making opposite changes to an article, known as edit warring. Over time, Wikipedia has developed a semi-formal dispute resolution process to assist in such circumstances. In order to determine community consensus, editors can raise issues at appropriate community forums or seek outside input through third opinion requests or by initiating a more general community discussion known as a request for comment. Wikipedia is a free, open content online encyclopedia created through the collaborative effort of a community of users known as Wikipedians. Anyone registered on the site can create an article for publication; registration is not required to edit articles. The site’s name comes from wiki, a server program that enables anyone to edit Web site content through their Web browser. Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger co-founded Wikipedia as an offshoot of an earlier encyclopedia project, Nupedia, in January 2001. Originally, Wikipedia was created to provide content for Nupedia. However, as the wiki site became established it soon grew beyond the scope of the earlier project. As of January 2015, the website provided well over five million articles in English and more than that number in all other languages combined. At that same time, Alexa ranked Wikipedia as the seventh-most popular site on the Internet. Wikipedia was the only non-commercial site of the top ten. Criticisms of Wikipedia include assertions that its openness makes it unreliable and unauthorative. Because articles don’t include bylines, authors aren’t publicly accountable for what they write. Similarly, because anyone can edit any article, the site’s entries are vulnerable to unscrupulous edits. In August 2007, Virgil Griffiths created a site, WikiScanner, where users could track the sources of edits to Wikipedia entries. Griffiths reported that self-serving edits typically involved whitewashing or removal of criticism of a person or organization or, conversely, insertion of negative comments into the entry about a competitor (Wikipedia, 2017). Wikipedia depends upon the vigilance of editors to find and reverse such changes to content. In addition to the encyclopedia, the non-profit Wikipedia foundation oversees several other open-content projects, including: 1. Wiktionary, a dictionary and thesaurus 2. Wikibooks, a collection of free texts and other books 3. Wikiquote, a collection of quotations 4. Wikisource, a collection of free source documents 5. Wikiversity, a collection of free learning materials 6. Wikispecies, a directory of species 7. Meta-Wiki, which coordinates all the other projects. (https://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/Wikipedia) SOME POPULAR WIKIPEDIA SITES FOR TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER IN AGRICULTURAL EXTENSION 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participatory_technology_development This wikipedia deals with PTD (Participatory Technology Development) is an approach to learning and innovation that is used in international development as part of projects and programmes relating to sustainable agriculture. The approach involves collaboration between researchers and farmers in the analysis of agricultural problems and testing. 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_extension This wikipedia deals with Extension terminology, definitions of extension, history of extension. Agricultural extension is the application of scientific research and new knowledge to agricultural practices through farmer education. The field of ‘extension’ now encompasses a wider range of communication and learning activities organized for rural people by educators from different disciplines, including agriculture and agricultural extesnion. 3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_and_communications_technology_in_agri This wikipedia deals with Information and communication technology in agriculture, also known as e-agriculture, is developing and applying innovative ways to use ICTs in the rural domain, with a primary focus on agriculture. ICT in agriculture offers a wide range of solutions to some agricultural challenges. 4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_education This wikipedia deals with The Cooperative Extension System. It is a partnership of the federal, state, and county governments. This service distributes information gathered by the land-grant universities and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to farmers, families, and young people. County extension agents, located in most countries. 5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_communication This wikipedia deals with Agricultural communication. It is a field that focuses on communication about agriculture-related information among agricultural stakeholders and between agricultural and non-agricultural stakeholders. Agriculture is broadly defined in this discipline to include not only farming, but also food. 6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Institute_of_Agricultural_Extension_Mgt This wikipedia deals with MANAGE, formerly National Centre for Management of Agricultural Extension at Hyderabad, is an autonomous agricultural education institute located in Hyderabad, Telangana, India. The aim of the institute is to instill managerial and technical skills to agricultural extension professionals. 7. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture_in_India This wikipedia deals with Agriculture in India. The economic contribution of agriculture to India’s GDP (Gross Domestic Product) is steadily declining with the country’s broad-based economic growth. Still, agriculture is demographically the broadest economic sector and plays a significant role in the overall socio-economic fabric of India. India exported $38 billion worth of agricultural products. 8. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture This wikipedia deals with Agriculture. It is the cultivation and breeding of animals, plants and fungi for food, fiber, bio-fuel, medicinal plants and other products used to sustain and enhance human life. Agriculture was the key development in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses. 9. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_productivity This wikipedia deals with agricultural productivity – An increase in a region’s agricultural productivity implies a more efficient distribution of scarce resources. As farmers adopt new techniques and differences, the more productive farmers benefit from an increase in their welfare while farmers. 10. https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farming This wikipedia deals with Farming. It is growing crops or keeping animals by people for food and raw materials. Farming is a part of agriculture. Agriculture started thousands of years ago, but no one knows for sure how old it is. The development of farming gave rise to the Neolithic Revolution whereby people gave up nomadic hunting. 11. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_agriculture This wikipedia deals with Urban agriculture. Urban farming, or urban gardening is the practice of cultivating, processing, and distributing food in or around a village, town, or city. Urban agriculture can also involve animal husbandry, aquaculture, agroforestry, urban beekeeping, and horticulture. These activities occur in peri-urban areas. 12. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farming_systems_in_India This wikipedia deals with farming system in India. Currently the country holds the second position in agricultural production in the world. In 2007, agriculture and other industries made up more than 16% of India’s GDP. Despite the steady decline in agriculture’s contribution to the country’s GDP, agriculture is the biggest industry in the country and plays a key role in the development of nation. 13. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_education This wikipedia deals with Agricultural education. Students will be taught the information in the curriculum in order for them to understand and develop skills in the application and problem solving issues that would occur in an agricultural setting. Another requirement for agricultural education at the high school level is the Young Farmers association group. 14. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ministry_of_Agriculture_Farmers_Welfare This wikipedia deals with the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare (formerly Ministry of Agriculture). This is a branch of the Government of India, is the apex body for formulation and administration of the rules and regulations and laws related to agriculture in India. The three broad areas of scope for the Ministry are agriculture, food processing and storage. 15. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_agriculture_in_India This wikipedia deals with women in agriculture. Jump to Women farmers and the environment. Just one season of such weather patterns can be devastating to the livelihood of farmers, who can find no resilience in small farms. The ceremonies celebrate the role of women in agriculture and fertility and importance of environment and biodiversity. 16. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-agriculture This wikipedia deals with E-agriculture. In contrast, less than a third highlighted the importance of technical hardware and technological tools. E-agriculture, therefore, describes an emerging field focused on the enhancement of agricultural and rural development through improved information and communication processes. 17. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_marketing This wikipedia deals with Agricultural marketing. It is inferred to cover the services involved in moving an agricultural product from the farm to the consumer. It is also the planning, organizing, directing and handling of agricultural produce in such a way as to satisfy the farmer, producer and the consumer. Numerous interconnected activities are involved. 18. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_farming This wikipedia deals with Organic farming. It is an alternative agricultural system which originated early in the 20th century in reaction to rapidly changing farming practices. Organic farming continues to be developed by various organic agriculture organizations today. It relies on fertilizers of organic origin such as compost manure, green manure etc. 19. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_roles_in_agriculture This wikipedia deals with Gender roles in agriculture. These are a frequent subject of study by sociologists and farm economists. Historians also study them, as they are important in understanding the social structure of agrarian and even industrial societies. 20. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_agriculture This wikipedia deals with history of agriculture. Sumerian farmers grew the cereals barley and wheat, starting to live in villages from about 8,000 BC. Given the low rainfall of the region, agriculture relied on the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Irrigation canals leading from the rivers permitted the growth of cereals in large enough quantities to support cities. 21. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contract_farming This wikipedia deals with Contract farming. It involves agricultural production being carried out on the basis of an agreement between the buyer and farm producers. Sometimes it involves the buyer specifying the quality required and the price, with the farmer agreeing to deliver at a future date. 22. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture_in_Kenya This wikipedia deals with agriculture in Kenya. Jump to Greenhouse Farming in Kenya. Kenya has a high birth rate which has led to a reduction in available farming land. Kenya also has a high rate of urban migration from the country. These two factors have led to an upsurge in demand for fresh food products. 23. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture_in_the_United_Kingdom This wikipedia deals with Agriculture in the United Kingdom. UK uses 69% of the country’s land area, employs 1.5% of its workforce (476,000 people) and contributes 0.62% of its gross value added (£9.9 billion) in agriculture. The UK produces less than 60% of the food it eats. Although agricultural activity occurs in most rural locations, it is concentrated in East Anglia. 24. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_farming This wikipedia deals with Integrated Farming. New European agriculture organic standard or integrated production is a whole organic farm management system which aims to deliver more sustainable agriculture. It is a dynamic approach which can be applied to any farming system around the world. 25. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precision_agriculture This wikipedia deals with Precision agriculture, satellite farming or Site Specific Crop Management (SSCM) is a farming management concept based on observing, measuring and responding to inter and intra-field variability in crops. The goal of precision agriculture research is to define a Decision Support System (DSS) for whole farm. 26. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_and_communications_technology_in_agri This wikipedia deals with ICT in agriculture. E–agriculture is one of the action lines identified in the declaration and plan of action of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). The “Tunis Agenda for the Information Society,” published on 18 November 2005 and emphasizes the leading facilitating roles that UN agencies need to play in the implementation. 27. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsistence_agriculture This wikipedia deals with Subsistence agriculture. Jump to Intensive subsistence farming. In Intensive subsistence agriculture, the farmer cultivates a small plot of land using simple tools and more labour.. Climate were large number of days with sunshine and fertile soils permits growing of more than one crop annually on the same plot. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture_in_the_Empire_of_Japan This wikipedia deals with agriculture in the empire of Japan. In the early Meiji period, landowners collected a high rate of rent in kind, rather than cash and consequently played a major role in the development of agriculture, since the tenant farmers found it difficult to obtain capital. Gradually, with the development of cash crops to supplement the mainstay of rice and the growth of agriculture. 28. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farmer_Research_Committee This wikipedia deals with farmers research committee. Jump to Function, Farmer Research Committees are an approach to community organizing and agricultural extension that provides rural communities and farmer organizations in developing countries with an adaptive research and technology testing service run by volunteer farmers. 29. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cash_crop This wikipedia deals with cash crop. A cash crop is an agricultural crop which is grown for sale to return a profit. It is typically purchased by parties separate from a farm. The term is used to differentiate marketed crops from subsistence crops, which are those fed to the producer’s own livestock or grown as food for the producer’s family. 30. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture_in_Thailand This wikipedia deals with Agriculture in Thailand. It is highly competitive, diversified and specialised and its exports are very successful internationally. Rice is the country’s most important crop, with some 60 percent of Thailand’s 13 million farmers growing it on fully half of Thailand’s cultivated land. Thailand is a major exporter in the world rice market. Agropedia was developed by the University of Kentucky’s College of Agriculture, Agropedia contains general agricultural information organized in different sections. The Class Material section contains curricula, outlines, facts and subject-relevant links to courses such as biotechnology, forestry, and agriculture. Agromania offers a photo reservoir pertaining to dairy judging, breeds of livestock, feed identification, and more. Other sections include links, a search directory, a glossary and a subject index with multimedia options. Agropedia is now deployed as SaaS model (Software as a Service) which means it can be used to rapidly build agriculture portals for communities such as Universities, Crops, Sectors, Institutions,. etc. Some of them are icrisat.agropedia.in, uasr.agropedia.in, iitk.agropedia.in and the unified portal for all of these is at www. agropedia.in. Agropedia is a comprehensive, seamlessly integrated model of digital content organization in the agricultural domain. It aims to bring together a community of practice through an ICT mediated knowledge creating and organising platform with an effort to leverage the existing agricultural extension system. Agropedia is an online knowledge repository for information related to agriculture in India. It includes universal meta models and localized content for a variety of users with appropriate interfaces built in collaborative mode in multiple languages. This national portal, designed as an “agricultural Wikipedia” hosts wide range of agricultural information on a variety of crops, with an aim to empower farmers with crop information (http://agropedia.iitk.ac.in). Agropedia is an open-ended knowledge sharing platform. It is an online agricultural knowledge repository that makes agriculture information available to scientists, researchers, extension personnel and the agricultural community and allows them to search and make contributions to the vast knowledge base. It is a collaborative project of seven consortium partners’ viz., ICRISAT Hyderabad, NAARM (National Academy of Agricultural Research and Management), Hyderabad, IIT (Indian Institute of Technology), Kanpur, IIT Bombay, GBPUAT (GB Pant University of Agril. and Technology), Pantnagar, UAS (University of Agril. Science), Raichur and IIITM-K (Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management-Kerala). Project is backed by Government of India and sponsored by the World Bank through NAIP (National Agricultural Innovation Project) of the ICAR. The project was launched on 12 January 2009. Many social enterprises are currently addressing the agriculture space, attempting to bring new technologies to rural areas to improve the efficiency and profitability of farmers. Agropedia works as a one-stop hub for information on the agriculture ecosystem. The Wiki-style platform provides, among other things, a space for stakeholder interaction, best practice sharing, news updates, and an online library by the ICAR. Agropedia has also collaborated with KVK (Krishi Vigyan Kendra), a training and education center for farmer and rural entrepreneurs, to develop “Voice Krishi Vigyan Kendra” (vKVK), a mobile based advisory system that sends SMS and voice-based messages to field officers and farmers around the country. It is a human psychology that, each of us have our own circle of influence. We need to convey the message of agriculture within our circles, so our stories can be influential (Amit lathiya et al., 2015). Agropedia is one stop shop for all information, pedagogic or practical knowledge related to extension service in Indian agriculture with the following objectives: 1. To develop an agricultural repository and to build a Digital Ecosystem in agricultural domain for proper knowledge circulation. 2. To prepare a bridge between explicit knowledge holders (like agricultural researchers, scientists, experts and tacit knowledge holders like farmers and other field workers). 3. To deploy extension services for agricultural development. By employing state-of-the-art practices and techniques of the semantic web, agropedia enables specialists in the agriculture research, education domain and others, interested in agriculture can make contributions to the knowledge base. The users have a choice to contribute towards the gyan dhara (certified content) or participate in the interaction space to contribute to Jangyan (emergent knowledge). Thus, the users of agropedia are the architects of the knowledge, which is the lifeblood of agropedia and they do so through an easy to use and attractive web interface. The agropedia platform aims to foster social networking and provides space for interaction to motivate and enable a healthy exchange of ideas amongst interested group of people. The objectives of social networking platform are to capture tacit knowledge as well as to vet existing encyclopedic content, and to provide a mechanism to link agricultural professionals within India and at global level and provide a mean for sharing problems and solutions instantly (http://agropedia.iitk.ac.in). KVK – Net KVK-Net is an agricultural knowledge sharing platform meant for experts at KVKs for sharing information and experiences. It consists of interaction tools like Blog, Discussion Board, Event, Community, Chat and Private Message systems. It has seven agriculture and allied communities to facilitate and share knowledge among the agricultural experts and extension functionaries. The KVKs of Zone IV are currently using this platform for pilot testing. It is proposed to include all KVKs of the country in near future. Openagri allows for uploading research publications such as Journal Articles, Conference Papers, Books, Book Chapter, Proceedings, Preprints and Multimedia Content. For each document being uploaded into this repository, a set of appropriate keywords are assigned automatically from Agrotags (http://agropedialabs.iitk.ac.in/extension/) Agro-advisory delivery networks : vKVK Agropedia has several mechanisms for delivering the content to various stakeholders. vKVK, a Simple Messaging System based platform allows Agro-advisories to be sent to the farmers’ cell phone using SMSs. vKVK is a platform that connects KVKs with farmers through internet and mobile technology. Finally a phone based delivery system allows an agricultural expert to transmit a voice based alert/advisory to be transmitted to farmers using a phone call. A recorded message can be transmitted via vKVK platform to all farmers under the guidance of KVK experts. This platform is currently being tested in selected districts of Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Karnataka. Within a short period of two years of its inception, agropedia has the distinction of being visited by people from over 140 countries and got 2,99,000 page views till date. Today it boasts of over 5400 registered users, with over a thousand documents like information objects among certified content and almost the same number (wiki pages, blogs etc.) of documents from voluntary users. Openagri, which was launched recently, has over 500 documents (http://agropedialabs.iitk.ac.in/kvk). SOME POPULAR AGROPEDIA SITES FOR TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER IN AGRICULTURAL EXTENSION 1. https://oar.icrisat.org/5759/1/agropedia_KSI_2011_2012.pdf This ICRISAT agropeida highlights the appropriate interfaces built in collaborative mode to support information access in multiple languages. Agropedia is one stop shop for all information, pedagogic or practical knowledge related to extension service in Indian agriculture. 2. Cyber agriculture wikipidea Nalaka Kasunsiri, 2014 explined the cyber agriculture wikipidea in Srilanka are as follows : This consists of three major components to attract and cover needs of majority of the AC (Agricutural Committee). This is a common meeting place for AC of farmers, experts, academic, students and general public interested in cultivation. This is a read-and-write web rather than the traditional read only website and it was hosted under the name of www.goviya.lk and opened for the public. Other components are a) Agriculture Discussion Forum This is a discussion forum open to all members of the AC and the discussions are on Sri Lanka agriculture policies, current issues etc. Initially, priority has been given to the Api Wawamu Rata Nagamu programme implemented by Ministry of Agriculture. Therefore, the discussion will be based on the 21 crops selected under this programme. b) Agriculture e-Learning Know the agriculture corps and the ICT for agriculture are the two major subject areas open for the agriculture community in this learning component. AC would have a good source of resource materials from Cyber Agriculture Wikipedia for their trainings. Initially, this will be open for the Cyber Agriculture Staff (Rural Knowledge Centre of Departnent of Agriculture). Gradually, others in AC can also participate in e-Learning. c) Wikipedia on Agriculture A web based encyclopedia for Sri Lanka agriculture has been developed and now it is continuously updated and nourished by the AC. Ultimately, this will result a complete encyclopedia on almost all the components in Sri Lankan agriculture. Presently, nearly 155 different articles have been posted in Agripedia section by different users and continue to grow. 3. https://agropedia.iitk.ac.in/node/2115 This agropedia start functioning from Jun 23, 2009. It might be mentioned here that extension education, its principles, methods ; techniques are applicable not only to agriculture but also to veterinary ; animal husbandry, dairying, home science, health, family planning, etc. Based upon its application ; use, various nomenclatures have been given to it, . 4. https://vikaspedia.in/agriculture/. It is the type of agropedia. The topic covers the objectives, components, implementation and progress made under the NMAET (National Mission on Agricultural Extension and Technology). 5. www.e-agriculture.org/news/agropedia/ The Gujarat Journal of Extension Education (GJOEE), by the Society of Extension Education Gujarat, India, has published the article “AGROPEDIA: An ICT Initiative in Agricultural Extension” by researchers K. C. Kamani, D. R. Kathiriya, P. S. Parsania, available in Vol. 25, Issue 1. This article published in agropedia site on Jan 16, 2015. 6. www.indiawaterportal.org/articles/agricultural-wiki-agropedia This agropeida webbed on Feb 7, 2009. Agropedia is a comprehensive, seamlessly integrated model of digital content organization in the agricultural domain. It aims to bring together a community of practice through an ICT mediated knowledge creating and organising platform with an effort to leverage the existing agricultural extension system. 7. https://www.agripedia.biz/…/CorporateProfileNigeria- This agripedia focused on commercial agricultural sector in South Africa. It discussed on Farm Planning, Implementation and Mentorships from Commercial Farmers, Integrated Agricultural Training Services, Agricultural Technical Services, Agricultural Extension Services, connecting and linking the Agricultural Industry of the Globe in South Africa. 8. https://www.ncpedia.org/extension-service This ncpedia was eloborate about the North Carolina Cooperative Extension Service, part of a national organization funded by federal, state, and local governments as well as private sources, serves as a link between university agricultural research and the people of North Carolina. 9. www.etrainingpedia.com/u-of-m-to-launch-organic-project/ This etrainingpedia was started from Apr 15, 2014. It provide report on organic project is funded by a three-year grant from USDA’s. National Institute of Food and Agriculture. Transitioning to organic agriculture is risky and can be overwhelming. Extension educator Jill Sackett was discussed during the annual Southern Minnesota Organic Crops Day on March 19 2014. 10. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_Training_Institute_(Philippines) The Philippines’ Agricultural Training Institute is an agency of the Philippine government under the Department of Agriculture responsible for training agricultural extension workers and their clientele; conducting multi-level training programs to promote and accelerate rural development; and ensuring that research results. 