2020 Social: Because Business is Social

Avoiding Collisions on the Social Web

Posted on 30. Dec, 2009 by Dave in Announcements, Case Studies, How To Guides, Ideas

Last week, the social Web felt a bit like a bad holiday sale…as some notable brands suffered collisions with their respective audiences. The combination of business processes and the consumer reactions, expressed via social media, played a role in each of them.

Post continues here.

What Social Media Taught Me About Management and Leadership

Posted on 28. Dec, 2009 by Gautam in Ideas, Trends

I started my career in HR in 1999, and I started blogging here in 2002 – so in my mind both of these are linked in some way.

In my career in moved from KM to e-learning, to Training to a HR Generalist stint and then to HR Consulting – and parallel to this I was discovering more and more tools as they got invented and went out of fashion – from Yahoo Groups to Ryze to Linkedin to Orkut to Facebook to Twitter.

Looking back at my career and social media journey over the last decade I thought I’d point down my thoughts on what social media taught me that an MBA in HR did not (or maybe I didn’t pay attention to it)

1. People have a lot more in common than their differences. Social media gives amplification to the basic desire of human beings – to connect and to express. Some people like to express more and some like to connect more. Leadership is going to mean more about giving them tools and work that meet that need is the key.
2. Conversation is key, if you want to persuade someone – influence someone, you have to talk to them. Sometimes, conversing is hard, with the volume of connections we all have, hence the prioritisation and knowledge of whom you have to convince-is imperative. The age of leading by command and control is truly on the way out.
3. Learning happens by doing and sharing – We all learn in different ways but the key to learning something in today’s ever-changing world, is to “learn in practice”. Learning Officers need to understand that simulations would be key to actual learning and not “classroom” or even “e-learning” in the way it exists today. As a leader and manager
4. Keep connected to innovators and the Average Joe. Hanging out with social media types one can get lost between the excitement for the next shiny new thing. Not hang out with the experimenters and you might miss the next big trend. HR people have a similar dilemma, focus on the high performers or the average performers. They are as different as chalk and cheese. The answer is “both”
5. Give to receive. Social media is the epitome of the giving it away thinking. Giving away ideas, thoughts, links. Telling people “here’s how that other guy/website/community can be useful for you” makes them come back to you and drives your influence up, ironically. It’s time for managers and HR people to admit that sometimes they don’t have all the answers, and to know who the experts are and send queries to them. That would build better trust.

What has social media taught you?

Mail Today Story on the Biggest Technology Trends of 2010s

Posted on 27. Dec, 2009 by gaurav in Media, Trends

Mail Today interviewed me recently for a story on the biggest technology trends of 2010s.

I think Augmented Reality will be the biggest digital technology trend over the next decade.

Augmented Reality applications add a data layer to physical objects, and augment our physical reality by making it interactive. Basically, you point your mobile phone camera at any physical object (a building, a book, a person) and get information about it, superimposed on the screen, in real time.

As an example, you will be able to point your cameraphone at the cute girl in the neighborhood cafe and see that she is single, likes super-achiever type men, and has three friends in common with you, but tends to complain about her ex-boyfriends in public. The app will achieve this feat by identifying her through face recognition technology, then quickly scanning her profile information and status messages on Facebook and Twitter. If you still fancy your chances with her, it will request your common friends to introduce you to her via Facebook Connect driven dating service Thread.

Layar and Mobilizy/ Wikitude are early examples of AR apps and Pranav Mistry’s talk at TEDIndia is a sign of things to come.

Augmented reality has the potential to transform how we create and consume content (read blog post that mention the red fort while you are there), how we connect with people (Googling someone before meeting them will be so 2000s in the 2010s), and how we relate to brands (read reviews about a new movie by pointing at the movie poster).

The step before Augmented Reality (a world that is digital by default) will be a web that is social by default. You will be able to sign into very website with your Facebook/ Google OpenSocial/ Twitter ID, see what your friends are doing on the website and seamlessly publish your activities to your Facebook/ Orkut/ Twitter activity streams. For the rare anachronistic website which still won’t enable these social features, you will be able to use a browser add on like Glue to do the same.

Here’s the full text of the article.

