Social Media News Stories-Last Week of Feb
Posted on 03. Mar, 2010 by Hardeep Kaur Rai in Media, Reviews, Trends
To begin with, a belated Happy Holi to all of you.Quite an interesting mix of noise in the social media sphere in the last week ofFebruary.
1) Business Standard featured an article ‘Turning a Digital Page’ by Neha Bhatt elaborating on the rising trend of digital books and the consequent increasing sales of e-readers. The article quotes Gaurav Mishra, CEO, 2020Social and a Kindle user, ‘I bought the Kindle last year. I was willing to leave behind my collection of 2000 books, since the e-reader could hold over 300 books. What I really like about my e-reader is the audio feature. The fact that the device is so light and easy to carry is another motivation’. The article elaborates that the device works for those who care about portability or those who want to appear chic to strangers or associates. However comparing to US and UK, the article considers e-readers a relatively new concept in India due to lack of e-books, pricing issues and loss of wider entertainment options like blogging, gaming and e-magazines.
Comment- For sure, e-readers have a brighter future and can take the book market by storm if made available within the budget of the common man. And with increased entertainment options, the youth will take to it like fish to water.
2) The Economic Times featured an interview of Harvard Business School Senior Associate Dean, Professor David B Yoffie in its article ‘Indian IT Cos need global makeover’ by Peerzada Abrar on 23rd Feb. The article quotes Professor Yoffie, ‘Many Indian IT cos are beginning to realize that offering simple BPO or outsourcing jobs is not going to be profitable as in the past. The long term challenge will be to develop newer services and find other areas in the value chain to operate’.
Comment- With the recession hitting the US and Europe markets, the entire business paradigm underwent a complete overhaul. New challenges demand a fresher perspectives and offerings that have a tie-up with IT. Indian firms could have an upper hand here if they choose to couple their current offering-high quality talent at lower costs- with newer creative operatives for a wider scope of industries.
3) The Economic Times reported its tie-up with Facebook in its article ‘ET Facbook in tie-up for Budget’ on 23rd Feb. The article elaborates on a tie-up between Facebook, Economic Times and ET, its television channel for users to interact with Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee for the annual budget released on Friday, the 26th. The article states, ‘the new initiative- ET Facebook: talk to FM will give users an opportunity to post their views and suggestions on the budget by logging on www.economictimes.com. All opinions received would be summarized and presented to the FM in addition to being displayed on the online edition of the paper’.
Comment- Such a move bridges the disconnect between politics and the Indian youth. It lends the youth a voice and have their say in the political matters pertaining to the nation, especially in the discussions preceding the annual Budget.
4) Business Standard featured another article ‘Mobile internet usage on a roll in India’ by Bibhu Ranjan Mishra on 23rd Feb that elaborated on the growing number of users utilizing the mobile Internet with figures doubling since the beginning of 2009. A major reason for this is the low cost of a general packet radio service , also known as GPRS, ready mobile handsets along with innovative data usage plans being offered by telecom companies. Major usage being for email, messaging, social networking and entertainment.
Comment- Mobile internet trend in India is poised to growth, especially with the young Indian becoming increasingly tech-savvy and 3G services being launched.
5) Business Standard reported ‘IPL catches the Twitter bug’ by Pradipta Mukherjee on 25th Feb. The article states, ‘IPL commissioner Lalit Modi tweets not only to give updates, but also to comment on controversies. Using Twitter, Modi has also sought bids for the two new teams that will be included in IPL IV in 2011. All teams have Twitter accounts and some have registered on Facebook too’.
Comment- The social media platform can be utilized to its full advantage to reach out to fans with teams ensuring interaction and a wider scope of activities on its websites like video downloading, match replays, special moments, interviews, wall papers, team songs, merchandise, ticket bookings etc.