11. https://go.usa.gov/3JhUT/Oregon/agripedia/2015 The Oregon agripedia is designed as an evolving reference tool for Oregon agricultural producers and organizations. This publication combined Oregon agricultural statistics, regulations and resources into one handy guide. FARMBOOK Farmbook is a free exchange for farmers and others to buy and sell agricultural goods, raw materials, equipment, livestock, services and much more. It has been designed to ensure that sound business advice is being provided to farmers, due to the main challenges they face. Farmbook is designed to be used as a business planning tool for farmers to support our work in “Value Chains for Vulnerable Farmers”; and to provide a systematic process to help field agents and farmers to improve decision making about food and financial security (Ghoshal, S. 2012.). Farmbook provides facilities for: 1. Finding new suppliers and customers 2. Exploring new products and trading opportunities 3. Using additional trade information resources How does it work? In order to get access to the ads on the site one must register. Once registered, you can search for ads within a certain distance, by navigating on the map or just by the categories of goods. If you find what you are looking for, you can contact the advertiser directly. The website is dynamic and allows traders to quickly register and post anytime. Pricing and delivery are left up to buyers and sellers to work out on their own. Many smallholder farmers operate outside of value chains, lacking the skills to analyze market opportunities and costs to engage competitively with the formal market designed for use by field agents. Farmbook is a business planning tool enabling farmers to develop customized business plans with details about their costs, revenues, sales and profits. The software calculates profits and generates reports that can be printed and shared directly with farmers and collects comprehensive agricultural data on inputs, cropping calendars, labor, costs, financing plan and sales that can be integrated into the monitoring and evaluation process for an extension program. Farmbook is a novel ICT tool for agricultural extension that is currently being field tested by the Catholic Relief Services (CRS) in Southern and East Africa. Farmbook enables extension agents to assess productivity and profitability of farming enterprises in a faster and more reliable manner, so as to increase farmer incomes and achieve food security. Farmbook is a field based application that the CRS agriculture team is developing at the request of a consortium of NGO,s who work together as part of the Southern African Agro-Enterprise Learning Alliance. The purpose of the application is to enable field agents to help farmers plan their farm businesses more effectively and evaluate their productivity and profitability. The system was also developed as a means of helping to manage field agents and support the needs of remote field agents being able to share their data with project managers (Andrea Jimenez, 2012). Business focused information Farmbook provides farmers with access to a business planning process, that is focused on their product and market opportunity. It provides customized business information, rather than general market information. For most farmers and many agricultural field agents business development is a challenge. Most small farmres do not keep records. Most field agents have not received any formal education in business management and therefore rarely help farmers to plan their enterprises. The focus therefore remains on productivity enhancement. However, for development processes and upgrading strategies to work successfully in a business environment, more attention needs to be given to monitoring the profits that different types of farmers gain from using technologies and linking to markets (Ghoshal, S. 2012.) The challenge of providing business services For any business calculator to provide useful information it must first be integrated into a program that provides training in marketing and business evaluation. CRS has developed a series of guides that help field agents, learn these techniques. The work on marketing and business is provided through two training modules entitled, (i) marketing basics and (ii) the 7 steps of marketing. These guides provide an initial grounding in marketing principles and terminology and the process guide helps field agents to gain practical experience in identifying market opportunities with farmers, gathering information to prepare a business plan and then evaluating the success of the plan at the end of the season. The Farmbook Suite is a set of ICT tools designed to help agents to support farmer groups through improved training, business planning, market analysis, and GIS (Geographical Information System) linked service delivery tracking. It is part of the 5 Skills Set approach to integrated rural development (Ghoshal, S. 2012.). Three step process explined by Andrea Jimenez (2012) are as follows : 1. Business Planner Designed for use by field agents, the namesake software in the Farmbook suite, the Farmbook Business Planner, was designed to enable farmers to develop customized business plans with details about their costs, revenues, sales and profits. The software calculates profits and generates reports that can be printed and shared directly with farmers, and collects comprehensive agricultural data on inputs, cropping calendars, labor, costs, financing plan and sales that can be integrated into the monitoring and evaluation process for an extension program. 2. Skillset e-learning In order to ensure consistent transfer of knowledge to extension officers, converted the guidebooks on the 5 Skills Set’ into an e-learning program with 9 courses: Introduction, Group Management, NRM (Network Relationship Management) Process, NRM Basics, Marketing Basics, 7 Steps of Marketing and Innovation. In multi-year, multi-country projects this provides a way to train, monitor and support large cohorts of field agents and extension officers and to quickly train new officers in locations where staff turnover is high. 3. Map and Track Recording the real time activities of field agents can help to improve the management of exxtension services and to provide incentives to ensure regular support and training for farmer groups. “Map & Track”, is linked to the Farmbook Business Planner to pull farmer group registration data and database and allows field agents to record their activities in real time. The application uses Arc GIS to map service delivery. The application also enables team supervisors and managers to better link service delivery and training with beneficiary group performance and results. In future programs, service delivery will be directly linked to support payments to field agents, providing direct incentives for performance based-pay and reimbursement for travel. SOME POPULAR FARMBOOK SITES FOR TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER IN AGRICULTURAL EXTENSION 1. static1.1.sqspcdn.com/…/farmbook-a-toolkit-for-agriculture-extension-workers-ict4d-… Farmbook. Name: Shaun Ferris, Suzanne Andrews, Vipin Gupta, Vijay Singh, Kevin Raymond. Email: [email protected]. Company size : working in nearly 100 countries. Years of service: since 1943. Non profit, 4000+ employees and major local partner network. Challenge in our enterprise work. 2. www.e-agriculture.org/news/farmbook-business-planning-tool-farmers This site posted in Dec 25, 2012. Farmbook info is a free exchange for farmers and others to buy and sell agricultural goods, raw materials, equipment, livestock, services and much more. It has been designed to ensure that sound business advice is being provided to farmers, due to the main challenges they face. 3. https://www.bookdepository.com/…Farm-Book-Or…Agriculture…/9781425534165 The American Farm Book Compend of American Agriculture : Being a Practical Treatise on Soils, Manures, Draining Irrigation, Grassgrain, Roots, Fruits, Cotton, Tobacco, Sugar Cane, Rice, and Every Staple product of the United States: With the Best Methods of Planting, Cultivation and Preparation for Market. 4. https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/principles-of…farming…farm-book…/100378529… This site posted in Aug 28, 1991. The Hardcover of the Principles of Dairy Farming by Diamond Farm Book Publishers Staf at Barnes & Noble. FREE Shipping on $25 or more! 5. https://www.springwise.com/farmbook/ This site posted in Apr 14, 2011. This site featured countless online exchanges over the years that connect buyers and sellers of a wide variety of goods. Zeroing in on the agricultural domain. 6. https://www.linkedin.com/company/farmbook Farmbook’s mission is to connect citizens with responsible and committed producers in order to make organic, healthy, quality food products accessible to everyone in the immediate vicinity. We also want to multiply and support citizen initiatives to integrate subsistence agriculture into every urban or rural place of life. 7. www.prancetechnology.com/the-american-farm-book-or-compend-of-american-agri American Farm by Allen – AbeBooks -. New American farm book (e-book-pdf) by Allen and a great selection of similar Used, New and Collectible Books available now at AbeBooks.co.uk. Title: american farm. Electronic Resources – Libraries – being a treatise, Compend of American agriculture : being a practical. 8. pqpublications.squarespace.com/ict4d-empowering…/farmbook-master-class.pdf This farmbook site specially for smallholder farmers, frequently operate outside of value chains, but lack the skills to analyze market opportunies and costs to engage. Traditional extension agents are trained to provide produc on advice, but may lack the tools to analyze markets and to test the profitability of the crop varieties or production. 9. www.marintheatre.org/productions/…/excerpts-from-thomas-jeffersons-farm-book Thomas Jefferson, plantation owner and inveterate record-keeper, recorded the smallest details of Monticello’s economic and agricultural operations in his Farm Book. In addition to monitoring daily temperatures, supply costs, and productivity for the plantation’s many endeavors, he traked expenses related to the people. 10. summeruniversity.bcn.cat/the-american-farm-book-or-compend-of-american-agri… This site posted in Dec 25, 2017 – The American Farm Book or Compend of American Agriculture, being a practical. Treatise on Soils Manual PDF (Portable Document Format) Book is the book you are looking for, by download PDF. 11. marchmontnews.com/Farming-Agriculture/../18250-Social-network-Farmbook-expa… This site posted in Jan 26, 2012 – The Russian Internet agricultural market. Farmbook has expanded internationally to European and US markets. 12. farmbook.co.za/forums/forum/cattle-farming/ Started by: Eli. Topic: Voices; Posts: Freshness. What makes the most efficient use of grass and why? Cows or sheep?. You must be logged in to create new topics. About TEACHME. There are many variations forms of communication on this site. 13. https://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/…/2016_farm_book_v3-canyon_road.pdf This site posted in Jul 19, 2016. The Director (2016 ‘Farm Book’). Canyon Road Farms consists of 10 acres of land (4 hectares) located at the junction of Canyon, Hullcar and Lansdowne Roads in Spallumcheen BC. The operation consists of 3 barns used for the production of broiler chickens as well as a dwelling and outbuildings. 14. www.croydon.unitingchurch.org.au/animal-farm-book-vs-movie.pdf This farmbook was coordinated by a animal farm book vs movie global shadow government. Addicting different homework help paypal Animal Farm movie versions, including the 1954 animal farm book vs movie cartoon. Record Book System for tracking experiences in High School Agricultural Education courses. 15. https://www.sustainablemarketfarming.com/tag/the-lean-farm-book/ This site posted in Sep 8, 2015 – blog post for Mother Earth News Organic Gardening blog, called Green Potato Myths and 10 Steps to Safe Potato Eating. You can read it here. it’s an updated version of a post on this site back in December.GFM (Growing for Market) September2015_cover_300px Meanwhile an issue of Growing for Market. 16. www.citricox.com/animal-farm-book-vs-movie.pdf This farmbook was coordinated by a animal farm book vs movie global shadow government Record Book System for tracking experiences in High School Agricultural Education courses. A successful farmyard revolution by the resident animals vs. the farmer goes horribly wrong as the victors create a new tyranny among themselves. 17. studylib.net/doc/5528023/agricultural-business-tools—farmbook Agricultural Business Tools Farmbook Name : Shaun Ferris and Deepak Jannu Emails: [email protected] ; [email protected]. Company started in Hyderabad, India Started operations in USA Setup an office in UAE. Started New Business Operations: BPO BPO – (Business Processing Outsoursing) / ITES (Information Technology Enabled Services). Set up a Software Development Centers. YOUTUBE YouTube is an American video-sharing website headquartered in San Bruno, California. The YouTube service was created by three former PayPal employees namely Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim in February 2005. Google bought the site in November 2006 for US$1.65 billion; YouTube now operates as one of Google’s subsidiaries. YouTube allows users to upload, view, rate, share, add to favorites, report, comment on videos and subscribe to other users. It offers a wide variety of user-generated and corporate media videos. Available content includes video clips, TV show clips, music videos, short and documentary films, audio recordings, movie trailers, live streams, and other content such as video blogging, short original videos and educational videos. Most of the content on YouTube is uploaded by individuals, but media corporations including CBS (Columbia Broadcasting System), BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation), Vevo and Hulu offer some of their material via YouTube as part of the YouTube partnership program. Unregistered users can only watch videos on the site, while registered users are permitted to upload an unlimited number of videos and add comments to videos. Videos deemed potentially inappropriate are available only to registered users affirming themselves to be at least 18 years old. YouTube is a video-sharing website where users can upload and view videos. YouTube, a video sharing platform, is the third most visited website in the world. A total number of 3.25 billion videos are watched on the website each month and more than half of the views are from mobile. Many individuals, organizations and networks are leveraging its advantages (Delaney, Kevin J, 2006). Seeing is believing. Video is an incredibly powerful tool, inspiring higher rates of message credibility and virality. As the cost of video equipment drops precipitously and mobile phones acquire higher quality video capture functionality, the format has become a more accessible way to frame your message. The increasing global popularity of video sharing websites is a sure sign that bandwidth availability is increasing, since video transmission requires much more data usage than text or images. The largest video sharing site, YouTube, is staggering in its scale. Localized in 56 countries and across 61 languages, the site currently receives more than one billion unique visitors a month. Users view six billion hours of video per month. That’s almost an hour per month for every single person on the planet. YouTube also allows users to upload, edit, and caption a video directly onto the site. Although this rich functionality will likely struggle in lower-bandwidth settings, other useful features allow you to filter, stabilize, slo-mo, or blur facial features within the YouTube editor. A host of other competitors have their specific audiences, with Vimeo (a creative-centric community favoring HD (High Difinition), DailyMotion (pop-culture and ad-driven), and MetaCafe (packaged entertainment) (Delaney, Kevin J. 2006). Andres, D. and Woodard, J. (2013) explined the YouTube user profile, most common usages, considerations and resources are as follows: USER PROFILE: Everyone with available bandwidth. MOST COMMON USAGES: Viewing, sharing, entertaining, linking, user-generated video storage. CONSIDERATIONS: Unless you capture breaking news, no one enjoys a shaky or poorly produced video. It is important to commit to the planning or storyboarding process. Regardless of the hardware and software you use, it can often require more effort than originally planned. If you work for a non-profit based in the United States, look into the YouTube Non-Profit Program, which can provide valuable marketing benefits. Example: Digital Green has over 2,700 agricultural videos on their YouTube channel. RESOURCES: If working on a specific campaign, a good resource for getting started is the YouTube Playbook. YOUTUBE IN AGRICULTURAL EXTENSION Few agriculture related YouTube http://www.youtube.com is a Video sharing Web site where users can view, upload and share short videos or multimedia presentations. Features upload videos and/or embed it within another Web page (unless the video owner chooses to disable the embedding feature) updated when new content of their interest is published. YouTube accounts to share technology related videos, instructional videos, extension material and other agriculture-related videos, videos on field level problems and local solutions and post them on YouTube. Agri-tech videos from YouTube and screen them on computer monitors or pico-projectors to small groups of farmers during their visits practices and upload them on YouTube at the field level important innovations/technologies and themes and upload on YouTube for sharing and re-using them for different purposes (http://www.youtube.com). SOME POPULAR YOUTUBE SITES FOR TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER IN AGRICULTURAL EXTENSION 1.GreenTV(https://www.youtube.com/user/Greentvindia): Green TV is India’s first premier agriculture television channel aiming to provide news updates of news and analysis on topical issues of national and international importance in agriculture. The channel also analyze issues involving biotechnology, farm mechanization, crop protection, horticulture, animal husbandry, food processing, agribusiness, research, high-tech agriculture etc. Since 2013, the channel has uploaded 912 videos, has 10,743 subscribers and 1,761,841 views in total on its videos. 2. YouTube MANAGE (https://www.youtube.com/user.manageinsti/pgdaem): MANAGE is sharing video lessons of all the modules of its Post Graduate Diploma in Agricultural Extension Management (PGDAEM), an online continuing education program, on YouTube. MANAGE PGDAEM 3. Video lesson on YouTube ICAR (https://www.youtube.com/user/icarinsti): ICAR are sharing videos on YouTube to the scientist, extension workers, farmers and those who visited the YouTube site.. 4. TNAUs e-Extension Centre (https://www.youtube.com/user/tnauagritechportal): Shares agriculture videos in the local language. Over 270 videos on Agriculture and allied aspects in Tamil have been uploaded on YouTube by TNAU Agritech. 5. CGIAR (https://www.youtube com/user/CCAFS): Research Program on Climate Change Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) shares videos featuring stories of smallholder farmers, interviews with leading agricultural experts and innovative information on climate-smart agriculture. 6. Digital Green (https://www.youtube.com/user/digitalgreenorg): Digital Green is a not-for-profit international development organization that has been using an innovative digital platform for community engagement to improve the lives of rural communities across South Asia and Sub- Saharan Africa since 2008. It has been creating and sharing videos for wider adoption of locally relevant agricultural practices in different languages to support rural communities. Short 8 to 10 minute documentaries which are localized in content, language, dialect are developed along with partners and village community. These are accessible on Digital Green website and also on YouTube. As of June 2016, it has reached over 1 million individuals across 13,592 villages through 4,426 videos, which showcase and demonstrate best practices. As many as 5,74,222 viewers have adopted one or more of the best practices promoted through these videos and YouTube is one of the popular platforms of sharing the videos. 7. Peterson Farm Bros (https://www.youtube.com/user/ThePetersonFarmBros): This YouTube channel created and maintained by three brothers, is about their family farm and what operations are being carried out on the farm. The videos range from parodies to informational videos to entertainment videos. The videos are made to create awareness about life on farm, various agricultural operations and start a conversation about agriculture with the rest of the community. The channel has 121,994 subscribers and a total of 43,529,553 views on the videos. 8. Kissan Kerala (https://www.youtube.com/user/kissankerala): Kissan Kerala is an integrated, multi-modal Agriculture Information System for Kerala. Conceptualized, implemented and managed by IIITM-K, Thiruvananthapuram. The project gives access to over a 100 informative videos on Agriculture, Animal Husbandry, Fisheries and allied topics. Kissan Kerala provides several ICT enabled agricultural information services to the farming community. Information services are provided through multi-modal delivery platforms like online services, television program, mobile based information services, touch screen kiosks etc. With 43,261 subscribers and more than 27 million views, this channel provides telecast quality informative videos on agriculture, animal husbandry, fisheries and allied topics. INSTAGRAM Instagram is a free, online photo-sharing application and social network platform that was acquired by Facebook in 2012. Instagram allows users to edit and upload photos and short videos through a mobile app. Users can add a caption to each of their posts and use hashtags and location-based geotags to index these posts and make them searchable by other users within the app. Each post by a user appears on their followers’ Instagram feeds and can also be viewed by the public when tagged using hashtags or geotags. Users also have the option of making their profile private so that only their followers can view their posts. As with other social networking platforms, Instagram users can like, comment on and bookmark others’ posts, as well as send private messages to their friends via the Instagram Direct feature. Photos can be shared on one or several other social media sites including Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr — with a single click. Instagram is not only a tool for individuals, but also for businesses. The photo-sharing app offers companies the opportunity to start a free business account to promote their brand and products. Companies with business accounts have access to free engagement and impression metrics. According to Instagram’s website, more than 1 million advertisers worldwide use Instagram to share their stories and drive business results. Additionally, 60% of people say they discover new products through the app (http://en.wikipedia.org /wiki/instagram). . History of Instagram Instagram was started in San Francisco by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, who initially tried creating a platform similar to Foursquare but then turned their attention exclusively to photo sharing. The word Instagram is an amalgam of “instant camera” and “telegram.” The iOS app was released through the iTunes App Store on Oct. 6, 2010 and the Android app was released on April 3, 2012. The platform’s popularity skyrocketed with the company reporting more than 40 million active users just two years after launch. This caught the attention of Facebook, which officially purchased Instagram for $1 billion in the summer of 2012. Originally, only photos could be posted to Instagram, but the company expanded to 15-second videos in 2013. In 2016, Instagram upped the maximum video length to 60 seconds. Until 2015, all photos posted to Instagram were confined to a square aspect ratio. The company changed this to allow users to upload photos and video at full size (USAID, CCC. 2016). How to set up and use Instagram The Instagram app is available for download on Apple’s iPhone, iPad and other iOS devices through the App Store and on Android devices through Google Play. Once installed, users will be prompted to sign up for free and are given the option to either input their email address, which entails creating a username and password, or to log in using their Facebook account. New users can find people to follow on Instagram by having the app look through their Facebook friends and people on their contact list. From the Home tab, the first screen that appears when the app is opened, Instagram users can view photos from accounts they follow in a format similar to that of Facebook’s newsfeed. Instagram Stories — posted by users you’re following — are displayed at the top of the Home feed in the form of circular profile photos. Users can access Instagram Direct at the top right corner of their home feed. The Explore tab of the Instagram app allows members to search for user accounts to follow or find user photos by searching hashtags or geotags. The Explore tab also presents curated content and recommendations based on the user’s activity and accounts they follow, as well as trending hashtags and popular posts. The Activity tab displays recent engagement on posts in the form of likes and comments, and also recent activity from those the user is following. The Profile tab presents all of the user’s photo and video posts in one place and a short bio. To post a photo or video, click the Camera tab, which will give the option of taking a photo or video from within the app or choosing a photo or video from the device’s library. In a lot of ways, Instagram is just like Twitter. One way they are similar is that everyone has the same “type” of account – there’s no differentiation between personal and professional accounts. They all look the same and have the same format. And yet, everyone on Twitter – and on Instagram – uses their accounts slightly differently. Some use them for sharing personal photos. Some use them to showcase their business. Some use them to be inspirational. Some use them to promote themselves. No matter how you use Instagram, there are three types of Instagram users. But, just because you think you’re using Instagram as one type, doesn’t mean you are. So what type of Instagram user are you? (Laxmimoorthi et al., 2017) 1. Personal Account If you’re using Instagram for personal use, you mostly fall into these parameters: 1. Share photos of your family, pets, vacations and other personal aspects 2. You follow friends, family, celebrities and occasional brands that interest you 3. Your account may be set to private to protect your images from being seen publicly 2. Business Account If you’re using Instagram for your business, you mostly fall into these parameters: 1. Share photos of your products, services, employees and customers 2. Reshare or share user generated content from your audience 3. You follow customers, others in your industry and business associates 4. Your account is public for easy viewing and following 3. Brand Account Some people (like myself) don’t fall into either of these two first types. Instead, they are using Instagram to promote their “brand”, and fall into a combination of the two parameters above. 1. Share some photos of family and personal aspects as well as photos of their business 2. Incorporate user generated content 3. Follow friends, family, celebrities, customers, others in the industry and business associates 4. Account is public for easy viewing and following Depending on your business or personal reasons for using Instagram, you will fall into one of these three categories. The problem is that many think they’re using Instagram as a business but they’re really using it as a personal account or even a brand account. It’s important to know WHY you’re using Instagram and then format your profile and content to match appropriately. If you are using your Instagram account to represent your business, focus on your business. Share images of your products, services, and business space. Highlight your employees at work and the things you do within your community, as a part of your business. Share images of your customers enjoying your products or services and incorporate user generated content into what you share on Instagram. While, you want to showcase the personality of your business, you don’t need to share the personal images of individuals (including yourself). Think about big brand companies like Nike, Ben and Jerry’s, Starbucks, Volkswagen, and Taco Bell. You don’t see any of them sharing the CEO’s (Chief Executive Officer) personal vacation photos do you? And yet, they still show tons of personality and find fun ways to genuinely connect with their audiences. If you’re going to use Instagram for your business, keep it for your business purposes. Keep it social, keep it fun, keep it relevant and keep it professional (http://www.instagram.com). If you’re going to use Instagram as a brand, much like I do, then you can get a little more personal. Using Instagram as a brand is more appropriate for home based businesses, solopreneurs, celebrities, industry experts and others aiming to make a name for themselves, not exclusively their company name. Because these users are connecting on a more personal level, and showcasing their personal experiences and journeys, it’s more acceptable to incorporate personal touches to their Instagram accounts. But this doesn’t mean sharing every personal photo of your vacation! Sharing one or two images from your vacation or family gathering is good – it shows who you are. But sharing dozens of images of all your nieces and nephews becomes (most likely) irrelevant to your brand and your audience. Keep these masses of photos for your personal Facebook or personal Instagram account. As a brand, it’s also important to show your business achievements, products, services and contributions to your community. People are following you because of what you do and to connect with them, you need to provide that content. So, go check out your Instagram gallery. Are you using Instagram the way you planned to? If not, you may want to reconsider your Instagram content strategy to align with your professional goals. Instagram http://www.instagram.com is a mobile, desktop and internet-based photo-sharing application and service. Features look vintage, innovative, or photo shopped and effects to their images and add locations through geotags on Instagram on the same subject or topic. Connect their Instagram account to other social networking sites, enabling them to share photos to those sites also. How to use Photo Sharing tools for Agriculture display of images alongwith title, description, tags and organize them to reach target audience easily images can be accessed through Twitter, Facebook, mobile devices, blogs, etc (http://en.wikipedia.org /wiki/instagram). .SOME POPULAR INSTAGRAM SITES FOR TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER IN AGRICULTURAL EXTENSION instagram April 25 2018 1. https://u.osu.edu/acel/tag/instagram/ This instagram initiated by Dept. of Agrl. Communication, Education and Leadership in Ohio State University. Entire details of University with Images was posted in this instagram. 