Viral songs
Daridram
Daridram is a song with a traditional touch and a fun twist. Soon after its launch, Telugus started jamming with the #daridramchallenge which went viral on social media overnight. Trying out different ways to showcase their talent, they posted videos of them grooving to the Telugu number. Right from director SS Rajamouli to the layman, everyone seemed to have tripped on this track
Manike Mage Hithe
Manike Mage Hithe went viral after Sri Lankan singer Yohani’s version of it was released mid this year. The song surpassed 91 million views on YouTube within three months and became a hit overnight. The song virulently made its way in Hyderabad as people started sharing it on Instagram and Whatsapp as background music.
Reddy Gari Ammayi
This Telugu track made by city-based college students Aishwarya Reddy and Afroz Ali found its way into netizens’ reels and clocked over 10 million views within months after its launch. The song is based on the done-to-death love-at-first-sight concept, but what set it apart was its cute love quotient, easy-breezy conversational lyrics and clean musical arrangements
Keeping up with the Trends
FB’s Metaverse
This year, Facebook became Meta to tread us into the next chapter of the Internet, ‘Metaverse’. Meta is the new frontier for online interaction, blending the physical and digital worlds through computer-generated avatars. Meaning, each user will have an Internet avatar with its unique personality (digital incarnation of the user’s personality) that can independently interact with the other avatars. It may sound like a science fiction movie, but Meta hopes to turn it into reality
Yellow Twitter
This year, #YellowTwitter was one of the popular trends. It was apparently started by netizens to brighten the lockdown days by sharing pictures of vibrant yellow-coloured things, including food items like dhokla, ladoos, bananas and mangoes. Recently, former ZPTC of Kondapak mandal, Gajwel, Madhuri Reddy, shared a picture of herself flaunting her yellow sarees
Clubhouse
Months after its launch, Clubhouse, a voice-only social media app that helps people communicate in voice chat rooms, gravitated many Hyderabadis towards it. The app helped those who were longing for interactions that happened in the clubhouses in the city before the lockdown. Besides, connoisseurs and people with specific interests, denizens used the app to discuss trends in the city. Some used it to learn local languages such as Telugu and Urdu too
#FeelItReelIt
A month after the ban on TikTok in India mid this year, Instagram launched Reels — a carbon copy of the banned app. Reels offered users a suite of creative tools to splice together 15-second videos with customisable music, text, special effects, scene-stitching technology and sharing options. It gained quick popularity across the globe and Hyderabad was no exception. Influencers from the city relied more on reels than on Instagram feed for quick fame