6) The Economic Times featured an article ‘MS topples Google from leading biz brand slot’ on 26th Feb announcing Microsoft as the leading business-facing brand, followed by Rolls-Royce with Google being pushed to number 5 in the annual Business Superbrands Top 500 survey by The Centre for Brand Analysis (TCBA). The article reports Handset manufacturer Blackberry as the newest entrant in the top 10 slot of the survey with other brands such as Sony, Virgin Atlantic, Nokia, BUPA, BP and Michelin completing the list.
Comment- The survey depicts mixed results some brands losing ground-particularly the government supported agencies and financial institutions- and others climbing the charts speedily. However, the war between Microsoft and Google for the top spot reveals that both sides are continuing to deliver on their promises and thus proving their mettle.
7) Economic Times journalist Rajiv Banerjee reported ‘You Tube ropes in HSBC as lead sponsor’ on 27th Feb, stating that the sponsorship will be utilized for live streaming of IPL matches. HSBC joins the likes of HP and Samsung through its sponsorship with You Tube that has acquired a two-year rights to host IPL matches live for an undisclosed sum.
Comment- With cricket being more than a passion in India and IPL symbolizing its craze peak, any association with it presents a big opportunity for any brand to reach out to a huge target audience. And using the more engaging online platform, that is predicted to only grow bigger, ensures more innovative brand exposure at half the price of TV sponsorship.
8) The Times of India featured an article ‘Facebook patents user news feed’ on 28th Feb that elaborates on how Facebook has won an American patent on its News Feed feature. The article states, ‘The patent summarizes the invention as a method for displaying a news feed in a social network environment. The method was described as US Patent and Trade Office Paperwork as including comments and links posted by social network users for sharing with other members of the online community’.
Comment- This comes freshly after Google’s Buzz launch. With social networking being an important trend, Facebook seems to be taking on Twitter, MySpace, Buzz and all other social networking services. Facebook has got itself a really strong weapon that it can use against other networks.
9) The Hindu featured an article ‘Changes in Cyber Space’ by Sevanti Ninan on 28th Feb reporting that the net is becoming more of a marketing platform and less of a medium for personal expression. The article elaborates, ‘Sharing is the operative word in social media. Some of the uses of social media are for companies who are advised how to sneak into their marketing into this world of sharing. Marketers found their way through niche blogs and advertisers tie-up with blogs. Marketing tends to inveigle itself into all kinds of communication spaces, including social media, which is all the rage on the Internet’.
Comment- Marketing incorporates selling to its target audience on platforms they inhabit and channels they use. With social media becoming a rage all over, it is to be expected that marketers would soon swamp the medium to exercise it to their advantage whether selling or gathering data. The Internet is a constantly evolving medium that reaches out to more people than any other and marketers tend to use such a medium which is dynamic enough to suit to their nature and needs. Another reason is that both the Internet and Marketing have a strong similarity i.e your tactics depend largely upon your target audience and thereby nothing is constant.
10) In a similar vein on marketing, Hindustan Times featured an article ‘Riding the info mouse’ by Rachit Vats on 1st March that predicts Information management as the next big marketing opportunity for brand owners. The article states, ‘A lot of marketers are beginning to wake up to the promise, looking at social media, consumer review sites, product reviews, consumer guidance or blogs as interactive knowledge and influence opportunities. They are monitoring content as well as seeding in content to generate the right kind of buzz around their brands’.
Comment- Today’s consumers are an intelligent lot who do not mind spending their money but only after they are convinced on quality. As more and more Indians blog and post product reviews online, brands have realized that monitoring and listening to them works to their benefit through first hand consumer feedback and also build relationships. Both the consumer and the brand benefits through this.
11) The Financial Express featured an article ‘Google Rolls out ad plan for Buzz social network’ on 2nd March that reveals Google’s move to invite brands to run personalized ads around Buzz. The article reports, ‘ The commercial model for Buzz is based on the ad system it uses for Gmail. It works by detecting the subject matter of email conversations and targeting the user with relevant messages. Media buyers say that Google is asking brands to run ads on Buzz to test their effectiveness’.
Comment- Buzz seems to be going all the way to establish itself as a strong competitor to other social networking sites, particularly Facebook and enjoy some of its success. If brands advertise on Buzz, then they automatically reach out to a massive user base of Gmail. And Google gets a taste of the effectiveness of Buzz through this.