WORLD WILL FIT IN YOUR MOBILE

By Neha Tara Mehta in New Delhi

Life is going to be about e- xistence, literally. Digital technology will rule us in abigger and better way

CIRCA 2020: You have a thing for the new girl in office and want to know if she is single and as perky as she appears when she’s around the coffee machine. All you have to do is discreetly point your mobile phone camera towards her. The face-recognition software linked to her social networking site will give you information about her in real time — superimposed on the camera.

You may not like what you see: the software tells you she is single (yippee!) and likes super- achievers ( do you qualify?). But a quick scan of her blog, Facebook and Twitter status messages may reveal she gets irritated with a boyfriend who smokes and plays games on his mobile phone when he’s out with her. Still interested in her? Perhaps the girl in the next cubicle would have fewer hang- ups? Give your dating the digital edge and whip out the mobile camera again.

Then again, if you’ve settled into happy domesticity but are engaged in warfare over who’ll do the laundry, go for the Home Management Application on Facebook/ Twitter , which is connected to your washing machine.

In the middle of your board meeting, you could use your phone to write on your washing machine’s wall that it needs to get down to washing. The washing machine, in turn, will write on your wall (as well as that of your wife and maid, if she is also on a social networking site), that it has achieved its key result area for the day.

If 2009 ended with news of a website (www.seppukoo.com) that allows you to commit an online ritual suicide on Facebook , the new decade is certainly not going to see the liberation of your digital body.

If anything, online social networking is set to grow exponentially — and not just between people. In an increasingly wired world, people as well as machines will interact socially — dramatically altering the way we perceive reality and connect with others.

“Googling someone before meeting him will be so 2000s in the 2010s,” says Gaurav Mishra, CEO, 2020 Social. He predicts that Augmented Reality — which adds a data layer to physical objects, thus making our physical reality interactive — will be the biggest digital technology trend in the next decade. So your mobile camera will be your walking encyclopedia or the ultimate voyeur.

Online market research company Juxt Consult estimates that as of May 2009, social networking was an activity undertaken by 41 per cent of the regular internet users in the country (around 15.05 million). Internet penetration is still less than 5 per cent. Things will change in the next few years, with an array of devices getting connected to the Net.

The dominant trend in the next decade, says Nikhil Pahwa, editor of the online telecoms and digital media news website Medianama, will be the availability of media across interactive platforms. “With 3G, LTE and 4G, every connected platform will have the ability to be an access point to a social environment,” Pahwa says.

What will ensue is a far more intelligent use of social media than now, says Rajiv Dingra, founder and CEO, Watblog. So your level of social interaction will be leagues ahead of just throwing sheep at each other on Facebook .

As of now, only one in five mobile users log on to the net. In the future, the mobile phone will be the primary mode of connecting to the net, and will emerge as the fulcrum of a connected reality the way we have never known it before. “In the last 10 years, we have primarily used voice-based services on the mobile. In the next decade, the non-voice services will become more important,” says Rajesh Jain, MD, Netcore Solutions.

The mobile will make social networking a lot more instantaneous. “Once people take to social networking on the phone, the interaction will become a lot more frequent,” Mrutyunjay Mishra, co-founder, Juxt Consult, predicts.

The potential for social media driven activism is also enormous. “Imagine 50 million mobile cameras connected to 3G,” says Pahwa. “We can have unquestionable truth on a video recording making it to the net in realtime.” You could have a villager filming a politician distributing money to voters, and posting it on the net in real time.

Jasmine Shah, the brain behind the Jago Re! One Billion Votes campaign, is bullish about using social media to engineer social change. Janagaraha, the NGO he works for, will soon launch Ijanagraha, which will be like Facebook tailored for social change. “We will connect citizens who are unknown to each other, but feel for the same cause,” he says. “We will launch the site in 10 locations and put people in the same polling booth area in touch with each other,” he says.

Maybe these neighbours will want to check each other out with their mobile phone camera. Reality is set to become a far more augmented experience.

Cross-posted at Gauravonomics: Social Media and Social Change.

Five Reasons Why Facebook is Good For Your Soul

Posted on 25. Dec, 2009 by gaurav in Ideas, Media

I just came off a panel discussion with writers Greg Atwan and Tom Hodgkinson on BBC World’s ‘World Have Your Say’ talk show. The topic: does Facebook improve our lives?

The discussion touched upon several topics. We discussed how governments, businesses and individuals can use Facebook in good, bad and ugly ways. We talked about reasons why Facebook is the most popular social networking platform in the world. We also touched upon some fascinating conspiracy theories from Tom on why Facebook is evil.