2. www.thepictaram.club/instagram/ This instgram Images from thepictaram club. It gain access to more than 50 online courses on agri fishery technology for free. Cross Cultural Studies Center for Transformational Development engages Agri Doctors participants in dialogues and workshops to garner their insights on agricultural extension. 3. https://www.socialsamosa.com/2017/07/instagram-case-studies/ This instagram was posted on Jul 20, 2017. Not many view Instagram beyond a place to share the snapshots of their daily lives and the visual compilation of their favourite moments, yet its so much more! The platform has helped numerous brands script some truly amazing Instagram Case Studies or success stories as they really are. 4. https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/agriculture/?hl=en This instagram posted by Ph.D student from North Sumatra, Indonesia is currently studying at the Wageningen. He posted photos of agriculture earth. 5. http://www.theland.com.au/story/4327930/top-10-ag-instagram- This instagram initiated on Dec 25, 2016. The Instagram account of our very own Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation Rural Woman of the Year, Sophie Hansen, will delight. The Orange-based food blogger posts photos of her homemade treats, kids’ adventures and, of course, updates from her family’s farming operation. FLICKR Flickr (pronounced “flicker”) is an image and video-hosting website and web services suite that was created by Ludicorp in 2004 and acquired by Yahoo on 20 March 2005. In addition to being a popular website for users to share and embed personal photographs, and effectively an online community, the service is widely used by photo researchers and by bloggers to host images that they embed in blogs and social media. The Verge reported in March 2013 that Flickr had a total of 87 million registered members and more than 3.5 million new images uploaded daily. In August 2011 the site reported that it was hosting more than 6 billion images and this number continues to grow steadily according to reporting sources. Photos and videos can be accessed from Flickr without the need to register an account but an account must be made to upload content onto the website. Registering an account also allows users to create a profile page containing photos and videos that the user has uploaded and also grants the ability to add another Flickr user as a contact. For mobile users, Flickr has official mobile apps for iOS (internet Operating System), Android and PlayStation Vita, operating systems and an optimised mobile website. Photo Sharing Agricultural researchers and extension managers often depend on photographs to document plants, pests, diseases, etc. Photo sharing sites like Flickrt can help organise and share photos and images easily and also receive comments from others (Guynn, Jessica, 2018). Flickr http://www.flickr.com allows one to store photos on a cloud and share them for free upto a limit. Features includes one terabyte of storage limited to 200 MB per photo and 1 GB per video with maximum length of 3 minutes. Streams can be displayed as a justified view, a slideshow, a detail view or a date stamped archive. Flickr provides code to embed albums into blogs, websites and forums within a Flickr account which allows users to modify tags, descriptions and set groupings and to place photos on a world map. Users can select and apply changes to multiple photos at a time controls that determine who can view the image or comment. Private images are visible only to the uploader, but they can also be marked as viewable by friends and/or family. comments to a Flickr photo on its photo page (http://www.flickr.com). Andres, D. and Woodard, J. (2013) explined about the Flickr user profile, usage, considerations and resources are as follows: Flickr is very popular photo sharing sites with robust functionality native to desktop computers, via browser and desktop application. Both sites allow users to share and embed personal photographs, creating an online community who respond and share each other images. Many bloggers use these sites to host photos for embedding in outside websites and posts. But as the internet becomes more visual, new photo sharing (and increasingly, short video) sites have ridden the wave to mass audiences. Driven by smart and seamless smartphone mobile apps, a new generation of users is embracing photo sharing for new purposes. In this very competitive context, Flickr (owned by Yahoo) is attempting to transition to mobile, while native to mobile services like Instagram (owned by Facebook) offer popular new features such as ‘filters’ that can make pictures look vintage, avant-garde, or otherwise photoshopped. USER PROFILE: either via website, mobile app, or social media, basically all high bandwidth internet users MOST COMMON USAGES: shooting, viewing, watching, commenting, sharing CONSIDERATIONS: In some ways it doesn’t matter where your photos live, but that they will ‘follow’ you around the web via embed. But each of the internet Goliaths seems to be pondering the level of integration that is best for their business purposes. Both Twitter and Facebook have taken measures to limit direct embed of each others’ subsidiary content. The recent Flickr redesign adds an elegant new ‘infinitely scrolling’ display and offers a full terabyte of free storage. Picasa is increasingly integrated into Google+, and may simply become part of it. RESOURCE: To get a sense of micro-video, read this post by PBS’s (Public Broadcasting Services) and IdeaLab. Flickr – almost certainly the best online photo management and sharing application in the world – has two main goals: 1. We want to help people make their photos available to the people who matter to them. Maybe they want to keep a blog of moments captured on their cameraphone, or maybe they want to show off their best pictures or video to the whole world in a bid for web celebrity. Or maybe they want to securely and privately share photos of their kids with their family across the country. Flickr makes all these things possible and more! To do this, we want to get photos and video into and out of the system in as many ways as we can: from the web, from mobile devices, from the users’ home computers and from whatever software they are using to manage their content. And we want to be able to push them out in as many ways as possible: on the Flickr website, in RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds, by email, by posting to outside blogs or ways we haven’t thought of yet. What else are we going to use those smart refrigerators for? 2. We want to enable new ways of organizing photos and video. Once you make the switch to digital, it is all too easy to get overwhelmed with the sheer number of photos you take or videos you shoot with that itchy trigger finger. Albums, the principal way people go about organizing things today, are great until you get to 20 or 30 or 50 of them. They worked in the days of getting rolls of film developed, but the “album” metaphor is in desperate need of a Florida condo and full retirement. Part of the solution is to make the process of organizing photos or videos collaborative. In Flickr, you can give your friends, family, and other contacts permission to organize your stuff not just to add comments, but also notes and tags. People like to ooh and ahh, laugh and cry, make wisecracks when sharing photos and videos. Why not give them the ability to do this when they look at them over the internet? And as all this info accretes as metadata, you can find things so much easier later on, since all this info is also searchable (www.flickr.com). SOME POPULAR FLICKR SITES FOR TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER IN AGRICULTURAL EXTENSION 1. www.icrisat.org/flickr-icon/flickr-icon. Share the News of Dr. APJ. Abdul kalam Ex-President of India visits the ICRISAT at Hydrabad and discussed with scientist on increase the awareness of farmers and agriculture extension workers on improved technologies for sustainable agricultural intensification. ICRISAT at the high-level. 2. https://www.flickr.com/photos/ciat/15765276952 This were initiated on Oct 22, 2014. Collecting data for farmer baseline studies using CIAT (International Cenre for Tropical Agriculture) technologies. Lushuto, Tanzania. Credit: Georgina Smith / CIAT. 3. https://www.flickr.com › … › Reviving Agricultural Extension in Ukraine This flikr were installed from Feb 10, 2017. FAO (Food and Agriculrure Organization) and the Department of Agro-Industrial Development in Luganska Oblast, Ukraine held a workshop on reviving agricultural extension service as an effective tool for supporting small agricultural businesses. The event, held 10 February 2017 on Severodonetsk UN premises. 4. https://extension.umd.edu/sites/default/files/_…/Introduction%20to%20flickr.pdf This was functioned from May 13, 2014.. Introduction to flickr. Let your photos work for you! Michele D. Walfred. Communications Specialist. University of Delaware College of Agriculture & Natural Resources. 5. https://www.flickr.com/photos/faonews/albums/72157673705815880/ This was posted on 18 October 2016, Rome Italy – CFS 43 – Side Event: The Role of Livestock in Sustainable Agriculture; Delivering for People, Animals and Planet. Developing farming in ways that maximise Food Security and Nutrition of malnourished adults and children, and enhance the wellbeing of humans, the environment and livestock. 6. https://www.flickr.com/photos/faonews/albums/ Opening ceremony of the exhibition: 65 years of The FAO Library. FAO’s treasures on display: incunabula and rare books … 49 photos • 108 views. Side Event: Migration and Food Security. 22 photos • 9 views. Side event: COP23, Agriculture for Climate Action. 20 photos • 42 views. FAO Council, 158th Session. 107 photos. 7. www.fao.org/communications/policy/social-media/flickr/en/ Even when participating in Flickr and similar sites as private individuals, FAO employees in all categories are asked to observe the following guidelines: behave in a manner consistent with the role of an international civil servant; think before posting – use sound judgement and think about reactions to what you plan to post. WHATSAPP WhatsApp was founded in 2009 by Brian Acton and Jan Koum, both former employees of Yahoo!. After Koum and Acton left Yahoo! in September 2007, the duo traveled to South America to take a break from work. At one point, they applied for jobs at Facebook but were rejected. For the rest of the following years Koum relied on his $400,000 savings from Yahoo.In January 2009, after purchasing an iPhone and realizing the potential of the app industry on the App Store, Koum started visiting his friend Alex Fishman in West San Jose where the three would discuss ” having statuses next to individual names of the people”, but this was not possible without an iPhone developer. Fishman found a Russian developer on RentACoder.com, Igor Solomennikov, and introduced him to Koum. Koum named the app “WhatsApp” to sound like “what’s up”. On February 24, 2009, he incorporated WhatsApp Inc. in California. However, because early versions of WhatsApp often crashed or got stuck at a particular point, Koum felt like giving up and looking for a new job, upon which Acton encouraged him to wait for a “few more months”. In June 2009, Apple launched push notifications, allowing users to be pinged when they were not using an app. Koum changed WhatsApp so that when a user’s status is changed, everyone in the user’s network would be notified. WhatsApp 2.0 was released with a messaging component and the number of active users suddenly increased to 250,000. Acton was still unemployed and managing another startup, and he decided to join the company. In October 2009, Acton persuaded five former friends in Yahoo! to invest $250,000 in seed funding, and Acton became a co-founder and was given a stake. He officially joined on November 1. After months at beta stage, the application eventually launched in November 2009 exclusively on the App Store for the iPhone. Koum then hired a friend who lived in Los Angeles, Chris Peiffer, to develop the BlackBerry version, which arrived two months later ( Parmy Olsen, 2014). WhatsApp messenger is a proprietary, crossplatform instant messaging application for smartphones. In addition to text messaging, users can send each other images, video, and audio media messages. WhatsApp Messenger is a cross-platform mobile messaging app and it is a platform to share real-time information which allows user to exchange messages, audio, video, photographs. It allows users to create groups, broadcast or send unlimited images, video and audio-media messages simultaneously to one person, or to a group. WhatsApp Messenger requires a smart mobile phone with internet data access. WhatsApp is the largest community of users of any IM (Instant Messaging) client on any device, ever, has been on the rise since its inception. With over 600 million users it is the most popular application for Instant Messaging, and has found mainstream acceptance and popularity now world over (Andres, D. and Woodard, J. 2013). WHATSAPP FOR AGRICULTURE WhatsApp Accounts to network ; share information. Scientists, University Faculty, NGOs may create WhatsApp groups for quick sharing of information within their groups. groups to send/share alerts – release of new varieties, meetings, office orders, details of Government Schemes, visits of senior officers etc., disseminate innovations. formation and network with experts and input agencies related to those commodities. innovative farmers, farmer friends. Sending information to farmers through WhatsApp groups is very easy. Whatsapp groups of farmers in India are actively sharing information and seeking advice from experts when needed and are requesting the government to use Google Earth and Whatsapp for accurate and efficient information delivery (Valsamidis, et.al., 2013 ). WHATSAPP FOR AGRICULTURAL EXTENSION Steps in using WhatsApp in Agricultural Extension 1. Effective and efficient sharing of Agricultural Technology to select farmers. 2. Scientists and farmers have to be trained in the use of Instant Messaging application namely WhatsApp in creating, sharing, recording and retrieval of agricultural information/ technology. 3. Access to be made to necessary hardware and connectivity namely availability of Smart Mobile devices and Internet connectivity to all the stakeholders (Farmers/ Scientists) involved in the project. 4. The knowledge sharing process has to be documented by all the stakeholders. 5. The reusability of shared knowledge retrieved from this extension model by for research and extension may be studied and the constraints faced by the users in using WhatsApp may be documented. A messenger app for smartphones, it is an internet based messaging platform that supports text, audio, video, pdf and various other forms of files. Real time video chatting has also been integrated recently, making it more popular among users. Currently there are more than one billion users of the app in 180 countries. Though initially used for personal messaging, it is gaining more popularity among agricultural professionals and practitioners to share information, which is aided by the group messaging feature. There are few hundred thousand WhatsApp groups created for agricultural extension and advisory services in India. WhatsApp Messenger can be downloaded to a smart mobile phone with internet data access. Over 1 billion people are using WhatsApp to stay in touch with colleagues, friends and family. With WhatsApp on the web and desktop, one can sync all chats to the computer and one can chat on whatever device is convenient. Features of WhatsApp are text messages, a camera button for sending off quick selfies and snapshots. A file attachments menu (paperclip icon) can share photos, videos, audio microphone icon that you hold down to record quick voice messages create a group of up to 256 users who can then message each other and share media in a chat room like environment. The creator of the group also becomes the group admin, with the ability to add new participants, remove existing ones and appoint new admins New Broadcast feature through which a message can be broadcast to a list of recipients through their data connection, bypassing call time and long distance call charges (Chaba, A.A. 2015). SOME POPULAR WHATSAPP GROUPS FOR TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER IN AGRICULTURAL EXTENSION 1. WhatsApp group for farmers helps Forest Department get real time alerts on animal movement www.thehindu.com › News › Cities › Coimbatore Nov 26, 2017 While instances of wild animals entering human habitation remain unabated, the Forest Department has taken a few smart moves to mitigate the problem. In one such step, a WhatsApp group that has more than 200 members, including farmers and foresters, is helping the Forest Department by providing real time alerts from villages across the district on the movement of wild animals in human habitations and agricultural fields. According to S. Ramasubramanian, Conservator of Forests (Coimbatore Circle), the WhatsApp group for farmers was one of the successful methods introduced by the department in Coimbatore to handle man-animal conflict. “Farmers who are members of the group alert on any instance of animal movement. Forest range officers are also members of the group. Upon receiving an alert, our staff will be deployed at the spot to handle the issue. Farmers’ associations have extended support to the initiative,” Mr. Ramasubramanian said. In the last one year, nearly 60 villages in Coimbatore faced instances of elephants straying into farmlands in the Coimbatore division. Villages along areas such as Mettupalayam, Thudiyalur, Anaikatti and Booluvampatti and Madukkarai especially in Sirumugai, Mettuppalayam, Periyanaickenpalayam, Coimbatore, Booluvampatti and Madukkarai forest ranges come under the conflict zone. In the last three years, wild elephants made more than 1,000 raids in agricultural fields and human habitations in the division. Among the affected, more than 20 villages are about three to five km away from the forest boundary. The main reasons for elephants straying into farmlands were identified as crop pattern along the forest fringes, cultivation of crops that attract elephants, conversion of forest lands for commercial purposes, converting agricultural lands to house sites along the forest fringes, construction of institutions very close to forests, presence of places of worship/religious importance close to forest, and possible behavioural change in elephants (Watch: Last Week in Science The HINDU (April 16-22, 2018). Laxmimoorthy et al., (2017) coated some example of whatsapp groups for technology transfer in agricultural extension are as follows: 1. E-Horticulture: Created and maintained since 13th June, 2015 by IIHR (Indian Institute of Horticulture Research), Bengaluru, the group has 152 members and two administrators. A total of 78 posts on cultivation and management of horticultural crops, queries, press coverage, new technological innovations, etc. Experts of IIHR generally reply to the queries posted by farmers. Pictures were the most used media followed by URLs to web contents, documents, videos and audio files. 2. Farmers in Punjab, are getting immediate advice on crop health to seed procurement, soil health, use of fertilisers and pesticides, on WhatsApp. Dr Amrik Singh, an agricultural officer citing over 100 farmers and experts. Some farmers upload photos of their disease hit crops to seek advice from experts. Farmers are also sharing good agricultural practices. 3. Mr K Venkitesh, owner of Vijay Farms in Villupuram district, Tamil Nadu, gets a call from a customer in Rajasthan for buying goats for Bakrid. He sends the photos of the goats through Whatsapp and the customer places the order. When the money is credited into his account, the goats are packed off to the buyer. http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/farmers-ask- whats-up-on-whatsapp/ article6492889.ece. 4. Marketing Vegetables on WhatsApp Shri Santhosh Kittur and Shri Abhijit Kamath, Young farmers from Belgaum district of Karnataka are using Whatsapp for marketing their vegetables. In order to ensure a good range of produce, each grew different varieties of vegetables like ridge gourd, bitter gourd, cucumber, cluster beans, beans, cabbage, tomato, green chillies, capsicum, onions and garlic. Once they had sufficient produce for sale, they created a WhatsApp and around 100 members including farmers and regular customers. On the previous day before the market day they post information on the available produce, along with quantity and price. Based on the request from members they pack the required quantity. Home delivery is on request. Members can even pick up as per their choice. The first preference is given to the members of the group. They give regular updates on farm activities, from sowing to harvesting with photographs, to farmer members. They say that this technology saves their time, eliminates middlemen and ensures direct delivery to customers in response to requests. However there are some problems too. Sometimes there are no buyers as they have found vegetables at lower prices elsewhere. At times the produce gets over quickly in the market and does not reach regular customers. They feel that while this method of reaching out to buyers on Whatsapp is good it is important that all are active on the group. Shri Santhosh Kittur and Shri Abhijit Kamath may be contacted on 9901563210, 9916274492. 5. WhatsApp group – cross Maharashtra. Its primary aim is to offer information and advice to farmers. Farmers in Maharashtra are connecting on the group to share best practices, seek advice, connect with experts and explore new markets. The issues relating to plant nutrition, soil problems, crop rotation and market prices are discussed on WhatsApp. Farmers ask what’s up on WhatsApp – The Hindu www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/farmers-ask-whats-up-on-whatsapp/article6492889….Oct 12, 2014 Pomegranates growing on Shashidhara Patil’s farm in Bagalkot district started to wilt. He asked agricultural scientists for advice, but it didn’t help him much. It was his smartphone that came to his rescue; he got his answers from Telegram Messenger App of ‘Progressive Farmers’. Yenagi Venugopala Reddy, an agriculture expert in Jagalur taluk of Davangere district, was the one who offered some ‘practical’ remedies to tackle the wilting, and the smile was back on Mr. Patil’s face. This is how Progressive Farmers’ a farmer-to-farmer interactive forum floated by the Department of Agriculture is connecting the sons of the soil through their Android phones. Claimed to be the first-of-its kind initiative in the State, Progressive Farmers’ is aimed at providing a platform for farmers to share their experiences and exchange expertise via WhatsApp. Farmers have now started uploading information, messages, pictures, and videos. Officials of the Agriculture Department are also chipping in when their services are required. The department initially formed “Farmers’ Friends” a group of top officials with Android phones and asked them to exploit the possibilities of WhatsApp. “It is a platform to share real-time information,” said Subodh Yadav, Commissioner of Agriculture. Making it mandatory for Joint and Assistant Directors to have smartphones, the department started passing information, messages, circulars through WhatsApp, even before hard copies could reach them. “This helped officials to take quick action and better interaction with farmers in distress,” Mr. Yadav said. The next move was to form ‘Progressive Farmers’ platform and make them get used to modern technology. But, technology has its own limitations. Considering that the department could not develop a dedicated platform, the department decided to make use of a public platform such as WhatsApp, Viber and Telegram Apps. Telegram App has now become a platform by the farmers and for the farmers, where they raise queries and get answers ResearchGate was founded in 2008 by virologist and computer scientist Dr. Ijad Madisch, who remains the company’s CEO, with another physician Dr. Sören Hofmayer, and a computer scientist Horst Fickenscher. It started in Boston, Massachusetts, and moved to Berlin, Germany, shortly afterwards. ResearchGate is a social networking site for scientists and researchers to share papers, ask and answer questions, and find collaborators. According to a study by Nature and an article in Times Higher Education, it is the largest academic social network in terms of active users, although other services have more registered users and more recent data suggests that almost as many academics have Google Scholar profiles. People that wish to use the site need to have an email address at a recognized institution or to be manually confirmed as a published researcher in order to sign up for an account. Members of the site each have a user profile and can upload research output including papers, data, chapters, negative results, patents, research proposals, methods, presentations, and software source code. Users may also follow the activities of other users and engage in discussions with them. Users are also able to block interactions with other users. The site has been criticized for sending unsolicited email invitations to coauthors of the articles listed on the site that were written to appear as if the email messages were sent by the other coauthors of the articles and for automatically generating apparent profiles for non-users who have sometimes felt misrepresented by them. A study found that over half of the uploaded papers appear to infringe copyright, because the authors uploaded the publisher’s version. ResearchGate not only used by the researchers, the extesnion workers and farmers are using for update the new information on farming prctices, new technologies, scientific findings etc (Yu, Min-Chun, 2016). ResearchGate is free to join and currently has about 3 million users mainly in the sciences. It offers the following benefits to researchers: 1. Sharing publications 2. Connecting with colleagues 3. Seeking new collaborations 4. Obtaining statistics and metrics on use of uploaded publications 5. Asking questions of researchers around the world that have the same set of interests 6. Job seeking or recruitment ResearchGate incorporates many elements of familiar social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn: 1. Creating profiles 2. Liking and following researchers and their publications 3. Endorsing the skills of others 4. Ability to bookmark favourites 5. Ability to comment or send feedback 6. Ability to share news items and updates easily and quickly ResearchGate links researchers around selected topics and specialisations – these can be chosen or edited at any time by members. Members can track and follow the research publications of others in their field. Members can upload copies of papers (either pre- or post-review) and the associated raw data. All will be searchable. Non-peer-reviewed material can be added only through manual file upload. Researchers are encouraged not only to upload successful results but also those results from failed projects or experiments – the latter are stored in a separate but searchable area. ResearchGate finds publications for members from a number of major databases, for example, PubMed, arXiv, IEEE, RePEC and CiteSeer enabling automatic creation of a publications list. Lists can also be created or added to manually or importing from a reference management database such as EndNote. It also appears to trawl University web sites and repositories so that if you have papers in the Exeter repository, it is very easy to create profiles and publication lists. Members will be asked to accept or decline publications (as is the case with Symplectic, for example). Members are automatically subscribed to a co-author’s feed, so that they can see work from and connect with their co-authors. ResearchGate offers the ability to search and filter on a variety of topics: author, institution, journal, publication, and so on. Members can request a copy of a paper from the author if it is not freely available. Full text publications uploaded to ResearchGate are indexed by Google. ResearchGate contains useful information about journals, such as impact factors, metrics and some details of open access policy – in this respect it is useful for bringing information together into one place (Andres, D. and Woodard, J. 2013). HOW THE RESEARH GATE WORKS 1. Share your publications, access millions more, and publish your data. 2. Connect and collaborate with colleagues, peers, co-authors, and specialists in your field. 