(Image source from: Impact of social media on 2014 general elections})

What makes India's general elections 2014 remarkedly different from its previous ones? In 2014 Lok Sabha elections social media has been playing a prominent role in campaigns of political parties.

Facebook, Twitter and Google have become the favoured choice of political parties and candidates for breaking news or spreading messages through these social media, along with the traditional media.  

These social media giants have emerged as a major player in the current general elections. All the three media giants have seen greater traffic and usage in India.

At present, there are 100 million Facebook users in India, which is the largest figure outside the US. Likewise, Twitter users in India has doubled since January, 2014.

Popularity of social media this general elections can be assessed by the fact that after the 7th phase of polling, it was found that 49 million Indian elections-related conversations were posted on Twitter. Compare this with the figures for 2013, when Twitter posts on all Indian elections-related conversations was around 20 million.

The popularity of this micro-blogging site has increased since 2009, when Sashi Tharoor was the only Indian politician to have an active Twitter account with 6,000 followers. In 2014, five years later, almost all political leader in India has an active Twitter account.

Today, BJP's prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi is the most popular politician on Twitter with 3.89 million followers. While Tharoor is second with 2.16 million followers.

Even on Facebook, Narendra Modi has around 14 million fans. Modi is second only to, Barack Obama the only other politician with more Facebook fans than himself.

The impact of these social media on India's general elections would be revealed only after May 16, when poll results would be declared. But  it remains a fact that the widespread use of Facebook and Twitter in this general elections has added substancial revenue to the coffers of these social media giants.

(AW: Pratima Tigga)