I believe that Facebook is indeed good for your soul and here are five reasons why –

1. The Facebook activity feed enables an ambient awareness of your social circle. Even if your friends are scattered across five continents, you can keep up with their lives on Facebook. So, when you meet again, you feel as if you were never really out of touch with each other.

2. The boundaries between your online and offline lives have blurred. If you meet someone interesting at a party or a conference, you are likely to friend them on Facebook, and get to know them better, so a chance encounter is more likely to result in real friendship. Similarly, if you meet someone interesting on your blog or Twitter, then friend them on Facebook, you are likely to meet them in real life and sometimes become close friends.

3. Even your closest friends get a more well-rounded picture of you on Facebook. When you meet your friends offline, you are likely to talk about some topics, but not others, based on what the context of the conversation is. On Facebook, however, you are likely to reveal more sides of your personality and talk about what you are reading, watching, listening to, feeling or thinking about. So, your friends get to see sides of you they haven’t seen before.

4. On Facebook, you choose to share what you want to and with whom. The Facebook privacy settings are the most comprehensive of all social networking platforms and give you granular control of who can see which parts of your profile and activity stream. If you don’t want your school classmate to see what you are doing, you can only share a limited profile with him, or even unfriend him.

5. Finally, Facebook is great for discovering interesting friends of friends, especially with the new privacy settings. If you and I share a common friend, we are also likely to share at least some common interests. Services like Thread enable you to discover interesting people who are friends of your friends and even let you ask your common friend to make the introduction. If you are single, you know where to find your next date.

How has Facebook improved you life? Do share interesting anecdotes in the comments below.

Cross-posted at Gauravonomics: Social media and Social Change.

2010 Social Media Predictions: Online Brand Communities Will Come of Age

Posted on 24. Dec, 2009 by gaurav in Trends

I was recently quoted in two compilations of social media predictions for 2010, by TrendsSpotting and Junta42, along with social media influencers like Pete Cashmore, David Armano, Chris Brogan, Peter Kim, John Batelle, Drew McLellan, Jason Falls, Charlene Li, Robert Scoble and Paul Gillin.

I think the big social media trend in 2010 will be that online brand communities will come of age.

Brand marketers will create compelling micro-content to seed these communities, then run contests to invite consumers to interpret their brand, create their own content.

I also see brand marketers investing in communities that are built around a bigger social object: a lifestyle, cause or passion.

Here is the TrendsSpotting 2010 Social Media Predictions –

Cross-posted at Gauravonomics: Social Media and Social Change.

The making of a Social Organization

Posted on 21. Dec, 2009 by Gautam in How To Guides

At 2020 Social one of the things we believe is that we are a our own petri-dish. We experiment with technology and processes to convert ourselves into the kind of organization we think is suitable to be called social.

So not only do we have a blog, a Facebook page, a twitter account, a twitter list showcasing all our tweets – we’ve also now started a wiki to focus on building a repository of social media successes in India – and will invite participation from like minded folks soon.

On the other side of the seriousness spectrum we have started a Fun page where we publicly talk on the lighter side of life at 2020 Social

Internally we are driving online collaboration using three tools, Google Apps for mail, document sharing and calendering - Socialtextfor internal conversations and collaboration on a wiki – and Basecamp for project management.

As social media enthusiasts we have noticed that internally even we need to see a business/behavioral benefit to using a tool – and we understand that more traditional businesses would need to see it more.

One of the way to showcase this is look for external cases where ROI has been calculated – but we believe that using the tools showcases a greater commitment and a better story for any client.

What do you think?

If you’re in the advisory business how many times do you apply your advice on yourself?

(Cross posted from Gautam on Organizations 2.0)

Singapore Management University Social Media in Asia Wiki

Posted on 17. Dec, 2009 by gaurav in Trends

The students of Singapore Management University have put together a nifty wiki on social media in Asia.

The wiki has sections for each country (see India) with pages for introduction, case studies, resources and interviews with local experts (Kiruba, Rajesh and myself).

In my interviews, I talk about how the social media marketing scene in India is maturing –

:: Tell us about the use of social media by businesses in India.

