Celebrity news beats reports from Parliament any day
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THERE WERE MANY topics buzzing on social-media platforms this week, especially Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pantip.com, though the two biggest ones were the controversial amnesty bill and the marriage of fugitive politician Vatana Asavahame's son Cho
A quick browse through the news feeds in Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pantip.com showed that these two topics were holding several people’s attention, though Janie and Ae’s story trumped the goings-on in Parliament.
In fact, there was a very clear split between social-media users and what held their attention. These two very different topics also proved how Thais rely on social media to share and access information in real-time.
Then there is Pantip.com, the only Thai-language social-media platform, which played a key role in digging up details about Janie and Ae.
Judging from the number of comments, “likes” and “shares”, it was clear that people were more interested in the celebrity wedding than what was happening in Parliament.
The matrimonial tie-up was revealed to the media on Thursday – the day the amnesty bill came up for discussion in the House of Representatives.
According to Thailand Trending (@thaitrend), the hashtag for Janie and Ae (#MBHJA) was mentioned at least 27,861 times, ranking it the second most popular topic on Twitter. Meanwhile, #Amnesty came in at 13, with only 3,216 mentions in a day.
Janie and Ae’s story was also top story on Instagram – a platform that is very popular among celebrities.
Apisilp Trunanont, product development manager at Pantip.com, said that on Thursday the number of unique users at Pantip.com rose by 13 per cent, while the traffic increased by 50 per cent.
He said this was because visitors kept refreshing their news feed to read new comments about, you guessed it, Janie and Ae!