3. Get stats and find out who’s been reading and citing your work. 4. Ask questions, get answers, and find solutions to research problems. 5. Find the right job using our research-focused job board (https://www.researchgate.net/) SOME POPULAR RESEARCHGATE SITES FOR TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER IN AGRICULTURAL EXTENSION https://www.researchgate.net/publication/256092297 Extension in India by Public Sector Institutions: An Overview Article in SSRN Electronic Journal • August 2013 DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.2315457 Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects: Effectiveness of Farmer to Farmer (F2F) Extension Model to Enhance the Technology Uptake in Rajasthan State. View project Regional Crop Planning for improving resource use efficiency and sustainabily View project K. M. Singh Dr Rajendra Prasad Central Agricultural University, Pusa 357 PUBLICATIONS 557 CITATIONS SEE PROFILE Burton E. Swanson University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign 38 PUBLICATIONS 278 CITATIONS 1. https://www.researchgate.net/…/256092297_Extension_in_India_by_Public_Sector.Ins This article in ResearchGate discussed about Indian agricultural extension. It has wide mandates and despite the pluralistic extension approaches, its coverage and use of services. The present study tries to analyze the role played by public sector institutions in India and several technology transfer plans through state governments. 2. https://www.researchgate.net/./41619251_Role_of_Agrl._Extenion This article discussed about the role of agricultural extension in the sustainable development of rural areas has not been fully exploited to realize sustainable rural communities. An effective extension system of any country always plays very prime role in the developmental process. However, in addition to technology transfer, agricultural extension play a major role. 3. https://www.researchgate.net/…/265240986_Role_of_Mass_Media_in_Transfer_of_Agrl. Extension. This article highlights the strength of mass media is of great help to extension workers in providing cost effective and efficient service to farmers. Hence, in the present context, mass media can play very important role in agricultural extension. They can reach more people in less time and less cost. Here, farmer gets right information, in right time. 4. https://www.researchgate.net/…/313947995_Stages_of_Development_of_Agr. Extn. In Nov 22, 2017 this paper published by G Rokvi?. Results of the research show that the Agricultural Extension Service in Bosnia and Herzegovina has gone through three stages and three different models of extension service development: Technology Transfer Model, The Farm Management Model and The Rural Extension Model. 5. https://www.researchgate.net/../237304797_Role_of_Electronic_Media_in_the_Adop This article elaborate about the agricultural sector dominates the economy of Pakistan, providing food, employment, income and foreign exchange. Thus, the development of country mainly depends on the development of agriculture. Agricultural extension, which is essentially a message delivery system, has a major role to play in agriculture. 6. https://www.researchgate.net/../267635698_Agricultural_Extension_in_the_Sudan This article discussed about the history of agriculture extension and agricultural technology transfer. This was started in Sudan in 1902. Extension plays essential role as communication channel to transfer new ideas. 7. https://www.researchgate.net/../265919498_Role_of_print_media_in_the_dissemin The present paper aims to assess the role of print media in agricultural technology transfer. For this purpose, extension organizations are using different ways and means including print media to educate the farming community. The data show that fellow farmers, and print media were the sources of agricultural information. 8. https://www.researchgate.net/./256092066_Role_of_State_Agricultural_Universities. This article published on Oct 12, 2017. As discussed the most of the developing countries, transfer of technology remained largely in the domain of the State Department of Agriculture and SAUs (State Agricultural Universities) are mandated to serve only a limited extension role in technology dissemination activities. The paper tries to critically review the extension activities of the State Agrricultural Universities. 9. https://www.researchgate.net/…/228659895_Innovation_system_approach_to_agrl.. This article published on Sep 30, 2017 – Innovation system approach to agricultural development: Policy implications for agricultural extension delivery in Nigeria. Interconnected institutions to create, store and transfer. the knowledge, skills and artifacts which define new technologies. 10. https://www.researchgate.net/…/251831252_Agrl._Extension and_Rural Extension.. The purpose of this publication is to highlight the important role of agricultural and rural extension to flight against hunger. Extension is seen as a broad effort directed at rural. development linking with other sectors and not just as an agricultural technology transfer service. This paper touches upon the global trends in Agricultural extension and rural development. 12.https://www.researchgate.net/…/228939989_The_research-extension-farmer_interface… This paperl links with technology transfer agencies ensure impact through a wider dissemination of technologies. Agricultural extension depends to a large extent on information exchange between and among farmers on one hand and a broad range of other actors. 13. https://www.researchgate.net/…/262957273_Extension_Theory_and_Practice_A_Revi.. This paper examines strengths and limitations of four major strategies or models in agricultural extension: linear ‘top-down’ transfer of technology; participatory approach and own ambition to contribute to improving production with changes in their roles due to increased complexity and with supporting farmers in using new technology. 14. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Biswajit_Lahiri2 Biswajit Lahiri of CAU (Central Agricultural University) is on ResearchGate. Read 35 publications, 4 questions, 35 answers and contact Biswajit Lahiri on ResearchGate, the professional network for scientists. 15. https://www.researchgate.net/…/Why_farmers_dont_adopt_the_technologies_generate. This paper highlights the reason for the farmers are reluctant to adopt farm technology is that farmers are accustomed to the farming situation that they get input from their area for centuries. Extension then fills a role of independant validation of technology benefits that doesn’t rely necessarily on business relationships. 16. https://www.researchgate.net/…/0269-475_Agricultural_Administration_and_Extensi… The purpose of this paper is to examine the character and relative importance of obstacles to the adoption of modern rice cultivation practices as perceived by small farmers. Common interpretations of extension such as ‘technology transfer’ to individual farming families are inadequate in these circumstances. 17. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Samuel_Donkoh This project report was published by Courage Saba • Solomon Sarpong • Anontise Isaac Aboyom. Three Current research Projects: 1) Agricultural technology transfer approaches, 2) adoption constraints 3) efficiency of rice farmers in northern Ghana. Project to draw the link between technology transfer approaches, adoption constraints and efficiency of rice farmers. ACADEMIA EDU Academia.edu is a social networking website for academics. The platform can be used to share papers, monitor their impact, and follow the research in a particular field. It was launched in September 2008, with 31 million registered users as of January 2016 and over 8 million uploaded texts. Academia.edu was founded by Richard Price, who raised $600,000 from Spark Ventures, Brent Hoberman, and others. Academia.edu proclaims it supports the open science or open access movements and, in particular, instant distribution of research, and a peer-review system that occurs alongside distribution, instead of prior to it. Accordingly, the company stated its opposition to the proposed (since withdrawn) 2011 U.S. Research Works Act, which would have prevented open-access mandates in the U.S. Academia.edu is a platform for academics to share research papers. The company’s mission is to accelerate the world’s research. Academics use Academia.edu to share their research, monitor deep analytics around the impact of their research, and track the research of academics they follow. Over 58 million academics have signed up to Academia.edu, adding 20 million papers. Academia.edu attracts over 36 million unique visitors a month. Having looked into it a little it sounds like it might be a useful site – the idea of a “social network for scientists” is one have seen the need for in the past. However, partly due to bad experiences with the seemingly similar ResearchGate. Without signing up for an academia.edu account the site doesn’t offer much information. Is it genuinely useful for any of the following purposes ( http://www.academia.edu.com. Accessed on 22 December, 2017). 1. as a platform for networking with academics 2. for discovering relevant research 3. as an effective system for post-publication peer review 4. for organising references among a small team of people working on a project Usefulness for discovery comes in 3 ways: a) The home News feed: you will find out about: 1. publications of people you follow 2. papers read by several of the “people connected to you” (those you follow and also their followees), or papers recommended by one person connected to you 3. activity in manuscript feedback sessions. Of course, the quality of the feed will depend directly on how many people you follow and how relevant they are for you. If you follow people whom you know but about whose research you don’t care much then your feed will be boring, especially because the ‘people connected to you’ that they will introduce will be even less relevant to you. Just follow people you really want to know about. b) Navigating through topics of interest: Each topic allows one to see a list of researchers who follow that topic and, more interestingly at least to see a list of papers recently posted under that topic. Keep in mind that topics are user-defined, thus there may be several similar formulations for each subject that you would consider following (such as “humor”, “humour”, “humor studies”, “humour research”, etc); it is best to follow them all, as they have partially overlapping communities. c) Mixed text-author search: Jumping from texts to their author’s profile, then to other texts by the same author or her co-authors, and so on. Unlike Google Scholar, where one searches and navigates in a universe of ranked text lists and interlinked texts. Academia.edu introduces the researcher profile as a “bridge” that connects different publications. It is up to you how much you will enjoy this new mode of transport, so to say. Academia.edu is more pleasant to look at and also has more opportunities to connect texts with author profiles as you scroll in the news feed or in various lists. For this text-author jump is the most useful feature of Academia.edu. Last but not least, find it energizing to look at texts which have been recently written or read by a living person. It gives a human touch to the entire enterprise. Of course, it also anchors literature searchers firmly in the here-and-now at the expense of past decades and centuries, so this is something have to compensate for. This sort of discovery works best for publications which are not in a very specific niche of keywords which you already master and you can search for in Google Scholar. It works for publications that depart somehow from the pattern – either by nuancing the topic, or going meta to reflect on methods and the philosophy of the enterprise, or taking a diverging theoretical stance which do not usually tap into, and so on. This gives some space for serendipity in extending the scope of thinking (http://www.academia.edu.com) SOME POPULAR ACADEMIA.EDU SITES FOR TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER IN AGRICULTURAL EXTENSION 1. www.academia.edu/…/Importance_of_Cyber_Extension_on_Agricultural_Information… This paper highlights the progresses in info-communication technology are poised to complement extension efforts for transfer of technology. The first milestone in agro- cyber extension in the world was initiated in 1995, by ARIS (Agricultural Research Information Systems), currently known as AKMU (Agricultural Knowledge Management Unit). 2. www.academia.edu/5370429/Agricultural_Extension_in_India This paper analyzes the basics of Extension, conditions in the rural population, calls for agricultural, importance of Agricultural Extension, dimensions of extension approaches that are context and situation. This also highlights the Agricultural Extension, Farmer’s Information Needs and Importance. 3. www.academia.edu/…/The_Role_of_Extension_in_the_development… The paper entitled “The Role of Extension in the Development of Agrl. Engineering Profession in Nigeria” published in the Journal ‘Arid Zone Journal of Engineering, Technology and Environment’ in August, 2012; Vol. 8, 47-52 by Habib I. Ahmad (Department of Agricultural Engineering, Bayero University, Kano, Nigeria). 4. www.academia.edu/../Challenges_of_agricultural_technology_transfer_and_production. This paper explained about the transfer of existing technologies and economic knowledge from the more progressive to the lagging farmers could increase productivity. This idea has provided part of the rationale for agricultural extension systems, particularly in farm management. Moreover, innovation was thought to be the best. 5. www.academia.edu/./Options_of_agricultural_extension_provision_for_rural_developt.. In many transition countries this process necessitates the transfer of capital-intensive technologies to knowledge based activities prioritizing thus the role of knowledge rather than capital and assets. This however has not yet been introduced at the same pace within the agricultural sector in Uzbekistan was discussed in this paper. 6. www.academicjournals.org/journal/JAERD/article-full-text-pdf/EB650824104 This paper summarized the technology transfer role of agriculture to the farmers, agricultural development programme role in technology transfer, linkages in extension system and extension service prvided to the farmers by agricultural departments. 7. uam.edu.ng/Academics/…/Agricultural…Extension/Agric-Extension-Communication This paper highlights the need for specialized training to produce the staff that will manage the intricate process of agricultural technology transfers and development in Nigeria. Therefore, in keeping with the University’s philosophy of innovation and service, the Agricultural Extension and Rural Development is committed to teaching, research and extension activities. LINKEDIN LinkedIn is a social networking site designed specifically for the business community. The goal of the site is to allow registered members to establish and document networks of people they know and trust professionally. LinkedIn was co-founded by Reid Hoffman, a former Executive Vice President in charge of business and corporate development for PayPal. The company started in December 2002, the site which was launched in May 5 2003, currently has over 300 million members from 200 countries, representing 170 industries. According to Reid Hoffman, 27 percent of LinkedIn subscribers are recruiters. LinkedIn Corporation is a social networking website for people in professional jobs. Users can make connections with other people they have worked with, post their work experience and skills, look for jobs and look for workers. The site is available in many languages, including most European languages, Japanese, Korean, Indonesian and Malay. LinkedIn has more than 200 million members around the world. Microsoft acquired LinkedIn in June of 2016 for $26.2 billion. According to some experts, the rich troves of semi-structured data that LinkedIn’s members freely give away — job titles, geographies, industry information, skill sets — made the deal a steal, even though the LinkedIn acquisition was Microsoft’s more expensive purchase to date. LinkedIn has been gathering up data across the more than 225 million LinkedIn profiles in an Economic Graph to provide policymakers, employers, workers and educators with data-driven insight into patterns that will help align workforce supply with demand. Such patterns include when people generally look for the next step in their career, work migration trends in specific geographical locations, skill gaps in specific industries and what cities are “stickiest,” i.e. areas that employees are less likely to move away (Encyclopedia, 2017). A LinkedIn member’s profile page, which emphasizes skills, employment history and education, has professional network news feeds and a limited number of customizable modules. Basic membership for LinkedIn is free. Network members are called “connections.” Unlike other free social networking sites like Facebook or Twitter, LinkedIn requires connections to have a pre-existing relationship. With basic membership, a member can only establish connections with someone he has worked with, knows professionally (online or offline) or has gone to school with. Connections up to three degrees away (see six degrees of separation) are seen as part of the member’s network, but the member is not allowed to contact them through LinkedIn without an introduction. Premium subscriptions can be purchased to provide members with better access to contacts in the LinkedIn database. Linkedin is geared toward the professional community. It allows you to network with work colleagues and is a powerful for brands and job seekers. You can post your resume, connect with other professionals and keep up to date with industry news. You can follow groups focused on topics relevant to your industry. Connects with professionals, share information related or becomes a resources. It is an online directory of professionals and organisations/companies. Individuals use LinkedIn for networking, job search, company research, and connecting with alumni and exchanging information and experiences. Companies use LinkedIn for hiring and connecting with other companies. This network has over 460 million+ members across the world. Features of profile including skills, employment history and education. E-mail contacts to search for professional contacts either friends, or co-workers and connect with them. Create and Join groups LinkedIn permits the creation of groups that share interest in specific initiatives or projects. One can search for groups or professional pages, join groups and connect with other professionals. etc. can be shared. person who endorses will appear next to the skill on that person also receive an email. How to use LinkedIn for Agriculture groups and share developments in agriculture and allied sectors. Professionals are connecting with prospective organisations for employment opportunities. Organisations are also reviewing LinkedIn profiles to seek experts and potential employees. CGIAR, World Bank, FAO are sharing updates on LinkedIn and enabling others to connect with their employees (http://www.linkedin.com. Accessed on 02 December, 2017). Andres, D. and Woodard, J. (2013) explined about the Flickr user profile, considerations, examples and resources are as follows: LinkedIn is an elder of currently booming social media networks. LinkedIn has 225 million global members and is a tremendous resource for job seekers and headhunters. The reason to list LinkedIn here is that it has cultivated a collection of 1.3 million Groups, but most social activity congregates in just 5 percent of them. The best Groups are very active places for conversation and drive a disproportionate amount of referral traffic to outside sources. LinkedIn is an oft-overlooked resource to cross-post on, build project reputations, and boost traffic to other platforms. USER PROFILE: business people, students, and job hunters. Most common usages: connecting, browsing, conversing, endorsing CONSIDERATIONS: Although Twitter is perhaps the least formal of social networks, LinkedIn is considerably more buttoned up. This is no surprise, considering its direct relationship to potential job opportunities and employers. EXAMPLES: Rural Development Network YPARD RESOURCES: Mashable’s A Beginners Guide to LinkedIn SOME POPULAR LINKEDIN SITES FOR TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER IN AGRICULTURAL EXTENSION Sivakumar Palaniswamy Business Manager at AGRINNOVATE INDIA LIMITED Central Delhi, Delhi, India Education 1. Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore Thanks Gerard Sylvester for providing an opportunity to… http://www.fao.org/documents/card/en/c/I8494EN/ 1. https://in.linkedin.com/in/sivakumarsachin This linkedin posted by sivakumarPalanisamy Business Manager – ?Agrinnovate India Limted, Central Delhi, Delhi, India. He discussed about the Public agricultural extension systems often fail due to inadequate consultation of farmers about their information needs and poor understanding of their information search strategies. Seeding Success through Innovation & Technology: Role of Innovations in Transforming Indian Agriculture. 2. https://www.linkedin.com/groups/862657/profile The Rural Development Network on LinkedIn connects people involved in rural development, in developing and developed countries. It is a forum for exchange of ideas and has over 23,000 members. 3. https://in.linkedin.com/in/k-c-siva-balan-4ab7a734 This linkedin posted by C. Sivabalan – ?Asst.Professor (Agrl.Extension) – ?School of Agriculture, PRIST University, Thanjavur, Tamil Nadu, India. His Academic carriers as TNAU research assistance fellowship holder 2012, review board member IASIR journals, best paper award – “Role of ICT in Rural Development” (Tamil), 21st All India Scientific Tamil Congress, Coimbatore.2013. *Session Convener – New Vistas in Technology Transfer. Agricultural Graduate Student Conference in 2013. 4. https://in.linkedin.com/in/society-for-technology-management-stem-4433463b This linkedin posted by Society for Technology Management (STEM) is a non-profit and leading association of technology transfer professionals working on professional development, CSIR (Central Scientifc and Industrial Research), ICAR, Department of Biotechnology and other premier Asian Research Institutions. 5. https://in.linkedin.com/in/shaik-n-meera-176603ba This linkedin posted by Shaik N.Meera Rice Extension Scientist Officer, Agricultural Research Information Systems at National Rice Research Institute, Cuttack, India. His achivement profiles like Leader of e-learning platforms for rice sector. Management role in 18 online platforms for rice stakeholders (researchers, extension and policy) –Facilitator. 6. https://in.linkedin.com/in/khelawan-daharia-79aa6a51 This linkedin posted by Khelawan daharia, Ast. soil conservation officer, ?Department Of Farmer Welfare and Agriculture Development. State Master Trainner, ATMA (Agrl. Technology Management Agency) and DNO (District Nodal Officer) –ATMA. Worked as leader to provide overall leadership for agricultural extension and related technology transfer activities, technical coordination and administrative supervision for all block-level extension programs carried out under the auspices of the FIAC (Farm Information Advisory Centre). 7. https://in.linkedin.com/in/manjeet-singh-nain-a8780227 This linkedin posted by Manjeet Singh Nain, ?Senior Scientist at IARI (Indian Agricultural Research Intitute), New Delhi. He actively involved in teaching, research in Agricultural Extension and Extension as service. Started M.Sc. and Ph. D, programme, guided students, coordinated village visit stay programme, Coordinated RAWE (Rural Agricultural Work Experience) programme nodal officer in Technology transfer programme of IARI, New Delhi. 