BENGALURU: The internet access speed in Karnataka chief minister Siddaramaiah's office is thrice that of the connection in the Prime Minister' s Office. A reply to a query by TOI under the Right to Information Act revealed the internet speed at CM' s office is 100 Mbps compared to 34 Mbps of the PMO.

If the CMO is, in fact, working at the speed mentioned in the RTI reply, it will be 98% more than the average speed of internet access in the country, which is 2.3 Mbps. According to a 2015 first-quarter global report on the State of Internet by US-based Akamai, a content delivery network and cloud services provider, the peak time speed in India, ranked 115th globally, is 17.4 Mbps.

Founder of oneindia.com, BG Mahesh, who was part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi' s pre-election social media campaign team, says: “Speed has no direct relation to the success of a social media campaign. Such campaigns depend on how committed the head is and whether or not he believes in the space.”

Brand guru Harish Bijoor says: " Maintaining an online persona is difficult as one is constantly monitored. How one stands out is also important because, taking an analogy, India is home to 83,000+ brands, but very few have pan-India recognition. Thus, physical and virtual personas are equally important to any political candidate wanting to position himself as credible."

" Narendra Modi, for instance, tasted resounding success during the 2014 general elections because he was able to create a storm of sorts in the online space, be it on Twitter or Facebook," Bijoor adds.

