04 February 2018

WSJ: “The Internet is filling up because Indians are sending Millions of ‘Good Morning!’ Texts”

Millions of Indians are getting online for the first time—and they are filling up the internet. Many like nothing better than to begin the day by sending greetings from their phones. Starting before sunrise and reaching a crescendo before 8 a.m., internet newbies post millions of good-morning images to friends, family and strangers.

All that good cheer is driving a 10-fold increase in the number of Google searches for “Good Morning images” over the past five years. Pinterest, the San Francisco visual-search platform, added a new section to display images with quotes. It saw a ninefold increase over the past year in the number of people in India downloading such pictures.

Newley Purnell

I’ve noticed this Indian habit first-hand last year, when I was included in a WhatApp group for a work trip. Back then, I assumed it was a way of showing they are online and available for our daily conference call, but it turns out it’s actually a widespread local trend. For the record, I never greeted them back.

Perhaps India’s most famous morning-message enthusiast is Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He gets up at 5 a.m. to practice yoga and is known to fire off good-morning messages as the sun is rising. Last year, he admonished a group of lawmakers for not responding to his greetings.

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