Republic TV had generated as many as 13 Twitter hashtags related to the stories that the channel covered in the first week of its launch between May 6 and 12. All the hashtags put together generated about 2, 61, 000 tweets at 1.21 tweets per follower. In contrast, Times Now generated 86,000 tweets which translates to .01 tweets / follower.
As per data provided by Opalina Technologies, Republic has 2, 41, 000 twitter followers which is roughly 3% compared to Times Now’s 7.4 million followers on twitter.
Gaurav Sharma, Co-Founder, Opalina Technologies, said, “The conversation generated by Republic has a higher retention level. This is between 20-30 per cent after 12 hours of story going on-air. As the channel has launched only recently, we expect the total volume and follower base to go up, however the activity level is likely to come down/ per follower.”
Out of the total 2.61 lakh tweets generated by the 13 hashtags from the channel, #lalutapeexposed contributed the highest number of tweets, about 30 per cent of the total. The second most popular one was #sunandamurdertapes with 26 per cent, followed by #akhileshinsuts martyrs (11 per cent) and #republicstingslashkar (nine per cent).
The other hashtags run by the channel include #arvindgate, #endgamelalu, #endtripletalaq, #gandhipapers, #indiawithkulbhushan, #iskejricorrupt, #nototripletalaq, #Traitorzakirbanned, and #zakirconversionfactory.
The channel has been quite popular on social media much before its launch.