When #SachinRetires We Trace Down His Social Media Activities

When the 18th November sun goes down slowly beneath the western end of Wankhede stadium, the hopes and joy of more than a billion people will experience the gloomy dusk of the day as the Cricketing God will walk out of the big green field for the last time.

The news of Sachin's retirement still seems so surreal, like a crude joke played by his critics, who will now be unemployed as the batting great hangs his bat and pads. But the sad truth is that it is real. Sachin Tendulkar is retiring from cricket after giving his devotees 25-years of fun and excitement.

It's not only cricket fans that will miss Sachin, but also the brand managers of various brands who rode on Sachin's success to make their brands' stronger. The long holiday of brand managers of some of the brands which Sachin endorsed is about to be over, as they will now need to work harder to get their brand messages as easily across as they did with Sachin.

There have been countless articles written about it, and despite my strong urge to write another one voicing my inner feeling, I am not going to talk about it. Instead, in this article I will try to piece together various activities that the batting genius has officially endorsed that have been published on social media. The purpose of this article is not to analyze social media activities of Sachin, but to bring back to memory of activity that was carried on social media with his name.

Sachin on Facebook

Although finding the official page of Sachin Tendulkar was not difficult, but the number of results displayed against the search was so many that it can humble even the biggest brand. And a visit to his official page was even more humbling;

It is not very common to find a page with around 1.2 crore fans, but what is more uncommon is the number of actively engaged fans (fans talking about the page), which was almost as big as the Facebook fan-bases of Boost, the brand he endorses since 1990, and Aviva another brand Sachin currently endorses (compare the images below).

Talking of the total fan base of the "God of Cricket," on Facebook, it is worth mentioning that it is even bigger than the individual pages of sports channels and a cricket website (ESPN Cricinfo) owned by ESPN Star Sports, which he is endorsing since 2002, and can only be matched when fan bases of all three pages of the group is clubbed together (compare the images below with the Sachin's Facebook cover image posted above). It is even bigger than that of Mumbai Indians, his IPL team.

The brand also felt the raw-power of the genius in pulling more people, who otherwise wouldn't have been as keen, to engage with posts containing Sachin in the frame. And same is true for the posts on the official wall of Mumbai Indians, the IPL team of which Sachin was the brightest jewel.

When compared with the likes, shares, and comments on posts on Sachin's official Facebook wall, the number depicted above are relatively low, but then it has more to do with the brand and its image than with Sachin or his magic.

Power of Brand Sachin in all its glory can be felt on the posts on his official wall, where some of its posts outweigh the entire Fan-base of majority of the brands he endorses, or the ones he doesn't. You can get an idea from the following images. I will warn you against calculating the engagement events on these four posts, as the process itself will overwhelm you, what to talk of the result, and by no means I claim that these are the most engaging posts on the wall.

Sachin on Twitter

It is not only Facebook where Sachin elicited such a strong response from his fans, on Twitter as well, the positive emotion flowing on the Little Champion's timeline is not something you will experience on the Twitter timeline on a regular basis, and perhaps nowhere on the timelines of any Indian brand or celebrity on twitter.

Despite the fact that there are only 376 occasions when a tweet was sent out from the official twitter handle of the batting great and with no discernable schedule or frequency, there are more than 38.10 lakh followers of the twitter profile. And even the few he sent out managed to get his fans going into a frenzy, any brand will vie for (see the following two tweets). This speaks volume of the brand.

... Those magical moments of our ODI journey will stay with me for the rest of my life. Thank you so much :-)

— sachin tendulkar (@sachin_rt) December 25, 2012

Words are not enough to express my thanks to each of you for all the love & support I have received over the years.....

— sachin tendulkar (@sachin_rt) December 25, 2012

The brands that have used Sachin in their tweets also were seen more often on twitter than the ones where either Sachin is absent, or is endorsed by someone else.