8.https://in.linkedin.com/…/national-agricultural-extension-and-research-liaison-services… This linkedin posted by NAERLS (National Agricultural Extension and Research Liaison) contributes to national development through technology transfer and adoption process, research, extension publications, electronic media packages and trainings. Its expertise spans the social sciences, agricultural engineering, animal science, food technology, veterinary sciences, agronomy, soil science etc. 9. https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-ward-8b170a1b This linkedin posted in January-April 2017. Agricultural extension – demand led approaches …, Evaluation of AgriTT Programme (Agricultural Technology Transfer) in china. It has developed an agricultural extension approach which builds on community engagement and micro-finance as well as research on nutrition, ecosystem services etc. 10. https://in.linkedin.com/in/vinay-reddy-b7961819 This linkedin posted by Vinay Reddy, awarded ?Prime Minister’s Rural Development Fellow – ?Ministry of Rural Development, Government of India entitled as “Importance of indigenous traditional knowledge while planning agriculture extension activities – A case study of Bijapur district, Bastar Division, Chhattisgarh”. Public policy in the sectors of rural development mainly sustainable livelihoods, agriculture, skill development and technology transfer. PINTEREST Pinterest is a web and mobile application company that operates a software system designed to discover information on the World Wide Web, mainly using images and on a shorter scale, GIFs (Graphics Interchange Formats) and videos. The site was founded by Ben Silbermann, Paul Sciarra and Evan Sharp. Development of Pinterest began in December 2009, and the site launched as a closed beta in March 2010. The site proceeded to operate in invitation-only open beta. Pinterest allows users to save images and categorize them on different boards. They can follow other users’ boards if they have similar tastes. The evolution of Pinterest is based on the shared interest of its users and relies on its members to produce the content. The most popular categories, as of March 2012, were home, arts and crafts, style/fashion and food. Silbermann said he personally wrote to the site’s first 5,000 users offering his personal phone number and even meeting with some of its users. Pinterest’s early growth wasn’t as Silbermann has expected. Four months after being launched, Pinterest only had a few thousand users, compared to Instagram which had about 1 million users after that same amount of time. Pinterest is a free website that requires registration to use. Users can upload, save, sort, and manage images—known as pins—and other media content (e.g., videos) through collections known as pinboards. Content can also be found outside of Pinterest and similarly uploaded to a board via the “Pin It” button, which can be downloaded to the bookmark bar on a web browser, or be implemented by a webmaster directly on the website. Some websites include red and white “pin it” buttons on items, which allow Pinterest users to pin them directly. In 2015, Pinterest implemented a feature that allows users to search with images instead of words. Pinterest also allows businesses to create pages aimed at promoting their companies online. Such pages can serve as a “virtual storefront”. In one case study of a fashion website, users visiting from Pinterest spent $180 compared to $85 spent from users coming from Facebook. These users spent less time on the company’s website, choosing instead to browse from the company’s pinboard. Further brand studies have continued to show Pinterest is more effective at driving sales than other forms of social media. A study carried out by Wolfgang Digital found that site traffic originating from Pinterest Business pages was more engaged spending up to five times longer on site. In 2013, Pinterest introduced a new tool called ‘Rich Pins’, to enhance the customer experience when browsing through pins made by companies. Business pages can include various data, topics and information such as prices of products, ratings of movies or ingredients for recipes. In May 2017, Pinterest president Tim Kendall made the announcement for Instant Ideas, the new feature allows advertisers reach consumers through their smartphone’s camera. Pinterest plans to eventually add them to results displayed when people use its Lens feature to scan a photo from their phone to find related pins as well as the Shop the Look feature that lets people tap products featured in a photo to reveal a list of links to similar products available for purchase (Tim Peterson, 2017). Registration is required to use. Like Facebook and Twitter, Pinterest now lets marketers access the data collected on its users. Technology providers including Salesforce.com, Hootsuite, Spredfast, Percolate, Piqora, Curalate and Tailwind are presently the only companies granted access to the data. By granting access to users’ data, Pinterest lets marketers investigate how people respond to products. If a product has a high number of repins, this generally tells the producer of the product that it is well liked by many members of the Pinterest community. Now that Pinterest lets marketers access the data, companies can view user comments on the product to learn how people like or dislike it. A study on Pinterest practices in 2013 found that “repinning” was the most popular action by users, followed by likes, and lastly, commenting. According to Salesforce.com, Pinterest has become a key part of corporate digital marketing strategies. Before 2013, Pinterest only accounted for about 2 percent of global social-mediated sales, but by May 2014 that was up to about 23 percent. People use social media sites like Pinterest to direct or guide their choices in products. However, at this time, the data collected from Pinterest is predominantly from female users. A recent study found that 80% of Pinterest users are women. Many businesses use Pinterest Analytics to investigate whether the time spent on the social networking site is actually producing results or not. Through the access of Pinterest Analytics, companies receive insight to data via API (Application Programming Interface), which makes it easier for the businesses using this method to closely engage with the consumer population on Pinterest. Pinterest Analytics is much like Google Analytics. It is a created service that generates comprehensive statistics on a specific website’s traffic, commonly used by marketers. Pins, pinners, repins and repinners are some aspects of user data that Pinterest Analytics provides. It also collects data that depicts the percentage of change within a specific time, to determine if a product is more popular on a specific day during the week, or slowly becoming unpopular. This data helps marketing agencies alter their strategies to gain more popularity, often changing the visual content to appeal to the Pinterest community. The “Most Clicked” tab in Pinterest Analytics demonstrates products that are more likely to sell. According to a study by Converto, in April 2012, Pinterest drove more social media-originated e-commerce sales than Facebook or Twitter. Companies also can add their own ideas features to explore how consumers respond to a product, like the Pinterest Trends product, Piqora. Piquora is a visual analytics and marketing provider for specifically visual social networking sites including Tumblr, Instagram, and Pinterest. Marketers use Piqora’s Pinterest Trends to analyze a brand’s performance against competitors on Pinterest (Brown. Eliot, 2017). Globally, the site is most popular with women. In 2012, a report found that 83% of the global users were women. Britain, however, is an exception. As of March 2012, 56% of the users were male and their age profile was different too, being about 10 years younger than in the U.S., where the predominant age range was typically 35–44. In terms of age distribution, the Pinterest demographic closely resembles the U.S Internet population. Small businesses can capitalize on the Pinterest surge to market their products and grow their consumer base. Pinterest, a highly visual medium, gives businesses a chance to engage consumers with compelling images and colorful infographics that promote deals and new products. Pinning pictures of employees could also help customers identify with the people who work at the company, putting a face to a name. Small business owners can also help facilitate conversations about their brands online by adding “share” buttons to their websites. These digital icons allow site visitors to easily click and share a piece of content through a specific Pinterest board. All said, Pinterest like other social media channels, can help create brand awareness and possibly facilitate website leads, but we still believe that, for most businesses, search engines can provide better ROI (Rate of Investment) and direct conversion of visitors into customers. Let’s have the conversation though – contact us to discuss how we might be able to help your business with a solid marketing plan based on the marketing channels best suited to your business. Stay connected through our blog for information on Digital Marketing. Interestingly, Pinterest is now the fastest-growing platform for online content sharing, according to a new report from online content distribution service ShareThis. The report analyzed the millions of monthly shares made through ShareThis in the third quarter of 2013 across more than 120 social media channels and two million websites and discovered that content sharing on Pinterest jumped 19.2% in the latest quarter of 2013, and LinkedIn sharing grew 15.1%. Facebook saw content sharing rise 14.7%, while sharing on Twitter fell 7.6% (Wikipedia, 2013). SOME POPULAR PINTEREST SITES FOR TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER IN AGRICULTURAL EXTENSION 1. https://www.pinterest.fr/pin/531284087267110553/ This Pin was discovered by Krista. The Farmer’s Wifee. Discover (and save!) the.farm safety and farming activities. 2. https://www.pinterest.com/explore/agricultural-extension/ This pinterest was posted by Thomas Monroe Campbell, the first agricultural extension agent in the US to promoted modern farming methods to farmers in Alabama. Charles Hamilton Houston was a black lawyer who helped play a role in dismantling the Jim Crow laws and helped train future Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall. 3. https://in.pinterest.com/explore/agriculture/Vertical farming This was posted to find and save ideas about explore 25+ best Agriculture ideas on Pinterest. See more ideas about Vertical farming, Hydroponic farming and Aqua ponics. 4. https://in.pinterest.com/explore/agricultural-extension/ This was posted to find and save ideas about explore 25+ best Agricultural extension ideas on Pinterest. See more ideas about Agricultural cooperatives, hobby and Small farm houses. 5. https://www.pinterest.cl › Travel › Agriculture in india This was posted for Canara Bank Recruitment 2013. Apply Online for Agricultural Extension Officers and Security Managers. EntranceExamForms displayed. 6. https://www.pinterest.ca/pin/450148925241706311/ This was posted for CGVYAPAM (Chhattisgarh Vyavsayik Pariksha Mandal), Recruitment 2017 – 828 Agriculture Extension Officer & other Vacancies. 7. https://www.pinterest.dk/pin/513269688759318836/ This was posted by Rajshahi University in Bangladesh. Job Circular 2016. Rajshahi University is now working in all location for helping the people of Rajshahi position. So Rajshahi University is a very attractive job service in Bangladesh. Dutch-Bangla Bank Job Circular 2016 if you are ready to take a voyage in a vibrant and challenging corporate. 8. https://www.pinterest.com/pin/362680576228445153/ This was posted for The Role of Precision Agriculture Progression at Work – Infographic. 9. https://in.pinterest.com/explore/agriculture-statistics/ This was posted to find and save ideas about Agriculture statistics on Pinterest. See more ideas about Agriculture, Agricultural science etc. 10. https://www.pinterest.com.au › Technology › Precision agriculture This was posted to find and save ideas about explore 25+ best Agricultural extension ideas on Pinterest for precision agriculture. It is now ‘main stream’ in agriculture and is playing a key role as the industry comes to terms with the environment, market forces, quality requirements, traceability, vehicle guidance and crop management. Research continues to be necessary and needs to be reported and disseminated to a wide range of precision agriculture. 11. https://www.pinterest.com.au › Education › Agricultural science This was posted to find and save ideas about explore 25+ best Agricultural science ideas on Pinterest. See more ideas about Agriculture and Animal science. Since the first plants were domesticated, irrigation has played a vital role in the development of agriculture worldwide. Take a whirlwind tour of the history of agriculture and irrigation. 12. https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/261208847117607091/ This was posted by FAO Infographic: International Year of Soils 2015: Healthy soils for a healthy life. Our soils are in danger because of expanding cities, deforestation, unsustainable land use and management practices, pollution, overgrazing and climate change. The current rate of soil degradation threatens the capacity to meet the needs of future. 13. https://www.pinterest.es/pin/450148925236607059/ This pinterest was posted for recognising the role of women in smallholder agriculture. 14. https://www.pinterest.de › Dekoideen für die Wohnung › Modern agriculture This was posted to find and save ideas about explore 25+ best Modern Agriculure ideas on Pinterest. Precision Planting is starting to play a growing role in modern agriculture. Using GPS the farmers have more accurate information about which specific areas of a field need chemical applications. This is very beneficial to the issues in the dead zone because it helps make it more specific and are able to use less! GPS.gov. ADVANTAGES AND ROLE OF SOCIAL MEDIA IN AGRICULTURAL EXTENSION ADVANTAGES OF SOCIAL MEDIA IN AGRICULTURAL EXTENSION Saravanan et al., (2015) discussed about the social media advantageously can be used in agricultural extension are as follows : 1. Highly cost effective 2. Simultaneously reaches large numbers of clients 3. Location and client specific, problem-oriented 4. User-generated content and discussion among the community members 5. Easily accessed from mobile phones 6. Increases internet presence of extension organizations and their client reach 7. Democratization of information by making it accessible to all 8. Brings all stakeholders into a single platform 9. Can measure, reach and success by tracking number of visitors, friends, followers 10. Facebook ‘likes’, conversation index and number of shares. These potentials make social media a highly relevant and beneficial platform for extension personnel to engage with their clients and peers. 11. Lack of connectedness with farmers have long been cited as a serious lacunae of extension services and social media gives ample opportunities to solve this issue. Carl Jackson et al., (2009) discussed on advantages of social media in agricultural extension and farmers are as follows. 1. Farmer advisory services Social media and ICTs are starting to demonstrate their potential for the co-creation, co-documentation and co-distribution of information and advice on farm practices. This potential lays both in their power as enabling media tools and as symbols for open and collaborative ways of working. This potential is timely given the retrenchment of public agriculture extension services over the last decades. The risk perhaps would be in trying to fill the gap left by the extension officer to exactly and missing the opportunities for innovative reworking of what farmer capacity development could be. Mobiles can compliment and extend radio by offering interactivity. FrontlineSMS, by turning an offline computer and mobile phone into a communications hub, is perhaps the most promising social media platform. MXit is a strong contender for social media platform for urban Africa beyond its stronghold in South Africa, but requires JavaScript capable handsets which exclude the very cheapest models used by the poor. Both are non-subsidised and highlight the important role of enterprise in harnessing mobiles benefits. 2. Accessibility Social media can also magnify risk for people who are already vulnerable to abuse of state power because they lack rights or protection because of age, sexual orientation, ethnic identity, etc. If social media and other ICTs do transform inequalities it will be through their innovative use to better create, grasp or sustain livelihood opportunities in other domains. This implies short-term investments to overcome the barriers to participation in these livelihood activities. Those with fewest assets will need to have their participation supported in the short-term to avoid entrenchment of existing inequalities. Subsidy should cover the cost of handsets and acquiring information literacy skills, as well as mobile airtime. However, there is little confidence that subsidy is sustainable outside of essential public services like health and that elsewhere users will have to pay as best as they can for services that meet their needs so that suppliers can recover costs (e.g. Nokia Life Tools and Google SMS Trader). 3. Rural areas The rapid spread of mobile phone networks into rural areas that have never had a two-way communications infrastructure, has the potential to connect people in all the ways that global telecommunications now offers (local, national, international). Whether it has the potential to transform rural areas in ways that transcend core-periphery relations with local urban centres is unproven. However, in many areas with no landlines and no internet, mobile phones, enhanced by tools like MXit and FrontlineSMS do offer the potential to bring social media to opportunities that would otherwise be unavailable. WiMax and 3G mobile may bring internet services to rural citizens eventually but the time horizon is expected to be significantly longer than the 2012 date predicted for unconstrained access for professionals in urban areas in Africa. 4. Web 2.0 Web 2.0 tools could help marginalised actors to adapt knowledge through remixing, redistributing and co-creating content. Web 2.0 is more bandwidth heavy on any device or network. Access to diverse media tools at the local level can lead to farmers and the community creating and sharing local agricultural knowledge more successfully than narrower top-down approaches. Web 2.0 combined with mobile phones for content gathering can connect global funders with local campaigners more directly than before, but also sidestepping national structures in ways not possible before. Co-creation tools like wikis are influencing ways of conceiving action towards more transparent, distributed and light models typified by networks for mobilising autonomous actors and underutilised resources. These models of action are still fundamentally about human enthusiasm. 5. Networks Social media’s ability to dynamically aggregate many weak links is giving renewed impetus to network centric models of social and economic change. For rural communities location specific networks that mobilise trusted peers (e.g. neighbouring farmers) can build capabilities through co-creation of knowledge and co-learning. In resource poor and risk prone environments a diversity of media including internet, radio, print, mobile phones, television used in social ways facilitates wider participation in networks. The emergence of the protocols that enable these socially mediated networks in the 21 century mirrors the international protocols of the 19th century that grew up around media like the letter post and telegraphs. Social networks still have a place within them for more central hubs of coordination and brokers of relationships. 6. Mapping and GPS The ease by which position data can be created and mapped is creating opportunities for aggregation and access to location specific information. In combination with Web 2.0 tools co-creation, re-mixing and redistribution of this information can be a powerful driver for collaborations between new configurations of actors. 7. Bottom of the pyramid social media enterprises Social meida tools, especially in mobile phones, are being used in urban areas to reverse the assumptions about how poor people benefit from ICTs. A view that includes their role as digital producers and entrepreneurs is needed to catch up with reality and build on strengths. 8. Collaboration spaces Social media not only permit collaboration but they have the potential to re-configure the spaces and interactions that emerge through them. Whilst it may not level inequalities, social media can create opportunities where improbable relationships can be formed. 9. Social Benefits Measures of performance for social media need to be sophisticated enough so as not to exclude benefits that cannot be directly quantified or monetised. 10. Traditional media and mediation What in future will define traditional in terms of media content, production, distribution and relationships is being written by social media actors rather than those in more traditional media such as print and television. There is no status-quo at present in terms of what ‘the media’ is. However, for processes of learning many other media toolsets and mindsets will remain relevant and probably more relevant than social media. Face to face interaction underpins most good collaboration, even if it then migrates into other mediated spaces and tools. ROLE OF SOCIAL MEDIA IN AGRICULTURAL EXTENSION Dalbeer Simgh (2015) reported the different role of social media in agricultural extension are as follows: • Save money, time and effort • Information rich and interactive • Per unit cost is less as compared to traditional form of extension • Experts can be contacted directly • Suitable for creating awareness among the users • Supplying extension information to a nationwide • Facilitate quick dissemination • Extending outreach to new audience • Publications in agriculture extension can be shared • Attracting youth towards agriculture • Widen the scope of extension • Help in market-led extension • Assist to get feedback USES AND PURPOSE OF SOCIAL MEDIA IN AGRICULTURAL EXTENSION Social media used as user friendly tools for the Agricultural Extension as mentioned below (Senthilkumar and Philip, 2015 ). 1. Easy to learn and do 2. Students can easily create forums and share 3. Peer review possible 4. Easy Storage and retrieval 5. Reproducibility 6. Audio visual learning I. Students 1. Generate, collate, store, retrieve and discuss reading materials 2. Document case studies in audio and video format 3. Network with millions of likeminded colleagues 4. Improves interaction II. Teachers 1. Easy to use and address the concerns of millions of students 2. Teaching at own phase 3. Effective communication through the use of audio- visual aids 4. Improvisation over time 5. Create learners interest III. Researchers 1. Open and real time research information made available 2. Can reach and access information across the world 3. Reduces plagiarism 4. Improves the research quality 5. Can organize or group, researchers of same interest across the world IV. Extension 1. Up to date advisory for farmers and extension workers 2. Facilitates easy understanding / diagnosis of problems and providing quality solution. 3. Helps to create, store and retrieve local database of farmers, problems and solutions The use of social media sites, blogs etc help to enable collaboration, information sharing and partnerships for innovation among literate farmers, stakeholders, extensionists and other actors. Enabling farmers and others to “gain a voice”, offering localized and customized information, helping to share and manage the information are the main advantage in using social media in agricultural extension services. Also social media creates meaningful relationships with customers and improves market intelligence and get ahead with competitors. The use of social media is rising and provides an opportunity for networking, extension and adoption, for example, compared to ‘traditional’media. Advances in cloud computing and smartphones have increased the ability to utilise different forms of social interaction. Are farmers and rural businesses realising this opportunity? The term social media covers a wide range of technologies that have developed out of the internet. This has shifted the internet from passive (websites holding information) to active, connecting people and allowing them to contribute to, as well as consume information. Social media is increasingly being used as a medium of sharing information and creating awareness. Platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and blogs have been used to engage with various audiences. The users generate and shape the content. Social media strengths are complementing traditional media in facilitating the shaping of content (Newman et al., 2015). Social media use for disseminating agricultural information has the potential to bridge the gap created by the short fall in the farmers’ extension ratio. The ratio of extension agents to farm families as recommended by Food and Agricultural Oraganisation is put at 1:250; this is against 1: 4,882 with 415,030 farm families in Oyo state (FAO, 2012). The use of social media is becoming increasingly necessary among all professionals of the world. The information that is transfer on the social media cannot be compared to any other means of information dissemination in the world because it gives direct access to information source and how to go about the use of the information gathered. This is believed to have the potential to change the face of agriculture in Nigeria and improve or increase the channel of gathering information among farmers because the ratio of agricultural extension officers is very low compare to the number of farmers that exist in the country Sanusi, et al., 2010). The special features of participation, openness, conversation, community and connectedness makes social media a unique user experience (Mayfield, 2008). Facebook has 195.16 million active users in India, YouTube gets more than 50 million unique users each month, Twitter has 23.2 million users, WhatsApp has 70 million users in India and the highest monthly active users in the world. All these statistics prove the huge potential that social media can be for extension practitioners to reach out to the people. India is a huge market for social media that is constantly expanding into the rural areas and that improves the scope of reaching not only the farmers but the farm families and youth altogether for higher impact world (www. statista.com, 2016). One of the main use of social media as a tool in farming is the ability to connect with farmers and agribusiness people from around the world over large geographical distances. The benefits of this can be as large or as small as we choose, depending on how much time we wish to spend on it. Collecting ideas on various farming technique globally and reaching out for opinions. Social media platforms such as Twitter allows for sharing knowledge and articles of interest in a quick easy format. Knowledge is an input into the farming business, but unlike other agricultural inputs such as feed and fuel, knowledge can be used and re-used over and over again by a large number of people at the same time, transformed with new ideas added to it, so that the output is in a stronger form than when it first arrived. The power of social media is that it is open to be shared universally so that knowledge is not hidden in one person’s email inbox or at a conference with only select attendee. A main benefit of social media in agricultural marketing is ability to gain wealth of knowledge and ideas, opportunity to establish key partnership, opportunity to reach wider consumers, experts in agricultural field (Kuria, C.W. 2014). Many organizations have developed agricultural apps for farmers to receive information on agricultural practices and engaging clients online, in addition to a wide range of social media tools for agricultural extension and advisory services. In-spite of all the advantages, its actual use in rural areas of developing countries is still low due to economic conditions and infrastructure availability. The use of social media can prove to be a powerful aide if utilized up to its potential. The farmers of rural areas should understand about the use of social media for their agricultural growth. Conducting training programs, awareness campaigns, and workshops will help them to make understand the agricultural app and use social media better. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and blogs are the major platforms for agricultural information dissemination. Professionals are using social media to form networks and farmers are taking to social media to talk to peers and consumers. All big things in agriculture – new technology or innovations, seminars and meetings, workshops and trainings, reports, publications – get tweeted or hash tagged on social media. In general, social media is a very useful tool in agricultural extension and rural advisory services. The field of agricultural extension specializes in the dissemination of information to the farmers and rural dwellers to improve their standard of living in all aspect of life. Social media could provide a platform for an interaction mediated by electronic communication between the farmers or extension officers (Babu et al., 2012). Amit lathiya et al., (2015) explained about the different uses of social media as follows: 1. Networking (Farmer –Farmer) : The formation of social media was initially created to create networking opportunities between people, which allowed for communication over larger distances, and in much quicker time frames. Therefore, it is understandable that one of the first facets of social media investigated was its networking abilities for the rural industry. It is commonly noted by farmers around the world that farming can be a relatively lonely occupation, which may have you only communicating with your dogs, cows and occasionally your partner on the ordinary day. People find relationships a good source of satisfaction and are one of the reasons social networks have value in farming because it can reduce social isolation. Networking has widely been recognised as an important part of business and innovation. Networks as “associations of individuals or communicate with each other for mutual benefit”. The presence for the access and creation of new knowledge. The potential for increased future value of social media as a networking tool is only as powerful as the users that are engaged in the technology. 2. Marketing : –The use of social media as a marketing tool has proved successful in many other industries – Providing valuable content and using an authentic and transparent voice can connect to farmers. Available research shows that there are farmer demographics using social media, particularly Twitter. –The younger farmers are using smart phone technology and social media at higher rates, therefore, gives organisations an ability to connect with different audiences. 3. Lobbying : `Social Media can bring together a collective voice and can provide power and authority on -issues that once were difficult to get to higher political powers. 