Social Media Stories Last Week
Posted on 24. Feb, 2010 by Hardeep Kaur Rai in Media, Reviews, Trends
Social Media News Stories This Past Week
So another week passes by and we bring to you a wrap-up of all the interesting tit-bits fron the Indian social media space.
1) Business Line featued an article by Anjali Prayag and Swetha Kannan on how corporates understand that ‘Social Networking is a serious business’ on 14th Feb. The article states how companies such as IBM and EMC are ‘using employees urge to keep in touch with people to their advantage by also creating their own networking tools, which they believe are useful to businesses’. The article further mentions IBM’s LotusConnections and EMC’s EMC One as social collaboration tools which carry features similar to social networking sites such as blogs, groups, user profiles, wikis, file sharing, photos and forum capabilities that enhance project collaboration for employees.
Comment- While the above trend is increasingly being incorporated amongst corporates, it is still in an exploratory mode in India. Quite a number of Indian firms are still apprehensive and struggling with the concept of social media and perceive social networking as a ‘waste activity’ that slows down the productivity factor of employees. What they fail to understand is that social networking can actually transcend into a tool for honest communication between employees and the firm as well as the employees themselves. Iit is precisely this open communication which sets the foundation for a globally forward firm that will ultimately realize its vision.
2) Times of India chronicled the trend of youngsters from towns and cities across using internet and mobile phone to profess love this Valentine’s day. The article ‘Enter Cupid: Love Blooms in Towns & Tehsils’ by Insiya Amir featured on 14th Feb states, ‘New media such as mobile phone and internet is a godsend for young couples in several parts of middle India where public displays of affection are frowned upon’.
Comment- Even though in different contest, yet here we see social media doing what it does best i.e connecting people across boundaries albeit here they are societal rather than geographical. Another reason why social networking is massively popular amongst youngsters.
3) In a somewhat similar tone to the above article, Economic Times featured an article ‘Tapping into Love @ work’ by Ishani Duttagupta on 14th Feb. The article looks at the role of social networking and social commerce in connecting to the younger audience and their needs. The article states, ‘There’s a huge surge in online buying, gifting and internet searches around festivals and events such as Valentine’s Day. For small mom and pop kind of businesses, it makes a lot of sense to advertise around social networking space- even bigger brands are now looking into the space to tap into the youth market in India. In the case of events such as Valentine’s Day which most youth would like to play out in the physical space, the online media is typically an awareness major, an interest aggregator and desire generator’.
Comment- Social media has changed the very dynamics of communications and the consequent marketing and advertising strategies. The fact that most of the younger audience is almost always connected online in some form or the other is changing the way relationships are conducted. Today it does not matter whether your sweetheart is in another city or country. The internet makes it possible to celebrate special occasions, video chat and voice chat. And it is precisely this youth connect that marketers and communicators are looking to utilize.
4) Following last week’s footsteps, this week saw another mention of Buzz. This time around Economic Times featured an article ‘Google fixing bugs to make the Buzz beep louder’ by Debjoy Sengupta and Harsimran Singh. As the title suggests, the article touches upon the flaws of Buzz that Google is working hard to fix. Buzz users have been complaining about flaws such as privacy concerns including auto-follow, Geo-location and Buzz spam thus leading to some amount of backlash.
Comment- Google is eager to see Buzz become popular enough. Its favourable point is that its entwined with Gmail- the email product of Google. What remains to be seen is how Google will play Buzz strategically to gain market share in the social networking space.
5) Financial Chronicle featured an article ‘Small Blessing’ by Ipshita Kumar on 16th Feb reporting the blessing social media has proved to be for small restaurants. The author states, ‘Social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter have definitely been a blessing for small businesses like small independent restaurants to even compete with big chain restaurants. The main advantage of a networking site’s ad to the restaurant is targeted advertising’.