About 5% of Indians have access to the Internet and 35-40% have access to mobile services. These numbers may seem small but actually it means 30 million users. For several businesses such as Pepsi and Reebok these 30 million internet users are sufficient because they are urban, educated, and upwardly mobile. For other business this number is not enough. Eventually we need to analyze who the target audience are for businesses. Hence, not everyone needs or wants to use social media at the moment. Further down the line, this might change.

:: Could you give us a brief comparison between the Indian and the U.S. market?

I spent the last year researching how users in emerging countries such as Brazil, Russia, China and India use social media. Emerging countries often lag developed countries in terms of penetration and in some cases the absolute numbers of internet users. But there is no lag in terms of actual usage behaviour. In fact, we find that in the emerging countries, especially Brazil, China and India, the percentage of internet users as a proportion to the whole population is small, but the proportion of social media users to the internet users is very high.

The difference between the most sophisticated internet user in India and the most sophisticated internet user in the U.S. is not much, but the variability in India is very high. There are those who are at the cutting edge of usage and thought leadership while others don’t even know what the internet is.

This means that a lot of the things you can do in the US market in terms of branded communities, collaborative workspaces and conversational marketing can also be done in India. In fact, research shows that Indians internet users are actually more willing to become members of communities and share their personal information while connecting with strangers than Americans are. This might seem surprising and counter-intuitive because India is a collectivistic society. But it’s true because all the cultural baggage we’ve come with is more than offset by the early adopter bias of Indian internet users.

What we can’t do in India is use the internet for mass market research because the internet user base in India is not representative of the general population as compared to the U.S.

:: From a marketing perspective, what do businesses do given that research on the internet is not reliable for the Indian market?

I said that I would not take the opinions of the 30 million internet users and extrapolate it as a representation of the rest of the population. But if a brand’s target population is these 30 million users only – users from the top cities – then this could work. It depends on who you are talking to. For example, if you are talking to Unilever, and I am talking about soap brand which 80% of its sales are accounted for by small towns, then of course anything you do on the internet is not relevant. But if I’m talking to Dell then most of their laptops, especially the higher end laptops, would sell in the top 8-10 cities. Hence, their entire target population is on the internet. The same goes for Microsoft if they’re targeting small and medium enterprises (SMEs) because their target population (the most profitable portion) is already on the internet already.

:: Are Indian companies (especially indigenous ones) starting to adopt social technology (such as wikis, blogs etc) within the organization? Or are they still resistant to using these tools?

Some companies are doing it. You must realize that a lot of Indian companies don’t even have well-run enterprise 1.0 programs (CRM, ERP, project management), so they aren’t quite ready for enterprise 2.0.

However, these are being widely adopted in the IT industry. Many of these companies utilize internal enterprise 2.0 systems which include blogs, wikis and knowledge management tools. A bunch of Indian start-ups and young companies are building products in the enterprise collaboration space; Zoho, Cynapse, Deskaway, Uhuroo and YouSuggest are good examples. But we still have a long way to go; much more than in the consumer space.

:: Do you often come across points of resistance to adoption of enterprise 2.0 or is it because internet penetration is not as high in India?

Here’s the funny thing about enterprise 2.0: it does not depend on internet penetration, as large Indian companies have internet access and several of these applications are hosted on company intranet anyways. Internet penetration is only an issue in terms of the consumer application of these technologies, and like I’ve said previously, for some businesses, 30 million internet users are enough.

:: What is the current state of blogger relations in India? Are companies taking bloggers seriously in their marketing agendas?

Companies are beginning to do regular blogger meetups and blogger outreach programs. However, the listening/ response and longer-term blogger relations aspects haven’t yet become ubiquitous. In the end, blogger meets are only effective if they are part of a larger long-term strategy.

:: Is India becoming more sensitive to social media?

There certainly is a lot of enthusiasm amongst everybody. People are open to listen, experiment and invest time and money behind this new technology. We’ve had a very good experience so far in terms of openness. There are also 40-50 social media agencies of all types in India now. The ecosystem is evolving and awareness is increasing about this space.

Cross-posted at Gauravonomics: Social Media and Social Change.