4. Extension : –Utilising different knowledge transfer techniques and social platforms can help disseminate information to a wider audience. – Twitter is an effective place for different farming techniques to be discussed – Opportunities for industry organizations to use Twitter more for extension purposes – Agricultural extension activities 5. Consumer engagement : Consumer engagement with food is becoming more important all around the world with consumers having more influence in determining farming practices. It is now more important than ever for farmers and our agricultural industries to connect with our consumers and be a part of the conversation for the future of food production. Social Media allows us to connect to a wide and diverse audience quickly and directly, with a transparent and authentic voice. It’s not only that however, using social media as a listening device to understand our consumers needs and wants can be extremely powerful. Mobile phone and social media used by farmers `A major boost to social media use comes from increased mobile phone subscriptions. Unique mobile subscribers are 51 per cent of the global population, whereas, global mobile penetration is 97 per cent. Globally, active mobile social media accounts penetration is 23 per cent. Nigeria and India has the highest share of web traffic through mobile in the world. 1.69 billion people across the globe are accessing social media via mobile where total number of active social media accounts are 2.08 billion (ITU, 2015). In growing markets like India, of the 118 million active social media accounts, 100 million are mobile users. With falling mobile broadband prices, it has now become affordable in 111 countries, giving another push to internet access in developing countries. According to a report released by Juniper networks, 97 per cent of people in developing countries say that mobile internet has transformed their lives. Poorer mobile phone users focused more on communicating to improve their lives in some way or the other (Banks, 2015).. But then again, with mobile being the major source of internet access across the world, it is going to change the landscape of social media use in a very near future. What needs to be emphasised is how best mobile and social media can be combined and used strategically to bring changes in the life of the people and lead to their development. The use of social media in agricultural marketing is increasing rapidly now a days. Many service provider companies are giving better facilities to the farmers. Eg. BSNL is providing mahakrishi plan (Kemp, 2015). Social media allows users to communicate directly with the customers, service providers; information sharing centers etc. farmers are using social media to increase their produce at each stage. Social media and ICT starts sharing of creation, information and advices for the particular cause. Increasing networking of mobile phones in rural areas, increases two way communication. Social media is becoming powerful tool and connects millions of people globally. Farmers are using social media because it has ability to connect with farmers, agribusiness, agri experts over a geographical distance. Up to certain extent social media in agricultural marketing provides solutions to the agricultural marketing problems (Horizon Poll, 2014). Sarah Cornelisse et al., (2011) discussed the following uses of social media in extension are as follows: Boundless opportunities exist for Extension to grab hold of and use these tools. What can Extension accomplish through the use of social media? • Promotion of Extension programs, workshops, and other offerings • Real-time interaction with clientele • Extension materials and communications available on mobile devices • Extending outreach to new audiences that may otherwise not know about Extension • Promotion of newly developed Extension materials, including those that are developed for social media networks ( e.g., YouTube, videos and blog posts) • Supplying Extension information to a nationwide (even worldwide) audience • Development of relationships and promotion of Extension and Extension activities to leaders and representatives of government, education, business, journalism and non-profit organizations Using social media tools to market their businesses and provide customer service. Social media has provided those who farm, traditionally thought of as a more or less solitary endeavor, an opportunity to interact with the outside world without leaving the farm. Activities once deemed too draining on a small resource base are simply and easily accomplished through social media. Just a small sampling of what agri-entrepreneurs can accomplish through the use of social media includes the following: • Display the location of their market, co-operative store, etc., through the use of location-based services (e.g., GPS on your smart phone) • Provide customers/clients with an opportunity to offer feedback or pose inquiries about their business or product • Monitor social network trends and identify possible “selling points” or other unfulfilled market niches • Act as their own consumer research, customer service, or public relations professionals, thereby saving on operating costs Social media users have the ability to embed custom analytics into their social media presence (e.g., Google analytics). Custom URL shortening programs (such as Bit.ly, which shortens lengthy URLs to a size that is usable within Twitter’s 140-character limit) can be used to create URLs for any Web address, and visits to each address can be tracked. One can track the “reach” of a message (namely via Twitter) with Twitter-centric tools such as TweetReach. Users of social media tools need to monitor which messages and interactions generate and sustain interest over the course of time with each tool. For instance, if promotion of an upcoming field day event generates more registrations through Facebook posts and less through a short YouTube video, re-directing future event promotions away from YouTube is justified. PURPOSE OF SOCIAL MEDIA IN AGRICULTURAL EXTENSION Kaggere, N. ( 2015) explained the main purpose of social media are as follows: 1. The main purpose of social media is sharing information and creating awareness. The most popular social media among farmers is Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, WhatsApp etc. 2. In addition to use of social media is on personal basis, they tell their stories of success, failure etc., they also shares updates regarding harvesting, post harvesting, promoting agricultural produce, market information, answering problems of farmers if it is related to their known areas. 3. Social media is very different form traditional media. The users of social media are creating their own groups, pages, community, blogs to share information. In this group they are also selling, buying agricultural commodities. It can be done by sending images, pictures, links, videos etc. This sharing of information facilitates the marketing of farmers produce and formation of network. There are many blogs covering agricultural marketing related information. 4. As the number of social media platforms is increased, many organizations have developed diverse agricultural extension advisory service providers. Each type of platform has more or less utility to individuals depending on type of user, purpose of use, content shared, technical literacy level, etc. 5. Social media is creating a life-changing experience for many farmers in rural areas who have come to use it. What is exciting is that agriculture has not only embraced social media but is also using it to bring real and positive impact on to the fields. They discuss best farming practices, answer product demand and supply related queries and come together to create a sustainable market situation. Farmers, producers and labourers can now voice their opinions, concerns and also share their success stories. DISADVANTAGES OF USING SOCIAL MEDIA IN AGRICULTURAL EXTENSION Amit lathiya et al., (2015) reported the following disadvantages of using social media in agricultural extension are as follows: 1. Overuse of social networks can lead to procrastination and a tendency to waste time and become addicted to constantly being updated on what is happening around the world. Because the advantages of using the tool have no direct, immediate and easily recognised financial returns, there is an opportunity cost of time that must be acknowledged. 2. It is recommended that their social media usage and impacts that has on their relationships in real life. There is also a risk of becoming too reliant on social networks and removing yourself from contact in the physical world. 3. As with any online tool, use of it in moderation is obviously the ideal outcome as face-to face communication ultimately is a great source of networking and communication. In no way should social media be a replacement for social networks and connections in the physical world, however social media can be a tool used to facilitate those social interactions. The World Bank (2016) documended the following disadvantages of social media in agricultural extension are as follows: 1. There are definitely shortcomings at personal (lack of interest in social media, negative attitude, or organizational restrictions). 2. Infrastructural (lack of internet connectivity for target clients or the extension personnel), policy level (organizational policies that restrict use of social media for official purposes) that hinder the use of social media. 3. With the challenges like limited availability of ICTs and internet facilities in rural areas, their suitability to only educated and online clientele. 4. Lack of awareness and readiness to accept social media by some farmers and extension professionals, breach of individual privacy, piracy of the materials and irrelevant information. 5. The success of social media depends on commitment level of extension workers and community members in using social media for extension. But in spite of these problems, social media are becoming popular among rural people. 6. The most common objection that farmers and agribusinesses mention when discussing social media in the agricultural industry is that they don’t see the value in using it. If we are spending our time with this new technology, we need to ensure that we are using it productively and getting something of value in return. The key question is how do we extract value from digital mediums and use it efficiently with or time instead of becoming a tool for procrastination and duplication of information. In business, often the concept of value can get reduced purely to a financial measurement or results orientated gain to the business. When talking about social media and its purpose, the concept of value seems to be often misunderstood. Whilst it is generally free to use social networking, there is an opportunity cost of time. For the purpose of the agricultural industry and most other industries, I believe the value lies in social capital. Social capital is defined as trust, engagement and community involvement. 7. It has widely been recognized that access to Internet and mobile services in rural areas is not as commonplace as that of our urban counterparts. Obviously access to Internet technology via computers or mobile technology is limited in rural area. It is largely agreed that it is extremely difficult to quantify success in social media however, level of engagement levels between users is good initial indicator. 8. Overuse of social networks can lead to procrastination and a tendency to waste time and become addicted to constantly being updated on what is happening around the world. Because the advantages of using the tool have no direct, immediate and easily recognised financial returns. 9. It is recommended readers are aware of their social media usage and impacts that has on their relationships in real life. There is also a risk of becoming too reliant on social networks and removing yourself from contact in the physical world. 10. As with any online tool, use of it in moderation is obviously the ideal outcome as face-to- face communication ultimately is a great source of networking and communication. In no way should social media be a replacement for social networks and connections in the physical world, however social media can be a tool used to facilitate those social interactions. 11. Even though the uses are many, social media is not always used positively. While unproductive activities in relation to development works dominate its use, a deeper analysis into the facilities provided by applications like Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn indicates the fallacies which limits user interaction. Also, issues of content security and privacy of users dominated the debate regarding the actual use social media in development as opposed to its perceived use. 12. Reduced infrastructure, availability of poor optical fiber connectivity and power supply condition in rural areas, low computer penetration in rural areas owing to high cost as compared to household income in rural areas and low literacy are a few major reasons behind low rural broadband Internet penetration. 13. Social media is popular worldwide, but in some developing countries people avoid using the facilities of social media platform. Due to lack of understanding on working of social media, privacy concerns, and control of digital footprint, many researcher, extension workers and academics host a feeling of negativity towards social media. Age is a factor that sometime affects the attitude towards social media and sometimes don?t. 14, Technical and educational illiteracy, unavailability of high speed internet connection and recording equipments, unauthentic information, data charges and accessing device are the main limitations. Disadvantages of Social Media for the Society 1: Cyberbullying According to a report published by PewCenter.org most of the children have become victims of the cyberbulling over the past. Since anyone can create a fake account and do anything without being traced, it has become quite easy for anyone to bully on the Internet. Threats, intimidation messages and rumors can be sent to the masses to create discomfort and chaos in the society. The cyberbullying stories that turned into suicide stories. 2: Hacking Personal data and privacy can easily be hacked and shared on the Internet. Which can make financial losses and loss to personal life. Similarly, identity theft is another issue that can give financial losses to anyone by hacking their personal accounts. Several personal twitter and facebook accounts have been hacked in the past and the hacker had posted materials that have affected the individuals personal lives. This is one of the dangerous disadvantages of the social media and every user is advised to keep their personal data and accounts safe to avoid such accidents. 3. Addiction The addictive part of the social media is very bad and can distrub personal lives as well. The teenagers are the most affected by the addiction of the social media. They get involved very extensively and are eventually cut off from the society. It can also waste individual time that could have been utilized by productive tasks and activities. 4. Frud and scams Several examples are available where individuals have scammed and commit frud through the social media. 5. Security issues Now a day’s security agencies have access to people personal accounts. Which makes the privacy almost compromised. You never know when you are visited by any investigation officer regarding any issue that you mistakenly or unknowingly discussed over the internet. 6. Reputation Social media can easily ruin someone;s reputation just by creating a false story and spreding across the social media. Similarly business can also suffer losses due to bad reputation being conveyed over the social media. 7. Cheating and relationship issues Most of the people have used the social media platform to propose and marry each other. However, after some time they turn to be wrong in their decision and part ways. Similarly, couples have chated each other by showing the fake feelings and incorrect infromation. 8. Health issues The excess usage of social media can also have a negative impact on the health. Since exercise is the key to lose weight, most of the people get lazy because of the excessive use of social networking sites. Which in result brings disorder in the routine life. This research by discovery will shock you by showing how bad your health can be affected by the use of the social media. 9. Social media causes death Not just by using it, but by following the stunts and other crazy stuffs that are shared on the internet. For example bikers ding the unnecessary stunts, people doing the jump over the trains and other life threatening stuffs. These types of stunts are performed by the teenagers because of the successful stunts made and shared over the social media. 10. Glamorizes drugs and alcohol One of the disadvantages of the social media is that people start to follow others who are wealthy or drug addicted and share their views and videos on the web. Which eventually inspires others to follow the same and get addicted to the drugs and alcohol. (https://tanzaniaforfuture.wordpress.com/2016/11/04/10). Some of the downsides of using social media include: 1. Resources You will need to commit resources to managing your social media presence, responding to feedback and producing new content. This can include hiring and training staff, investing in paid advertising and paying for the costs of creating video or image content. 2. Evaluation While it is easy to quantify the return-on-investment in terms of online sales generated by social media advertising, there are some less tangible benefits. It can be hard to measure and place a monetary value on the brand awareness and reputation that social media can bring. It’s difficult to know how social media effects sales in-store. 3. Ineffective use Social media can be used ineffectively. For example, using the network to push for sales without engaging with customers, or failing to respond to negative feedback may damage your reputation (www.nibusinessinfo.co.uk). Marilyn Price-Mitchell, (2014) reported the following disadvantages of Social Networking are as follows: 1. Lacks emotional connection “A couple weeks ago, one of my friends and I got into a fight and she told me all of her feelings as to why she ignored me for two weeks. Assuming it would have been really hard to say it to my face, she sent me a text message. The negative side was I didn’t know if she truly felt sorry because I didn’t hear it from her. The quality of a conversation using social media is awful because you cannot sense the emotion or enthusiasm from the other person. It makes you wonder if they actually mean what they say.” 2. Gives people a license to be hurtful “I do think it has gotten to an extreme point where you can say things you can’t say or get away with in person.” “I’m disappointed whenever I hear about social media being used as a way to hurt people. I wonder if this happens when the writers forget that there are real people behind the screen.” 3. Decreases face-to-face communication skills “Computer reliance could hurt a person’s ability to have a face to face conversation by making it awkward and unusual to hear something and respond with a thoughtful message through the spoken word because of one’s dependence on a keyboard to convey a message.” 4. Conveys inauthentic expression of feelings “Social media conversations today are filled with “haha”, “LOL”, and other exclamations that are meant to represent laughter. This shorthand has become second nature and is often used when the sender is not even smiling, much less laughing, in real life. On the occasion that our “roflcopter” is actually put to use at a funny moment, we are replacing actual laughter with, in this case, a simple ten-letter acronym. According to Robin Dunbar, an evolutionary psychologist at Oxford, the actual physical act of laughter, and not the abstract idea of something being funny, is what makes laughing feel so good. If we are so willing to replace the act that, honestly, we all love, with an artificial, typed representation that doesn’t even bring the same joy, what else would we be, potentially subconsciously, willing to exchange?” 5. Diminishes understanding and thoughtfulness “Since the inception of social networking, the quality of conversations has dropped. I believe that people are spending so much time online that they don’t always understand the feeling, emotion and/or character of the person they are talking to. When you talk to someone through a message or even a voice, you can’t always fully understand them.” “Social networking has ruined the thoughtfulness in basically saying hello in person. For instance, you could say hello to your friend in Germany with Facebook, chat in seconds; but what if there was no way to communicate via social networking? Well you would have to write them a letter and that is something very thoughtful.” 6. Causes face-to-face interactions to feel disconnected “When I see my friends on their phones and I am around them, I feel disconnected even though we are only two feet apart. Unfortunately, sometimes friends use their phones so much that it is difficult to have an actual conversation with them. Sometimes friends can get so socially attached to something such as a blog or gaming console that they lose touch with friends, creating small gaps and holes in close friendships/relationships.” 7. Facilitates laziness “The new socially active era causes laziness because instead of running to your friends you can message them. Or instead of walking upstairs to notify the family of dinner, I can blog it. Social networking makes life so convenient that it creates laziness. In my opinion staying fit is important, but it is difficult to go beyond the newly developed status quo.” “It’s really easy to spend hours doing nothing. It’s a fantastic way to waste time.” 8. Creates a skewed self-image “We tell ourselves lies about ourselves and develop something we are not. We post pictures of us looking perfect and share the good news. We never post pictures of ourselves when our dog dies, when someone we love leaves, and when we lose a job. We never share the bad news that always clouds our lives. We all develop this perfect image of ourselves and some of us actually try to rely on this imaginative thought we have of ourselves instead of staying true to who we are.” 9. Reduces family closeness “Texting, Facebook, Twitter, and Gmail alienate us from our families more than we actually think it does. When my family is spending family time together and watching a movie, in reality my brother and I are on our phones rather than actually watching the movie with our parents.” 10. Causes distractions “When I have my phone out, it makes me feel like nothing else is going on around me. I use social media as a way to feel popular, important, and also just to fit in. My friends and I always compare ourselves to each other, wondering who has more Facebook friends or Twitter followers. But what really ends up happening is I begin to talk less and end up relying on text for a conversation. Ever since I got a smartphone I have been distracted from everything. I watch television less, do homework less, and even spend less time with my friends and family. Disadvantages of social networking : 1. Perpetuates false and unreliable information Just like stated above, anything can spread to millions of people within hours or days on social media. This also, unfortunately, includes things that are false or made up. This information can cause panic and severe misinformation in society. 2. Causing major relationship problems Online social interactions with social networking have not only been starting new relationships, but ending many others. It is very simple to communicate and share pictures or plans with a person on social media and keep it completely under wraps. This new temptation has been driving wedges into people’s real life, offline relationships, often time ending them for good. Social networking puts trust to the limit. 3. Cyber bullying is a growing problem Having access to people’s lives at all times is not always a good thing. A new trend of cyber bullying is wreaking havoc all across the world. This is especially true with young kids. They are publicly harassing one another, and posting mean or slanderous things which are broadcast-ed to the entire cyber world. 4. Used to profile and discriminate in the job world Just about everyone has a social media account the shows what they look like, the type of life that they live, and how old they are. Employers are using this to their advantages is some very unsettling ways. Jobs that are looking for a certain criteria of person, but cannot legally express these criteria, are using social media to prescreen their applicants. 5. The addiction is real One of the biggest problems with the social media craze is that people are becoming more and more addicted to using it. It is the number one time waster at work, in school, and at home. All of this has caused people to have literal withdraws from their social networks crazy (Future of working, 2015). CHALLENGES OF SOCIAL MEDIA USE IN AGRICULTURAL EXTENSION Calalo, F.C. (2015) discussed the challenge of social media in agricultural extension are as follows: 1. Adoption of social media as a tool of agricultural extension. 2. There is a limited access to social media because of data, network etc. 3. There is a need of training and education about use of social media in agril extension. 4. People are less trusted on e-buying, e-selling of agricultural commodity on social media. 5. All the activities are restricted by time, technology, networks etc. 6. Cost of technology use in agricultural extension is more. Many organizations are having their official pages, blogs, and groups on social media. It is having prompt response for the question. 7. It saves time and cost of the farmers. Farmers getting right information on right time. For example weather report. 8. Network providing companies are giving more data in lesser prices. It helps farmers to browse more. Young farmers believes more on use of social media in agricultural marketing. They seek more information on YouTube and Facebook. WhatsApp is the most likely app among farmers. 9. Possibility of sharing ideas/information into action. Awareness created through social media can be converted to practical actions in many instances in development sectors, agri-business, agri-tourism etc. 10. Organizing the people to do something with the information they are exposed to online will be the biggest opportunity of social media. 11. Forming special interest groups Special groups and pages can be created in Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp etc to share information and ideas among the farmers, stakeholders and agricultural experts. Stories of success and failures in agriculture practices helps to learn from others experience also help in developing better connections personally 12. Social media can be effective in agricultural crisis like pest or disease outbreaks as well facilitating faster communication among experts, farmers, and other actors helping in containing situations quickly. 13. Developing innovation competencies Social media is the recent place for giving users an opportunity to contribute their views and ideas making it an interactive environment where no one is just an audience. Apart from traditional media social media enables new ways of collaboration and content creation with target audience. It is an exposure to different views and trying them out in their own situations can help the smallholders develop innovation competencies. 14. Cost effective: Internet is available worldwide. Though mobile phone subscriptions have increased, usage of internet also has been increased. But getting a good network is still a struggle in many rural areas of Asia and African countries. Data charges in developing countries and developed countries are different. But high internet cost restricts the use of multimedia like images and videos as they consume much more data than text message. Also, in some areas internet connection is provided through telecommunication centres. 15. Lack of infrastructure: Internet usage in least developed country is less, compared with the developed and developing countries. The major reason of this is the lack of power supplies in rural areas, also the lack of fibre optic lines, cell towers and wireless spectrum, as well as the limited use of smartphones. So there is a limitation in reach and benefit of internet connectivity for using social media. 16. Literacy Illiteracy is still one of the biggest challenges holding back the development efforts. Social media requires both educational and technical literacy which are both lacking among majority of the population, especially women of developing countries. 