Comment- Social networking allows businesses to build a strong presence across target audience. The advantage of social media is that anybody with a small marketing budget can utilize the social networking sites to reach out to customers within one’s vicinity.
6) DNA featured an article chronicling the user experience of Venkatesan Vembu of a new online service ChatRoulette started by a 17 year old boy from Moscow in its 17th Feb edition. In the article ‘We are all strangers in a strange world’, Mr. Vembu states, ‘On the website, visitors use a webcam to chat with a succession of perfect strangers from anywhere in the world, pulled out randomly from among the thousands online at any given time. Since there’s no registration or filtering involved and you don’t get to choose whom you’ll get to chat with, it makes for a surreal social encounter for both parties. For all its utter pointlessness, ChatRoulette has an oddly mesmeric quality to it partly arising from the oddball nature of the characters you encounter, even if only fleetingly ’.
Comment- The world is already fitting into the palm of your hand and considering the social media space, social interactions are evolving with every passing minute and more so defined by youth culture. The popularity of the above online service ChatRoulette brings to light a new genre of social interactions.
7) DNA featured the case of an online identity theft instance of notable Bollywood director Madhur Bhandarkar in its article ‘Who’s the imposter on Madhur’s social networking site?’ on 18th Feb. The article reveals ‘The person who is using Madhur’s photo as the profile picture, has written several things including hailing Shah Rukh Khan and his recently released movie’.
Comment- Such instances are increasingly becoming common place along with online death hoaxes. Truly , a scary thing considering the huge fan following and the trouble and confusion it could create for the ‘real person’ and the people following him/her.
8) Time for a film on social networking sites like Facebook? Well so thinks director Roshan Abbas. DNA reports in its article ‘Facebook..time for a film about it’on how the debutant director is making a film on how youth today connect through social networking sites. All of Roshan Abbas’s friends on Facebook get regular updates about his film Always Kabhi Kabhi and also provide regular inputs to him via the same.
Comment- It was inevitable. The youth of today spend most of their time online and any director who wants to capture the true mindset of youth has to bring in his/her’s social networking profiles on these sites into the picture. Case in point being the latest youth oriented Bollywood film Love Aaj Kal where the young protagonists are presented to explore each other’s social networking profiles to know more about each other’s personalities.
9) The Financial Express featured an article ‘Facebook offers more payment options for items in games’ on 20th Feb that elaborated on Facebook Inc’s new service Facebook Credits that gives it 30% cut off from sales of items sold in virtual games on Facebook. The article reports, ‘ The company will make the service available on many more games ahead of its annual developer conference this April’.
Comment- It is a superb tactic by Facebook to earn some revenue considering its popularity as a social networking site as well as gaming platform. Presently gamers pay for virtual items to Zynga Inc and Electronic Arts Inc. Advertisers will also be able to purchase ads on Facebook through Paypal, a unit of E-Bay Inc.
10) Times of India published an article ‘New Media has disrupted marketing’ elaborating on the recently held CII Brand Summit 2010 in its 20th Feb issue. The article elaborates on how marketers are finding it increasingly difficult to grab attention of consumers and new media can actually help with better connect with consumers who are spending a lot of time and having conversations on social media. The article quotes Dave Evans, Consulting Director at 2020Social, ‘Brands need to become part of social networks, become part of the conversations’.
Comment- Most of today’s youth spend their time on platforms like internet, mobile devices and are increasingly choosing to hold all interactions on the online platform. This makes it an imperative medium to understand and utilize for every marketer.
More on the Hyper-linked Organization
Posted on 07. Jan, 2010 by Gautam in Ideas, Trends
JP at Confused of Calcutta is musing about what the Facebookisation of the Enterprise means for IT departments. Here are some of the posts we have done at 2020 Social on the same issue: How to Build a social organization and Making of the Social Organization
As he says:
Was I talking about Facebook? Or was I talking about the IT department
Which brings me to my final point. Facebook does not invest in the edge apps, build them, host them, amend them. They don’t support them, maintain them, back them up. I think IT departments would do well to learn from this. Let the people at the edge build what they want, within a 21st century enabling framework. They know what they want better than any IT department can. What the IT department should do is their utmost to guarantee safety and security of access, privacy and confidentiality, search and subscription tools, scheduling tools, data migration tools, visualisation and mashing tools, prioritisation and ranking tools.