Tata Indicom Uses Account Statements to Invite Customers to Participate in Its Blog and Forum

Posted on 15. Dec, 2009 by gaurav in Case Studies

I was pleasantly surprised recently to see that Tata Indicom is using its account statements to invite customers to participate in its blog and forum –

I have been presenting slides on how real employees (including old friend Nidhi) use the Tata Indicom corporate blog to have real conversations with their customers –

I tend to be very particular about building the right customer community platform using the right software (which, very often, is something like Lithium), and for a reason. The right platform enables and encourages the right behavior, opens up new degrees of freedom, both for community users and the administrators.

However, the Tata Indicom example is a reminder for me that brands can do a lot of right things without using sophisticated software. Their blog is built on the free Wordpress blogging software and their forum is built on vBulletin, not a particularly sophisticated forum software. The forum user interface is unwieldy, the different pieces of software don’t speak to each other, and there’s only so much that Tata Indicom or their customers can do with it.

However, even though Tata Indicom doesn’t have the right software to run a customer community, it sure has the right soul and, in the end, the right soul matters more than the right software.

When we build online communities for our clients, we work hard to get both the software and the soul right. Ask us how.

Cross-posted at Gauravonomics: Social Media and Social Change.

Janaagraha Launches Its Citizen Action Community iJanaagraha

Posted on 15. Dec, 2009 by gaurav in Announcements

Bangalore-based civil society group Janaagraha, which had earlier tied up with Tata Tea to launch the Jaago Re (wake up) campaign during the 2009 Indian Lok Sabha elections, has launched its citizen action community iJanaagraha today.

In its finished avatar, the iJanaagraha online platform will have strong location, community and activation layers and connect citizens with activists and politicians around civic issues at the polling booth level.

In the first phase, the iJanaagraha platform asks citizens to stay awake (Jaagte Raho) and register online to vote and also volunteer to become an Area Voter Mitra. Area Voter Mitra will run get-out-the-vote drives in their neighbourhoods, with support from Janaagraha and the Election Commission of India. The activities in the first phase will be focused on the long overdue Bangalore local elections (see iJanaagraha Blog).

On his own blog, my friend and co-conspirator Jasmine Shah shares his experiences in running the very successful Jaago Re campaign and looks ahead to Jaagte Raho.

I have been associated with Jaagte Raho/ iJanaagraha initiatives over the last six months as a member of the Janaagraha Technology Advisory Group. Members of the 2020 Social team have also been working with Jasmine on strategy and project management aspects. It’s exciting to see the project in public after months of work. It’s even more exciting to know that only a fraction of the project is in public view as of now, and some of the most powerful pieces are still in the pipeline. Stay tuned.

Cross-posted at Gauravonomics: Social Media and Social Change.

My Talk on Digital Activism at Social Media Club Delhi

Posted on 15. Dec, 2009 by gaurav in Events, Ideas

In my previous post on three lessons entrepreneurs can learn from activists, I wrote about the importance of building a partner and volunteer ecosystem and mentioned how we use this principle in our own work at 2020 Social.

Over the last three months, Dave has been working with several other social media practitioners and enthusiasts to start chapters of Social Media Club in a number of Indian cities, including Delhi (Facebook, Twitter), Mumbai (Twitter), Bengaluru (Twitter), Chennai (Twitter), Kolkata (Twitter), Hyberabad (Twitter), and Pune (Twitter). Several of these aren’t yet active, so if you want to take the lead in your local Social media Club, write to @evansdave on Twitter or volunteer on the Social Media Club wiki.

The Delhi Chapter of Social media Club held its first meetup at Hauz Khas Village on November 21, 2009 (the first Social Media Club meetup in India?) and some 40 odd people turned up.

I gave a talk on digital activism in India and China to emphasize the idea that social media goes beyond business and marketing.

In the discussion that followed, I suggested that we keep the focus of Social Media Club meetups on big ideas so that not only social media enthusiasts and practitioners but also marketers and non-profits are interested in getting involved. I would love to attend talks that teach me something new about social media in India, for instance —

- How are Janaagraha, Breakthrough and Cry uses social media in India.
- How are Zoho, Deskaway, Uhuroo, Cynapse, YouSuggestand Remindo are building SaaS-based collaboration products out of India?
- How are startups like Quippy, Fachak and Lifeblob building consumer focused social networking platforms from India?

I hope Dave and the other good folks who are setting up Social Media Clubs in India will keep their eye on the big ideas and make the Indian chapters some of the most vibrant communities in the Social Media Club ecosystem.

Cross-posted at Gauravonomics: Social Media and Social Change.