17. Ensuring participation Engaging farmers and stakeholders with social media is a challenge. Many visit the group pages, only few posts, share and discuss ideas, and issues. This limits the scope of the information shared to reach a global audience as well as the potential of the platforms. Social media offers tremendous opportunity to explore in agricultural extension service delivery. Nonetheless, its usage and effective integration into the extension system poses a number of challenges. In a position paper of GFRAS tagged the “New Extensionist” Sulaiman ; Davis (2012) expressed that extension and advisory services is faced with new and complex challenges which need new capacities to effectively deal with them. Among these challenges are how to properly integrate and make good utilisation of social media. In consonance with that, a number of researches that include. Kipkurgat et al., (2016), Kuria C.W (2014) and Suchiradipta, B ; Saravanan, R. (2016) discussed several challenges in the use of social media for agricultural extension service delivery. Hence, an appraisal of the global challenges is presented below: 1. Relative cost for access: This concerns the relative cost compared to outcome. Large number of farmers are subsistent with little to incur data cost for accessing social media. This farmers are commonly found in Africa and Asia (mostly developing countries). In addition, there’s high internet cost at internet café. These ultimately present challenge to social media use in agricultural extension service. Andres, D and Woodard, J. (2013) indicated that high internet cost restricts the use of multimedia like images and videos as they consume much more data than text. 2. Lack of infrastructure: Poor electricity supply and internet connectivity infrastructures are part of the key challenges to social media use in agricultural extension service delivery, most affected are rural communities in developing countries. ITU (2015) reported that internet penetration was only 9.6 per cent in less developed countries due limited internet facilities and unreliable supply of electricity. 3. Illiteracy Stakeholders in agricultural extension service delivery especially farmers and extension workers are less educated, and to use social media one requires both educational and technical literacy. In a study by Thomas & Laseinde (2015) they reported that extension workers require training on basic skills in the use of social media. 4. Lack of quality control Free nature of social media in terms of comments and creation of content is something that extension service cannot compromise. Worse even is the today’s cybercrime perpetration, because of the delicate nature of information usually handled. Thus, information shared, especially by organizations need to be controlled for effectiveness and uphold of reputation. One of the possible ways to achieve that was put forward by Baena (2015) where she stated that in order to keep the organization’s reputation high, there is a real need of a full time moderator who makes sure that information shared are reliable, up-to-date, and in focus with organisation’s aim. Equally important, skilled human resource is necessary to maintain social media interactions, privacy concerns and conflicting perceptions. Fuess (2011) reported that irrelevant posts, privacy concerns, stakeholders’ conflicting perceptions and lack of capacity in using social media act as deterrents to using social media in extension service program delivery. 5. Limited participation It has been acknowledged severally that most of the social media users on agriculture related pages and platforms are passive with a few that are active. This shows low interaction which limits knowledge sharing and the scope of the information shared in reaching maximum audience globally. 6. Non-institutionalisation Social media is yet to get the required institutionalisation at several organisational levels. Many institutions have not attached the importance of it in public or even private spheres. But, the relevant role that can be played by social media in agricultural extension service delivery cannot be overemphasized. Olakulen (2015) opined that extension services would be more effective and efficient if social media can be streamlined in its operations. 7. Lack of adequate yardstick for impact measurement As at present, monitoring, and assessing the quality and worth of information shared on social media are unsatisfactory for extension service delivery. The available mechanisms are only friends, followers, mentions, number of visitors, likes, conversation index, and number of sharing of shared content. In agricultural extension service delivery, assessing and monitoring are paramount for evaluation and planning. 8. Need for gender sensitive approach As a result of cultural and societal limitations on women, integration of social media into agricultural extension service delivery needs to take into account gender sensitive approach in order to cater for all regardless of advantage or otherwise. For that reason, designing policy and approaches towards that is a challenge to overcome. 9. Satisfying heterogeneous users Audience in extension service delivery determine the message and method to be used in delivery of agricultural information/technology. This audience usually cut across young, adult, old, men, women, rural and urban. Likewise, social media users targeted. Consequently, the openness of social media point out a challenge in fulfilling the extension needs of different social media users. Suchiradipta, B., and Saravanan, R., (2016) from his reviews and findings of the survey, it is clear that social media is fast becoming an integral part of agricultural communication and it is being readily accepted as the next big thing in AEAS (Agricultural Extension Advisory Service). Though agricultural organizations are slowly adapting to the changing scenario, faster actions are required to better utilize social media. To overcome the challenges, a multipronged approach is needed at different levels: A. Individual level ? Extensionists need to take personal initiative to use social media as part of their job within the norms of institutional guidelines. Continuous engagement at individual level is needed for mass influence and to carry out fruitful discussions and encourage rural communities to get involved. ? Encouraging farmers, agripreneurs, and agribusinesses to directly connect with consumers through social media can raise awareness about agriculture in the general public and increase income. ? Faster translation of research findings into practical application can be ensured by sharing results through social media among communities of extensionists and professionals. This can also reduce the gap between research and practice. B. Organizational level: ? Formulation of favourable social media policy and guidelines and coordinated strategies are required. A clear understanding of the audience should be the foremost step to plan a social media strategy. ? Encouraging use of social media to promote organizational goals, actions, and success. ? Training employees not just at the bottom level but also at higher level of hierarchy to help them understand and use social media appropriately. ? Organizing workshops and hands-on-training for clients to create awareness about utility of social media and also developing skill to use it. ? Employing social media officer or communication officers to manage social media accounts, create content with experts, and gatekeeping. ? Private institutions and development agencies can try crowdfunding development projects through social media to raise awareness and financially sustain the projects. ? Organizations need to find innovative ways (like felfies) to promote social media use in agriculture among farming community especially among rural youth and women to make farming attractive. C. Infrastructural level: ? Basic infrastructure like power supply and access to network services are necessary to access social media. ? Markets, road, and transportation need to be created in rural areas for translation of information into practical use. ? Free Wi-Fi in public places in rural areas by the government can be helpful in accessing social media. D. Policy level Regulation of data tariffs in the rural areas and introduction of zero rating services (Bleiberg and West, 2015), by the government can help in making it accessible to the rural people. Promoting use of social media at the government level can encourage faster adoption. Major social media awareness campaigns and other such initiatives for increasing social media technical literacy of rural people. SOCIAL MEDIA IMPLICATIONS, ISSUES AND BARRIERS IN AGRICULTURAL EXTENSION SOCIAL MEDIA IMPLICATIONS IN AGRICULTURAL EXTENSION All development sectors including agriculture, need their own voice to create awareness, for advocacy, to bring in change. Social media has a number of implications on extension that are reported by Saravanan et al., (2015) and these are mentioned below: 1. Social media provides tools to extension professionals for sharing information and to be a part of discussions and debates on extension. It also helps them to be aware of the ongoing developments in the agriculture sector and stay updated. 2. With increasing awareness among urban consumers about the farm to plate journey that food makes in today’s world, the agricultural practitioners and professionals can use social media for building informed communities and thus increase visibility of farmers (increase information access to consumers about farm conditions, mechanism of food production, plights of farmers, etc.). 3. The reach of extension personnel in rural areas (which is estimated to be around 1200-1500 farmers per extension personnel currently) can increase manifolds with the use of platforms like Facebook, WhatsApp, and YouTube. 4. Professional development of extensionists is an important aspect, which social media can help with networking, sharing ideas and opinions, even conducting research can ultimately help in career advancement of extension professionals and they become competent to serve the clients better. 5. Inclusion in important development related discussions has increased due to social media and all stakeholders can become active participant and contributors in the discussions and follow-up actions. 6. As end to end extension is gaining more importance for holistic development of farming community, social media can be used as the common platform for all stakeholders to have a dialogue and increase inclusion of generally disadvantaged groups like women and the socially marginalized. Communication has shifted to a more open forum leading to a two way dialogue through social media. Digital India project of Government of India has emphasized on use of social networking in agriculture to increase farmers’ access to information and extends timely services to them. 7. While it is true that infrastructure building is required to realize the full potential of the information obtained from social media, the platform also helps to draw attention to the required interventions required for obtaining the infrastructure, if not available. 8. Lack of mobile networks or poor connectivity, faulty internet connections, high data charges, low bandwidth limits the access of social media to a large extent. 9. Social media includes lack of poor and costly internet connection and lack of awareness and expertise. Systematic training, cheaper thin clients such as mobile phones, omnipresent internet connectivity and availability of apps with ergonomically designed interfaces will improve the present status of usage of ICT in general and social media in particular for the betterment of agriculture leading to a better life for farmers in villages. MAJOR ISSUES OF SOCIAL MEDIA IN AGRICULTURAL EXTENSION Jijina C.K.1 and Raju G. (2016) reported the major issuses of social media in agricultural extension are as follows. 1. Lack of skills and usage of extension services Compared with traditional communication system social media is a new communication medium to connect people globally. Even though more and more young people are using them, the online presence of the older generation is still low, especially in rural areas of developing countries. In India, women and older men constitute 27 per cent of the social media users in urban India and in rural areas, the trend is lower (Kaggere, N. 2015). Besides they prefer to avoid using them because of their low levels of skill and competency in using social media. Basic skills in using social media can be easily acquired by anyone with regular use of these tools. 2. Infrastructure Proper physical infrastructure is needed for getting better access to social media and utilization of information in farm life. Lack of mobile networks or poor connectivity, faulty internet connections, high data charges, low bandwidth limits the access of social media to large extent. Generic infrastructural issues in developing countries leave very little scope for rural community to practically implement them. 3. Attitude towards social media Social media is popular worldwide, but in some developing countries people avoid using the facilities of social media platform. Due to lack of understanding on working of social media, privacy concerns, and control of digital footprint, many researcher, extension workers and academics host a feeling of negativity towards social media. And age is a factor that sometime affects the attitude towards social media and sometimes don?t. Popularizing social media needs awareness and training for each farmer and stakeholder. Understanding the incentives of communicating through social media first hand can play a critical role in increasing its use. 4. Training needs At present, an important force that is stopping more people at rural level from using social media are psychological barriers and concerns that arise due to lack of knowledge about how social media works. So proper trainings, workshops, and awareness programs should be given to the farmers, stakeholders, extensionists and other actors to make them understand and use social media better. Encourage this positive attitude and behavior towards social media at individual and institutional level. 5. Engaging rural community The most important factor for using social media in agricultural extension is engaging the rural community continuously. Ease of use, continuous advisory support, sharing information etc. will engage people involving in social media. Also the frequency of use and comfort level on the platforms can increase the involvement of social media. BARRIERS OF SOCIAL MEDIA USAGE IN AGRICULTURAL EXTENSION Dalbeer Simgh (2015) reported the different barriers in social media for agricultural extension are as follows: A) User oriented barriers 1. Illiteracy 2. Passive users 3. Mindset of users 4. Lack of technical know-how B) Extension workers oriented barriers 1. Attitude towards social media 2. Overload with works 3. Lack of engagement C) Content oriented barriers 1. Irrelevant information 2. Bulk of information 3. Misinformation SOME RECTIFICATIONS FOR USING SOCIAL MEDIA IN AGRICULTURAL EXTENSION Http://meity.gov.in/sites/upload_files/dit/files/SocialMediaFrameworkDraftforPublicConsultation_192011.pdf. Tthis site provides some rectifications for using social media in agricutural extension are as follows : 1. Though social media offers various capabilities for fostering rural development, their potential for managing organizations is yet to be explored. But then again, organizational use of social media is totally different from that of personal use. While an individual can share his own opinion on social media, when they get associated with an organization, the personal views might be considered as the organizational views too, which might be a matter of concern. Also, organizational followers and personal followers have distinctly different demographics which can potentially create conflict of interest among them. 2. As organizations get social media savvy, inclusion of social media policy guidelines are becoming important to provide the employees a clear direction of dos and don’ts while using social media. The Government of India has already issued a social media guidelines for its employees to follow across the country Also, depending on the mandate of each organization, they will need to frame their own guidelines. 3. Organizations need to identify their goals, objectives and targets clearly, before engaging with clients and the public through social media. Understanding how social media help in fulfillment of the organizations’ mandates is a pre-requisite for devising organization’s social media strategies. The organizations also need to work on how to engage, which platforms to choose and whom to connect with. As the social media information requires a variety of treatments based on their nature and clients, a unique and continuous engagement with every stakeholder is necessary. Merely having a Facebook/ Twitter page will not help extension workers and farmers. 4. A good social media use is characterized by quick replies to queries, effective programme planning through event creation tools, develop and analyse polls on specific aspect, etc. Promotion of social media page is also important to increase visibility and reach the potential audience. But the most important part of engaging online is to know the audience better and accordingly decide the strategies (USAID, CCC and DI, 2016). 5. Projects and initiatives for agricultural development that suffer from lack of funds can take the help of crowdfunding platforms like www.gofundme.com to reach a sustainable stage. Active use of social media to highlight development projects in critical areas can attract huge funds through crowdfunding, if promoted strategically through Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. 6. With increasing visibility of agriculture related issues faced today, many youth from non-agricultural and urban background are getting interested in agripreneurship and creating employment opportunities for others in the rural sector. Extension professionals can take advantage of this and effectively reach out to them through social media and collaborate. Also, a large number of farm youth who are moving out of the sector can be influenced to return to better agricultural practices through social media. 7. Social media provides insights and evidences required to influence policy and policymakers. It has long been established that social media can create and shape public opinion. When used efficiently in agriculture, social media can bring out the plights of farmers for developing immediate and effective interventions. 8. Capacity development is another issue that can be conveniently addressed through social media for field functionaries, rural youth and farmers. With technological advancement, platforms like YouTube, WhatsApp and Facebook can be easily integrated in delivering content in different formats for self-learning of the target groups. Aliyu Akilu Barau and Safiul Islam Afrad (2017) reported some recommendations to use of social media in agricultural extension are as follows: ? Given the low level of subsistence farmers’ literacy and passive or limited participation of stakeholders at institutional level, governments and other service providers need to strengthen capacities for proper integration of social media in agricultural extension service delivery. This will go a long way to facilitate further and effective use of social media in agricultural extension service delivery. ? Organisations and change agents need to dedicate human resource for maintenance of quality control and, message accuracy and suitability respectively. Likewise, ensure gender inclusion in service provision. This widens the scope of usage and adoption. ? Availability of infrastructure and access to internet facilities should be enhanced by governments and other service providers so as to enable proper utilisation of social media for agricultural extension service delivery, especially by the extension workers and farmers. ? There’s the need to advance technology more by developing a tool/yardstick of measuring the impact of agricultural extension service delivery through social media. These technologies would certainly enable and expedite monitoring and evaluation, which are an integral part of agricultural extension service delivery. ? Also, there is the need for further research on social media use at farmers’ field level. These explores areas that require added streamlining efforts to suit the socioeconomic conditions of farmers. Prudence Cook (2015) explined the Top 10 tips for social media and agricultural extension: 1. Know who you want to talk to and where they are Agriculture presents a unique opportunity when using social media as our audience is finite. We already know a lot about the volume and communication preferences of the people we’re trying to target so look for quality interactions – not quantity. I often get asked what platform is best – it’s the one your audience is already using. 2. Get involved It’s not enough to just schedule tweets and respond to queries as they come in. Set aside time each day to monitor social media. Look for conversations happening in your industry; can you contribute and add value? Would others in your organisation be interested in these conversations? Watch what competitors and contemporaries are doing; look for areas to improve, identify new trends and features and develop benchmarks to track your own performance. 3. Add value, don’t sell Anything you post needs to add value. I always ask myself “Will our audience members find this information useful? Can they do something with it that will help them improve?” before I hit the publish button. Users will associate far more value with you and your organisation if they’ve received something that helps them on-farm. Direct sell jobs tend to get little traction and, in some instances, can even lead to negative responses. 4. Don’t try to be everything to everyone Often there is a high degree of confusion around what purpose social media serves – it can be a customer service channel, a broadcast channel, an information gathering tool or any combination of the three. There is no one way to use social media, but if you try to do everything, you’ll end up with segments of your audience switching off. Understand what you’re aiming to get out of social media, who your target audience is and stick to key themes that are of interest to them. A consistent approach means your followers know what to expect and will derive more value from your efforts. 5. Internal buy in and involvement is a must Having your team aware of the types of people and conversations happening on social media is critical to getting relevant content and speedy responses to questions. If your organisation is new to social media, choose a champion, develop up a campaign to promote their project and use the results as a case study to get other staff members on board. Actively encourage individual staff accounts; this gives your content a wider audience and allows quicker responses straight from the expert. Additionally, growers are far more likely to engage with an individual than they are a company logo. Ensure that staff choosing to use social media in their work have access to training and support, and are familiar with the objectives of your social media strategy. 6. Social media won’t answer all your questions I’m often approached by people asking if they can use social media to gather feedback relating to farm practices or seek industry input into project design. At best, you’ll get a handful of responses, depending on the size of your network and the existing relationships you have within it. Use social media to complement other channels, but don’t rely on it as a single source of truth. 7. Allocate time and budget to do social media properly If social media is an ‘add on’ to your role, then when you get busy, it’s the first thing to get forgotten. As part of your social media strategy, work out how much time you need to monitor, develop content, schedule and evaluate in order to meet your objectives. Depending on these objectives, this may only need an hour or so a week. You’ll also need a budget, particularly if your audience is active on Facebook. Once again, as we are working with small audience sizes, the budget doesn’t need to be huge. Paid promotion will allow you to better target your posts and ensure a wider audience is able to see your content. 8. Data based decision making We rely heavily on numbers to help with decision making in agriculture – social media is no different. Get familiar with Google Analytics; this will give you insights into who you’re talking to, when they’re most active online, what information they’re after and what platforms and formats most appeal. Then use analytics from each of your social media accounts to further refine who your audience is, what type of information they’re interested in and how they want to receive it. 9. Act your age Stay true to your brand and don’t try to be something you’re not. If you’re trying to convey agricultural information, don’t try to be too trendy or cute. Analytics suggests that growers respond well to timely and relevant technical content. Presenting a clear value proposition is the best way to drive engagement. 10. Be prepared to let things go Sometimes this is straight forward. With the relative ease you can publish information, it’s easy to say ‘this content isn’t relevant, we’ll avoid it in future’ should a post perform poorly. It’s much harder to let go when you’ve invested a lot of time in a campaign, or even an entire platform. I was a big fan of Google Plus; I loved the functionality, the look and the concept. Unfortunately, my target audience didn’t feel the same way, so I concentrated my efforts back into the platforms they were already using GOVERNMENT PROJECTS IN SOCIAL MEDIA FOR AGRICULTURAL EXTENSION I. KERALA GOVERNMENT SPONSORED SCHEME Annual plan (2017-18) Kerala goverment sponsored scheme on “Integration of social media for agricultural development for strengthening of agricultural extension”: The main objectives of the scheme are 1. To explore the potential opportunities of social, digital media, mobile and interactive web service platform and to integrate those platforms for the effective information dissemination and advisory serevice among the farming community in Kerala by using krishi.info portal as a single window system for the convergence of all ICT media tools like e-mail, mobile phone, fax and social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Whatsapp, SMS, MMS (Multi Media Service) facility being developed as a part of “Karshika Vivara Sanketham Project”. 2. To promote Kerala based social media groups for strengthening cyber extension and to enhance production, productivity and profitability of farming in Kerala by using krishi.info portal of “Karshika Vivara Sanketham” as a centre point and integrating this to all other applications, web portals and social media channels. This will increase the reach of extesion activities of the Department through maximum networking at different tiers like State, District, Block and Krish Bhavan. 3. Positive and proactive engagement with social media for dissemination of modern scientific agricultural innovations to farmers and to bring maximum registred farmers to social media, in case of farmers who are not proficient in modern digital technologies and social media. Lead farmers/Master farmer from the group will be given incentive to spread new technology to such farmers and interact with social and digital media platforms. To promote marketing activities by the use of e-Vipani Mobile App nad e-commerce portal being developed by SFAC (Small Farmers Agri-Business Consortium). 4. To attract, encourate and motivate NRIs (Non-Residential Indians), Ex-service men, youngsters, women and professional to farming in Kerala and also self help groups like Kudumbasree and other faring clusters. 5. To disseminate scheme information, support from Agricultural Department and assistance to social media group members for the development of Agricultural Sector in Kerala. 6. To encourage and motivate social media participants to provide Agricultural Support Services to farmers by providing cash prizes to best social and digital media groups and apps. 7. To provide Training and connect farmers to authentic sources of information regarding availability of quality inputs through social media participation to encourage more people to adopt scientifc farming in Kerala. 8. To form a Digital Sena of experts consisting of Karshika Vivara Sanketham experts, Agricultural Department officials, Techno savvy Master Farmers, Experts, Agricultural Graduate and Postgraduate Students to authentic information for farmer engagement. 9. To bring all the Agriculture based online group under the umbrella of the Web Portal ‘krish.info’ and mobile apps for farmers and department officials being developed for “Karshika Vivara Sanketham”. 10. To encourage Agricultural Department officials to participate in social media by providing cash prizes. 