Here’s what I think:
The biggest benefits of the “Facebookisation” is higher employee engagement – hence it is not the IT department that would take a step ahead with that – but the Ops, Strategy and HR groups that would be asking the IT department to follow FB’s lead to create a truly hyper-linked organizaton.
The other big benefit (and this would need to be taken a call by Org Design and CEOs) is do the other systems and processes in the organization support the openness and transparency that the Facebookisation would bring. – if people are rewarded for individual behavior and if the Peformance system does not incentivise a culture of sharing and connecting – the phenomenon would be limited to the “social innovators” within the enterprise alone.
What do you think?
Forbes India Nominates Facebook For 2010 Person of the Year
Posted on 02. Jan, 2010 by gaurav in Media, Trends
Forbes India named nominated Facebook for 2010 Person of the Year in its December 2010 issue and asked me why it should win.
In a recent post, I shared five reasons why Facebook is good for your soul, so my love for Facebook is no secret.
In the interview, however, I highlight the fact that Orkut, not Facebook, is the default social networking platform for Indians. Orkut introduced Indians to social networking, it’s still much bigger than Facebook in India, and with its recent redesign, it might have more staying power than most people give it credit for. Speaking for myself, I have started spending much more time on Orkut after the redesign than I have in the last year or so.
I also highlight the difference between LinkedIn and Facebook in the interview. Most people use LinkedIn like a rolodex, exclusively for professional networking. On the other hand, Facebook reflects our real world relationships better, where we switch between the personal and the professional, almost seamlessly. LinkedIn too offers a vastly improved user interface after its recent redesign and I expect myself to spend more time on LinkedIn in the coming weeks.
So, yes, Facebook is great, but the other social networks have a lot going for them and the battle for the Indian social networking space is far from over.
Here is the full text of the Forbes India story –
Bitten by The Zuckerbug
The Facebook effect: Why a billion people like this
by Rohin Dharmakumar
Jan 2, 2010Account information
Name: Rohin Dharmakumar
Network: Network18
last update: is watching newbie twitter CEO Rajeev bajaj take on questions from random people on twitter
personal info: self critic and cynic with mild OCDRohin Dharmakumar is wondering if there is anything or anyone that scares Google?
5 people like this.
Rajesh Lalwani Facebook? I think it’s the most significant threat to Google. Google represents the Internet of yesterday when we searched for information…information that had to be indexed first. With Facebook information finds you, right here and now.
What is happening to search? Earlier when you heard an announcement you went to Google and did a search, but now you see a video and share it on your Facebook page…and half a day later it’s on all of your friends’ profiles and everybody is talking about it. Put simply, earlier you sought news, now news finds you!
Prashant Mehta While seeking answers people like us will trust information from friends on Facebook a lot more than Google. Facebook is people while Google is just a machine.
Alok Kejriwal I don’t think so. The biggest challenge for Facebook is this: Facebook = Friends whereas Google = Information. I will never think of Facebook while searching for information about, say, rheumatoid arthritis. Besides the average number of connections on Facebook is 100-150, and you cannot get a wealth of info from that small a network.
Rohin Dharmakumar Hmmm, interesting thoughts. But isn’t Facebook more of a Western phenomenon?
Prashant Mehta When 2009 began Facebook’s ranking among the most popular Indian Web sites was in the 20s. It is now Number 7. No Web site has moved that fast in a market like India.
Rohin Dharmakumar wants to know how big the Facebook phenomenon is in India?
Alok Kejriwal I would say no Web site has ever had such an impact on Indians! Two girls from Dehradun will spend 5 hours a day on Facebook because there’s nothing else to do. Though in cities it’s a conversational medium, in smaller places it’s an entertainment medium…which means that’s where the games and apps are getting played and explored.