Here is Q5 of the #ShivajiParkToLords #contest. Ans to win Sachin signed goodies, tabs & a chance to meet Sachin! RT! pic.twitter.com/QerFmmOQwa — Aviva India (@avivaindia) November 12, 2013

Sachin on YouTube

It is the spectacle that Sachin creates which inspire a sense of awe in its fans, and what other medium can communicate it more powerfully than video? And when it comes to video nothing beats the power of YouTube. Although there is no official channel of Sachin Tendulkar on YouTube, at least not one that I could find, YouTube is constantly abuzz with searches related to the batting genius. There are countless videos about Tendulkar on YouTube, and one of the few attempts to use this medium to engage audience with Sachin in frame, in perhaps only exclusively for-web videos, was undertaken by Aviva. And it is needless to say that the videos created by Aviva has generated a lot of interest in Sachin's fans—be it the cricket training videos or talking about the brand the Little Champion endorses. The power of brand Sachin has even motivated to create a separate section on Aviva's YouTube profile, called The Sachin Corner, which includes sections like Padding up with Sachin, Sachin Off Guard, and Sachin@Aviva.

One video that is spiking on YouTube is Sachin recitation of a Marathi Poem for MARD (Men Against Rape and Discrimination), a social initiative designed to create awareness to instil gender equality and respect towards women.

Sachin Memory Project

To salute the genius of Sachin and bid farewell to the illustrious career of the batting genius, Star Sports has started the Sachin Memory Project (#SachinMemoryProject) where it tries to bring the cricketing career of Sachin together on a timeline. It has also curated some memorable moments from his career and placed them on a separate timeline, and the sports channel has done the same with videos displaying the highlights of his career.

Visit: Sachin Memory Project to experience Sachin and remember the days that have gone by. The sports channel also invites Sachin's fans to participate in it by engaging with the page on Facebook and Twitter, an example of content shared is shown below in the tweet.

http://t.co/sVEwpOaan7 #SachinMemoryProject

— Kaushik Hazarika (@kaushik_h) November 12, 2013

BCCI did it again...

BCCI ran a Thank You Sachin (#ThankYouSachin) campaign on Twitter to pay tribute to the man who filled its bank accounts to the brink. And the cricket control body has shown a nice gesture by changing the cover of its Twitter profile to thank Sachin for the role he played in taking the game to masses, but as always happen with BCCI, things didn't go well, and the app it has used to send a digitally signed photograph each to each of its fans backfired. The app randomly picked twitter handles to send out personalized tweets, but it all went wrong when someone started to add some adorning words to the tweets. See for yourself the words added to the tweets in the tweets shared below, and just imagine what will be going in the minds of BCCI officials.

Classy :) "@BCCI: @shivamLM Bhenchod click here http://t.co/9QM7lJyb80 for your Sachin Tendulkar personalized digital autograph."

— Nikhil Halkude (@nikhilhalkude) November 7, 2013

@constipatedd Constipated click here http://t.co/YS4vkkEMB9 for your Sachin Tendulkar personalized digital autograph.

— BCCI (@BCCI) November 8, 2013

@BCCI #ThankYouSachin kk.

— Avirup (@CentralWinger_) November 6, 2013

...so long Sachin Tendulkar

My first memory of Sachin Tendulkar goes back to 1991-92 when I was in hostel and my exams were going on. A classmate of mine crawled under as many as 15 dormitory beds to reach to the television set placed in the room. He had a stick in his hand to switch the television on and further mute the volume so that our warden who was in the next room does not come to know that instead of studying we were watching cricket.

The good friend stayed there, under the bed, for the entire duration of the match, and rest of us took turn at keeping the watch to announce the hostel superintendent's arrival. The event went unnoticed, but the memory still lingers, and doesn't fail to bring smile back from the days. Only thing I cannot remember is whether it was early morning match (2-3am one), or the afternoon one. Perhaps was too caught in the aura of the Genius to be to count time.

So long Sachin...!