11. To train Agricultural Department officials in using social and digital media for enhancing the effectiveness of extension and dissemination of information and discuss about trending topics in the field of Agriculture. 12. To develop a social and digital media policy for Agricultural Department in compliance with the guidelines of Government of India and Kerala. 13. To get real time response and feedback of schemes from farmers for effectively planning, implementation and monitoring of schemes resulting in seamless farmer experience. 14. To identify and popularize farmer level effective innovations and Good Agricultural practices. 15. To continuously improve the effciency and effetiveness of service delivery of Agricultural Department with farmer focus by constantly engaging with farmers, consumers, agricultural experts, input dealers, students and all stakehoders of Agricultural Department in Kerala and to solve issues and compliants related to service delivery by integrating with “Karshika Vivara Sanketham” with portal. Mobile app and other portals and aplications developed for Agricultural Department by IIITM-K, NIC (National Information Centre) and KAU (Kerala Agricultural University). To help farmers to adopt the best Agricultural Scientific Practices and crowd sourcing more funding and technology from all over the world to local farming community and groups with the paticipation of field level officers. 16. The proposed convergence platform will function to promote the Organic Agricultural Policy of the state by supporting Good Agricultural Practices, Organic farming, Safe to eat produces, Ecological Engineering and Urban Agriculture. 17. To link existing e-governance tools like farmer registration and Electronic benefit transfer data to the krishi.info portal to provide a single window system to get all information at a single point. Potential Social and Digital Media Platforms to be used for Extension in Kerala Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Whatsapp, Instagram, Youtube, Websites, Flickr, Slideshare, Mobile Apps based Agri-Advisory Services, SMS, Voice messaging, USSD (Unstructured Supplimentary Service Data) code etc, Sound Cloud, FM and Online Farm Radio Services and other new age social and digital media platforms/applications, tools and technologies etc. All new age social and digital media platforms will be integrated with Krishi.info portal developed for Agricultural Department under “Karshika Vivara Sanketham Oru Viralthampil Project”. Total cost of the project is Rs 1,10,000,00. Deputy Director of Agriculture (Extension and Training) of the Districts will be incharge of the implementation of the scheme at the District level. At the State level Additional Director of Agriculture (Extension) will monitor the implemendation of the scheme. ATMA may create district level facebook pages/blogs. These pages can be linked to the krishi.info portal of “Karshika Vivara Sanketham” of SFAC. ATMA District level Team should share weekly messaes and technologies advice to block and Krishi Bhavan level officers for sharing through social media platform. Integration Archtecture . Data Plan Support to Krishi Bhavan, Lead Farmers/Master Farmers The Assistant General Manager, BSNL has provided a special data plan for Agricultural Department. Farmers and officers who have joined the data plan should report product for marketing in e-commerce portal/e-Karshika Vivara Sanketham on a weekly basis. Lead farmers who have actually reported to data should be selected for adding to the new plan. Krishi Bhavan officials and Lead/Master farmers who receive Data plan should use this to share modern scientific agricultural information using e-extension tools and techniques through social media like WhatsApp, facebook etc to farmers leaders and farmers regularly. They should update social media platforms of technological department regularly and share agricultural knowledge with other farmers and effectively use social media tools for e-extension. In case of any field level problems they should communicate with social media enabled call centre portal www.krishi.info of “Karshika Vivara Sanketham Oru Viralthampil Project” (Toll free No 1800-425-1661, WhatsApp No +91 944 705 1661, Facebook fb.com/krishiinfo) Krishi Video Mobile App (www.krishivideoadvice.gov.in), Research Stations/KVK’s and other institutions where experts/solutions/technology are available using photos/videos/audio/accurate description of field problems and share the solutions received form experts to farmers. The data plan holders should effectively showcase and share demonstations results, new agricultural practices, success stories, Scheme information and achievements of Agricultural Department and Farmer Welfare Department using social media. New advisories, messages received from ATMA District Team/KVK/Other institutions should be shared with maximum beneficieries from registered farmers of the Deparment through social media. IT Division of Agricultural Department will issue detailed guidelines for the effective use of social media for Agricultural extension activities. Official users of social media should comply with the guidelines of draft social media policy of Government of India, IT Act 2000 and instructions from State Govt and Agricultural Department issued from time to time. IT Division will create social media platforms for sharing scheme and related information to various Agricultural Department offices. II. AUSTRALIAN GOVERNMENT SPONSORED PROJECT Stanley, K and Mandy Pearce (2013) reported that the Social Media in Agriculture is an innovative project that will explore the use of social media (You Tube, Vimeo, Facebook, Twitter, RSS, etc.) as an extension tool. The project is part of an ongoing commitment of the “Ag Excellence Alliance’ to supporting grower groups across the state and is funded by Australian Government’s Caring for Our Country. Through this project, short videos will be produced and loaded onto social media Internet sites to assist with delivery of agricultural extension around soil condition and landscape scale conservation in South Australia. The project will share information on new and innovative farm practices. Ag Ex anticipates that there will be many uses for the video clips including: • Presentations at field days, conferences and other events. • Providing instruction and demonstrations of new and innovative practices in the paddock through i-phone access via Vimeo and YouTube. • Use in training activities and promotion of project achievements on the Internet for wide spread access. The project is targeting the 15 farming systems groups that have an association with the “Ag Excellence Alliance” and its network partners including advisers, agri-business, relevant state and Australian government agencies and the state’s eight natural resource management organisations. Social Media in Agriculture aims to build the skills of groups and individuals in the use of social media. In particular, the project will support the production of short videos that will be loaded onto social media Internet sites to assist with delivery of agricultural extension around soil condition and landscape scale conservation in South Australia. 40 high quality videos will be produced. Grower, group members and advisors will also have the opportunity to participate in training in the use of social media and making videos, to allow to them to be at the leading edge of these technologies in the future. REFERENCES Adler R. 2007 Next-Generation Media: The Global Shift, Aspen: The Aspen Institute, Queenstown, USA Aliyu Akilu Barau and Safiul Islam Afrad. 2017. An Overview of Social Media Use in Agricultural Extension Service Delivery. Journal of Agricultural Informatics. Vol. 8, No. 3: 50-61. Amit lathiya, Arvind rathod and Kuldeep choudhary. 2015. Role of Social Media in Agriculture. International Journal of Commerce and Business Management. Volume 8. October, 2015. 268-273. Visit us : www.researchjournal.co.in Andres, D and Woodard, J. 2013. Social Media Handbook for Agricultural Development Practitioners. USAID and FHI360. Andrea Jimenez. 2012. Farm Book – A Business Planning Tool for Farmers. e- agriculture, www.e-agriculture.org/news/farmbook-business-planning-tool-farmers. Annual plan. 2017-18. Kerala goverment sponsored scheme on “Integration of Social Media for Agricultural Development for Strengthening of Agricultural Extension”: Directorate of Agricultural Development and Farmers Welfare. Vikas Bhavan, Thiruvananthapuram. Arévalo D. 2007. Social Networks for Information and Knowledge Management in GTZ Knowledge Management with Farmers, Nr. 16 | December ’07 | GTZ – Services for Rural Development, Germany. Armstrong, J. and Franklin, T.F. 2008. A Review of Current and Developing International Practice in the use of Social Networking (Web 2.0) in Higher Education. Accessed Sept 2015. http://franklin-consulting.co.uk/publications.html Ashley, H., Corbett, J., Jones, D., Garside, B. & Rambaldi, G. 2009. Change at Hand: Web 2.0 for Development. Participatory Learning and Action, 59, 8-20. Babu S, Glendenning.C, Okyere .K & Govindarajan. S. 2012. Farmer Information Needs and Search Behaviour. Case Study in Tamil Nadu India, IFPRI. Baena, I.R. 2015. ‘Personal Opinion on Social Media in Agricultural Extension and Advisory Services’ Global Survey on Social Media for Agricultural Extension and Advisory Services, GFRAS Interest Group for ICT (ICT4RAS), GFRAS, Lindau, Switzerland. Banks, R. 2015. Mobile Technology is Improving Life for those in Developing Nations. http://www.mobileindustryreview.com/2015/05/mobile-technology-developing-nations.html. Posted on May 22, 2015; Accessed on August 10, 2015. Bera, S. 2014. Nearly 52% Agricultural Households Indebted, Shows NSSO Survey. http://www.livemint.com/Politics/ZFPXWN8hdAAUb49jVl2NqK/Nearly-52-agricultural-households-indebted-shows-NSSO-surv.html. (Updated on 20 December, 2014; Accessed on 22 November, 2016). Bhargava, Y. 2015. Social Media use Doubles in Rural India. The Hindu. http://www.thehindu.com/todayspaper/social-media-use-doubles-in-ruralindia/article7335017 (Published on June, 20, 2015; Accessed on June 21, 2015). Bleiberg, J. and West, D.M. 2015. 3 Ways to Provide Internet Access to the Developing World. http://www.brookings/edu/blogs/techtank/posts/2015/03/2-digital-divideinternet-west (Published on March 02, 2015; Accessed on September 09, 2015). Boyd, D. M., & Ellison, N. B. 2007. Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13(1), article 11. Brown, Eliot. 2017. “Pinterest Acquires Twitter Co-Founder’s Startup Jelly”. Wall Street Journal. New York City. Retrieved March 9, 2017. Buskens I. and Webb A. 2009. African Women and ICTs Investigating Technology, Gender and Empowerment, Zed Books. Calalo, F.C. 2015. Personal Opinion on Social Media in Agricultural Extension and Advisory Services. Global Survey on Social Media for Agricultural Extension and Advisory Services, GFRAS Interest Group for ICT (ICT4RAS). GFRAS, Lindau, Switzerland. Carl Jackson, Evangelia Berdou, Victoire Ngounoue, Christian Kreutz and Louise Clark. 2009. Use of Social Media to Share Knowledge on Agricultural Impact, Planning, Assessment and Learning (IPAL). ALINe, Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, Brighton. Carr, C. T., & Hayes, R. A. 2015. Social Media: Defining, Developing, and Divining. Atlantic Journal of Communication, 23(1). doi: 10.1080/15456870.2015.972282. Chaba, A.A. 2015. Punjab Farmers turn to WhatsApp Group for Farming Solutions. p http://www.punjab-andharyana/punjab-farmers-turn-to-whatsappgroup-forfarming-solutions/ (Published on July 3, 2015; Accessed on July 10, 2015). Christensen, C.M. 1997. The Innovator’s Dilemma. Publ. Harper Collins, 2003. Colmar Brunton Survey; MYOB Oct 2014. Chui, M., Manyika, J., Bughin, J., Dobbs, R., Roxburgh, C., Sarrazin, H., Sands, G, & Westergren, M. 2012. The Social Economy: Unlocking Value and Productivity through Social Technologies. McKinsey Global Institute. Corcoran, Cate T., Feugere Stephane. 2009. Brands Aim to Adapt to Social Media World’. Women’s Wear Daily, Vol. 198 Issue 66, P20. Cornelisse, S., Hyde, J., Raines, C., Kelley, K., Ollendyke, D., & Remcheck, J. 2011. Entrepreneurial Extension Conducted via Social Media. Journal of Extension, 49. Art.6. CSI Communications 2013. Social Networking, 37 (3): June 2013. Dalbeer Simgh. 2015. Social Media in Extension. Published in Nov 6 2015 in Slide Share. Delaney, Kevin J. 2006. “Google Looks to Boost Ads with YouTube”. The Wall Street Journal. Dennis. E & Merill .J. 2006. Media Debates Great Issues for the Digital Age California: Thomson Wadsworth. Diekmann, F., C. Loibl, & M. T. Batte. 2009. “The Economics of Agricultural Information: Factors Affecting Commercial Farmers’ Information Strategies in Ohio.” Review of Agricultural Economics 31 (4): 853–872. Digital Green, http://www.digitalgreen.org, Accessed on Tuesday, 21 April, 2009 E-agriculture.org. 2009. Mobile Telephony in Rural Areas, Policy Brief March 2009, FAO, Rome, Italy. Encyclopedia, 2018. Role of Pinterest in Digital Communication www.encyclopedia.pinterest. role.digi.communicaiton.com. Encyclopedia, 2007. Functions of social media in the New era of Digital Communication www.encyclopedia.social media.digi.communicaiton.com. Encyclopedia, 2017. Role of linkedin in Digital Communication www.encyclopedia.linkedin. role.digi.communicaiton.com. ET tech. 2016. India’s Internet User Growth Rate is 4X of Global Rate: Mary Meeker’s 2016 internet trends. http://tech.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/internet/indias-internet-user-growth-rate-is-4x-of-global-growth-rate-mary-meeker/52550127. (Updated on June 2, 2016; Accessed on December 21, 2016). FAO 2012. Urban and peri – Agriculture. FAO of the United Nations Document. pp 19-23. Retrieved 19 January, 2013 from http://faostat.fao.org//default.htm Fuchs, C. 2010. Social Media and Networking: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications. Ed. DeMarco, A. Publ. IGI Global. Fuess, L.C. 2011. ‘An Analysis and Recommendations of the Use of Social Media within the Cooperative Extension System: Opportunities, Risks and Barriers (Honours Thesis)’ College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Social Sciences of Cornell University, Ithaca, New York. Future of working, 2015. Advantages and Disadvantages of Social Networking. https://futureofworking.com. Gakuru, M, Kristen W. & Stepman, F. 2009. Inventory of Innovative Farmer Advisory Services Using Information Communication Technologies. The Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa. Ghoshal, S. 2012. Farmers Facebook as Crisis Pokes: Site Helps Peasants Discuss Prices and Plan Strategy. Economic Times. New Delhi. GTZ. 2008. The Participatory Web-New Potentials of ICT in Rural Areas, Germany: Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ), Germany. Guynn, Jessica. 2018. “Exclusive: Flickr Bought by SmugMug, Which Vows to Revitalize the Photo Service”. USA Today. Gannett. Heeks, Richard. 2008. ICT4D 2.0: The Next Phase of Applying ICT for International Development, pg 26-33. Accessed in June 2008, IEEE Computer Society. Horizon Poll. 2014. Adult Smartphone Ownership will Hit 79% within Year. Accessed Sept 12, 2015.https://www.horizonpoll.co.nz/page/388/adult-smartphoneownership-will-hit-79 Italie, H. 2015. Report on Social Media Drives News Consumption. http://www.csmonitor.com/Technology/2015//Report-social-media-drive/news/consumption. Published on May 30, 2015. ITU. 2015. ICT Facts and Figures-2015. International Telecommunication Union, Switzerland. http://www.itu.int/en/ITU/Statistics/Documents/facts/ICTFact& Figures2015.pdf. Jijina C.K.1, Raju G. 2016. Social Media and Farmers. International Journal of Research in Engineering and Technology,.Volume: 05: Special Issue: 19: Oct-2016, P 20-25. Available @ https://www.esatjournals.org/ijret. Kaggere, N. 2015. WhatsApp! WhatsAt? Siddu stunned by 69-yr-old farmer. .http://www.bangaloremirror.com/bangalore/cover-story/WhatsApp-WhatsAt-Siddu-stunned-by69-yrold-farmer/articleshow/46361423.cms (Published on February 25, 2015; Accessed on July 10, 2015). Subbarao Appemane, SVP, Corp Comm & Regulatory Affairs. Mahyco:http://www.mahyco.com/knowledgezone/downtoroots/14/social-media-and-agriculture.html. Kaplan, A. M., & Haenlein, M. 2010. Users of the World, Unite. The Challenges and Opportunities of Social Media. Business Horizons, 53(1), 59-68. doi: 10.1016/j.bushor.2009.09.003. Kasper, G and Scearce, D. 2008. Working Wikily: How Networks are Changing Social Change, Monitor Institute. Kemp, S. 2015.. Digital, social and mobile worldwide in 2015. http://wearesocial.net/blog/2015/01/digital-social-mobileworldwide-2015/ Posted on January 21, 2015; Accessed on August 12, 2015. Kietzmann, J. H., Hermkens, K., McCarthy, I. P., & Silvestre, B. S. 2011. Social media? Get Serious! Understanding the Functional Building Blocks of Social Media. Business Horizons, 54(3), 241-251. Kipkurgat, T, Onyiego, M & Chemwaina, S 2016. ‘Impact of Social Media on Agricultural Extension in Kenya: A Case of Kesses District’ International Journal of Agricultural Extension and Rural Development Studies, 3(1), pp. 30-36. Available on www.eajournals.org Kuria, C.W. 2014. ‘Use of Social Media as a Source of Agricultural Information by Small Holder Farmers: A Case Study of Lower Kabete Kiambu County (MA Thesis)’ University of Nairobi. pp 4-5. Laxmimoorthy, Srinivasacharyulu, A and P. Sarath kumar. 2017. Harnessing Social Media for Agricultural Development. Extension Digest, MANAGE, V (1), No (1), June 2017. Lissaman, W., Rowarth, J.R. and Casey, M.J. 2013. Innovation and Technology Uuptake on Farm. Proceedings of the New Zealand Grassland Association 75: 27-32. Mangold, G. W. and Faulds David, J. 2009. Social Media: The New Hybrid Element of the Promotion Mix’, Business Horizons 52, 357 – 365. Marilyn Price-Mitchell. 2014. Disadvantages of Social Networking: Surprising Insights from Teens. Roots of Action. Published: June 16, 2014. Mayfield, A. 2008 .What is Social Media? Crossing Retrieved from http://www.icrossing.com/uk/sites/default/files_uk/insight_pdf_files/What%20is%20Social%20Media_iCrossing_ebook.pdf. McCue, T. 2014. Navigating the App Minefield. Accessed Sept 2015. http://www.enablingchangeand innovation.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/ Mukherjee, A. and Maity, A. 2015. Public-Private Partnership for Convergence of Extension Services in Indian Agriculture. Current Science, 109(9): 1557-1563. Nalaka Kasunsiri. 2014. New Media for Agricultural Extension. Agri Articles. www.agriarticle.blogspot.com Narula S. 2009. Web2.0 Technologies: Social networking for farmers http://www.i4donline.net/articles/currentarticle.asp?Title=Web2.0_technologies;articleid=2244;typ=Features. Accessed on Thursday, 21 May, 2009. Nelson, G.C., Rosegrant, M.W., Koo, J., Robertson, R., Sulser,T., Zhu, T., Ringler, C., Msangi, S., Palazzo, A., Batka, M., Magalhaes, M., Valmonte-Santos, R., Ewing, M. and Lee, D. 2009. Climate Change: Impact on agriculture and cost of adaptation. Food Policy Report. IFPRI, Washington DC. Newman, N.; Levy, D.A.L. and Nielsen, R.K. 2015. Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2015; Tracking the Future of News. Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford. Ogunbameru, B.O. 2004. Training Development in: Akinsorotan “Element of Agricultural Extension Administration” Personal Management. Bounty Press, Ibadan, p.65. Olakulen, O.J. 2015. ‘Personal Opinion on Social Media in Agricultural Extension and Advisory Services’ Global Survey on Social Media for Agricultural Extension and Advisory Services, GFRAS Interest Group for ICT (ICT4RAS). GFRAS, Lindau, Switzerland. Parmy Olsen, 2014. “Exclusive: The Rags-To-Riches Tale Of How Jan Koum Built WhatsApp Into Facebook’s New $19 Billion Baby”. Forbes. Retrieved January 14, 2015. Pru Cook, 2015. Getting the Most out of Social Media: A Grains Industry Perspective Grains Research and Development Corporation, Australia. Accessed in Date: 25 Feb 2015. https://grdc.com.au/…content/…/social-media-for-ageing-agronomists-social-media-. Rouse, M. 2012. Social Media Analytics. http://searchbusinessanalytics.techtarget.com/definition/social-media-analytics. Updated, 21 November, 2012; Accesses 25 November, 2016. Sanusi, M.A, Petu-Ibikunle, A.M and C.M Mohelia 2010. The Influence of ICT on the Dissemination of Agricultural Information among Urban Farmers in Northern Guinea Savannah Zone of Nigeria. African Scientist 11(2): pp 135-140. Sarah Cornelisse, Jeffrey Hyde, Christopher Raines, Kathleen Kelley, Dana Ollendyke and James Remcheck. 2011. Entrepreneurial Extension Conducted via Social Media. Journal of Extension. December 2011 // Volume 49 // Number 6 // Tools of the Trade // 6TOT1. Saravanan Raj and Suchiradipta Bhattacharjee. 2017. Social Media for Agricultural Extension. Extension Next. Bulletin No 1, March 2017. P 1-28 . Saravanan, R., Suchiradipta, B., Chowdhury, A., Hall, K. and Odame, H.H. 2015. Social Media for Rural Advisory Services, Note 15. GFRAS Good Practice Notes for Extension and Advisory Services. GFRAS: Lindau, Switzerland. www.betterextension.org. Schroeder, S. 2009. The Web in Numbers: The Rise of Social Media. http://mashable.com/2009/04/17/web-in-numbers-social-media/. Accessed on 30 June 2009. Senthilkumar and Philip. 2015. Social Media for Agricultural Knowledge Sharing. TNAU Agri-tech portal. www.agritech.tnau.ac.in/pdf/16.pd. Seetherman, Deepa. 2016. “Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey’s Account Briefly Suspended”. Wall Street Journal. Retrieved November 23, 2016. Shanthi Kannan, 2009. Harnessing Technology for Farmers. http://www.hindu.com/2009/03/15/stories/2009031555101000.htm. Accessed on 28 May, 2009. Shirky, C. 2008. Here Comes Everybody: How Digital Networks Transform our Ability to Gather and Cooperate. Publ. Penguin Press, New York. Stanley, K and Mandy Pearce. 2013. Social Media in Agriculture. “Ag Excellence Allience”. Linking South Australian Growers Group. Project Duration Oct 2011 – September 2013. https://agex.org.au/project/social-media-project/. Stanley, Sophie. 2013. Harnessing Social Media in Agriculture. A Report for the New Zealand Nuffield Farming Scholarship Trust. www.nuffield.org.nz/uploads/media/S_ Stanley_2013_Final_Report.pdf (Accessed on 20.5.2015). Suchiradipta, B., and Saravanan, R., 2016. Social Media: Shaping the Future of Agricultural Extension and Advisory Services, GFRAS interest group on ICT4RAS discussion paper, GFRAS: Lindau, Switzerland. Sulaiman, RS ; Davis, K 2012. ‘The New Extensionist: Roles, Strategies and Capacities to Strengthen Extension and Advisory Services’ Global Forum for Rural Advisory Services. Available on https://www.g-fras.org/en/knowledge/gfras-publications.html Thomas, K.A ; Laseinde, A.A. 2015. ‘Training Needs Assessment on the Use of Social Media among Extension Agents in Oyo State Nigeria’ Journal of Agricultural Informatics, 6(1) pp. 100-111. Available on journal.magisz.org. https://doi.org/10.17700/jai.2015.6.1.144 Tim Peterson 2017. “Pinterest will Use Image Recognition to Target Ads, including in Lens Results”. Tech Crunch. Retrieved 17 May 2017. TRAI. 2016. Highlights of Telecom Subscription Data as on 30th September, 2016. http://www.trai.gov.in/WriteReadData/PressRealease/Document/PR_No_117_Eng_09_Dec_2016.pdf. USAID, CCC and DI (United States Agency for International Development, Cooperation Committee for Cambodia, and Development Innovations). 2016. Social Media Handbook: https://www.ccc.cambodia.org/downloads/Praticial_Guideline/Social_Media_guide_V6_High.pdf. (Accessed on 10 January, 2017). Valsamidis, S., Theodosiou, T., Kazanidis, I. and Nikolaidis, M. 2013. A framework for opinion mining in blogs for agriculture. Procedia Technology, 8: 264- 274. Van Noorden, R. 2014. Online Collaboration: Scientists and the Social Network. Accessed Oct 21 2015 .Nature. Varner, J. 2012. Agriculture and Social Media. Mississippi State University Extension Service, Mississippi, USA. Wald and Koblo, 2008. ICT and Poverty Reduction: Mobile Telecommunication Advancing Fast, Germany, KfW Banking Group, Germany. We are social, 2017. Digital in 2017. Global Overview. Published January 24, 2017; Accessed February 7, 2017. Wenger, E., White, D., ; Smith, N. 2009. Digital Habitats Stewarding Technology for Community. Portland, OR: CPSquare. Wikipedia, 2014. Development of Wikipedia in Social Media. www.wikipedia.development.social media.com. Wikipedia, 2012. Definition of Social Media in the New Era of Digital Communication. www.wikipedia.social media.digi.communicaiton.com. Wikipedia, 2013. Pinterest in Social media, www.wikipedia.pinterest.socialmedia.com. Wikipedia, 2017. New Era of Development of Wikipedia in Social Media. www.new.era.wikipedia.development.social media.com. World Bank, 2016. World Development Report 2016. Enabling Digital Development – Social Media. Vol.1 No.1 | June 2017. Www.statista.com. 2016. Number of Social Network Users in India from 2015 to 2021 (in millions). https://www.statista.com/statistics/278407/number-of-social-network-users-in-india/ (Accessed on 22 November, 2016). Yu, Min-Chun. 2016. “ResearchGate: An Effective Altmetric Indicator for Active Researchers?”. Computers in Human Behavior. 55: 1001–1006. doi:10.1016/j.chb.2015.11.007. Retrieved 2016-04-22. Zanello, G ; Maassen, P. 2009. Strengthening Citizen Agency through ICT: an Extrapolation for Eastern Africa, Working Paper, Hivos, Netherlands. WEBLIOGRAPHY http://www.e-agriculture.org/agricultural-value-chainsand-ict.http://www.animalagaliance.org/ image s/upload/Social%20 Media%20Manual.pdf. http://agropedia.iitk.ac.in. http://social.yourstory.in/2012/12/agropedia-the-one-stophub-forthe-indian-agriculture-sector. http://en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Agriculture_in_India http://en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Agropedia. http://en.wikipedia.org /wiki/instagram. http://socialimplications.com/101-social-media-tools-for-social-media-marketing-and-more/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_networking www.tnau.ac.in http://agritech.tnau.ac.in/pdf/16.pdf http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog http://www.crsprogramquality.org/fiveskill-sets-for-farmers/ http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/11829710.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest;utm_ medium=text;utm_campaign=cppst. IAMAI-IMRB Report 2016. http://www.iamai.in/media/details/3673. http://www.joe.org/joe/2011december/tt1.php. http://www.nature.com/news/online-collaborationscientists-and-the-social-network- http://www.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/content/347883/farmers-facebook-as-crisis-pokes/ Updated on February 10, 2012). https://www.slideshare.net/wearesocialsg/digital-in-2017-global-overview (Accessed on 22 March, 2017). http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/high_tech_telecoms_internet/the_social_economy http://www.academia.edu.com (Accessed on 22 December, 2017). http://www.linkedin.com (Accessed on 02 December, 2017). http://ictforag.org/toolkits/social/SocialMedia4AgHandbook.pdf. http://wearesocial.com/blog/2017/01/digital-in-2017-global-overview http://www.firstdigital.co.nz/blog/2014/09/10/facebook-demographics-newzealand-age-distribution-gender/#Facebook 2009 http://www.icra.in/Files/ticker/SH-Telecom-Monthly-1-January%202017.pdf. (Accessed on February 5, 2017). http://www.nonprofitsocialnetworksurvey.com. Accessed 13 May 2009 http://www.web2fordev. net/ Accessed 15 January 2009. ABBREVIATIONS AESA – Agricultural Extension in South Asia AIS – Agricultural Information System ATMA – Agrl. Technology Management Agency CEO – Chief Executive Officer CGIAR – Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research CRS – Catholic Relief Services FAO – Food and Agriculture Organisation FAQ – Frequently Asked Qusetions GDP – Gross Domestic Product GFRAS – Global Forum for Rural Advisory Services GIFs – Graphics Interchange Formats GIS – Geographical Information System http – Hyper text transfer protocal ICRISAT – International Crop Research Institute for Semi-Arid Tropics ICT?s – Information and Communication Technologies IFPRI – International Food Policy Research institute IIITM-K – Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management-Kerala INGENAES – Integrating Gender and Nutrition within Agricultural Extension Services iOS – internet Operating System KVK – Krishi Vigyan Kendra MANAGE – National Institute of Agricultural Extension Management NGOs – Non Governmental Organizations PDF – Portable Document Format RSS – Really Simple Syndication SFAC – Small Farmers Agri-Business Consortium SMS – Short Message Service TNAU – Tamil Nadu Agricultural University TRAI – Telecom Regulation Authotity of India URL – Uniform Resource Locator USDA – United State Department of Agriculture VKVK – Voice Krishi Vigyan Kendra WWW – World Wide Web YPARD – Young Professionals for Agricultural and Rural Development