Gaurav Mishra Facebook was not the first platform to become big in India, Orkut was. And what Facebook does is fundamentally most of what Orkut does too – connect with friends, share interests. But Facebook does have more applications, a more sophisticated user interface and better privacy controls.
Rajesh Lalwani Though Orkut is currently Number 1 in terms of numbers, Facebook is probably growing much faster. It is also poaching a lot of Orkut users through its Import Profile feature.
Rohin Dharmakumar Thanks for those comments folks. I thought of checking on some figures around Facebook’s popularity in India, just to be objective, you know
Data from both comScore and Vizisense says 10.3 million Indians, or roughly one in four Indians with an Internet connection used Facebook in October 2009. But the data also says Google’s Orkut had like 15.5-17.5 million Indian users. But Rajesh is right on the growth aspect – compared to Orkut’s annual growth rate of 43.4 percent, Facebook grew at a whopping 229.7 percent!
Prashant Mehta Orkut might not be #1 by 2010!
Charles Assisi These are fantastic figures Rohin. Can we consider Facebook as a contender for our Person of the Year awards? Let’s talk once you’re in office.
Rohin Dharmakumar commented on Forbes India’s page – 2010 Person of the Year
Rajesh Lalwani wants to know what makes Facebook special for you? (via Rohin Dharmakumar, who’s writing at article about it for Forbes India)
3 people like this.
Gaurav Mishra I was a typical IIM MBA working in a 9-to-5 job. Then through Facebook and Twitter I came upon writing book chapters, articles, a fellowship (at Georgetown University) and finally a new company (20:20 Social)!
Rohin Dharmakumar Not everyone is going to be as lucky as you, Gaurav!
Alok Kejriwal You know about the famous “Speaker’s Corner” in London’s Hyde Park? You know the one where anybody can stand and address the world? Well Facebook is my Speaker’s Corner to the world!
No other medium has ever existed where I could broadcast my thoughts to 5,000 friends at the click of a mouse. Thoughts that everybody notices, whether or not they react doesn’t matter.
Prashant Mehta Some Facebook apps have completely consumed us. My nine-year-old cousin comes home to get online and use Facebook. My 65-year-old mother-in-law connects with me from the US. There is no other medium that has an impact on such a wide segment of society.
Rohin Dharmakumar Interesting! But I’m curious to know if Prashant’s experience is isolated, or if it is more widespread in India?
Rajesh Lalwani I have my 12-year-old niece and 65-year-old former boss on Facebook. Everybody is a wire agency today!
Alok Kejriwal Rohin, my 13-year-old daughter has a Facebook account. Initially I and my wife were concerned, but then we found out that she is connected to five of her school teachers too! My daughter also plays Facebook games with my Mom. Sure they could have played together at home, but the point is they don’t.
Rohin Dharmakumar created a poll.
If you could be on only one social network, which one would it be?Facebook 78% (7 votes)
LinkedIn 22% (2 votes)
Orkut 0%
BIG Adda 0%
IBIBO 0%Rohin Dharmakumar Surprised that LinkedIn isn’t more popular among my “working class” friend list?
Rajesh Lalwani LinkedIn is static. I don’t know my LinkedIn contacts well enough because it tells me yesterday’s biodata, not what you’re doing today.
Gaurav Mishra True, LinkedIn has this very tight business networking context due to which you can’t really get to know people. Besides if you choose to then Facebook can be used primarily for professional networking, or personal, or both simultaneously. I think that ability is unique to it. I think that’s because of Facebook evolution from US Ivy League colleges where personal and professional contexts merged. And when those students grew out of college Facebook evolved with them, but it has its roots in that context.
Alok Kejriwal LinkedIn is like a large auditorium of business folks, all dressed up and not willing to talk to each other!
Charles Assisi is wondering if Facebook kills office productivity…at least this research says so
Study: Facebook use cuts productivity at work
Survey finds 77 percent of Facebookers use the social networking site while on the job
5 people like this.
Rohin Dharmakumar There should be a dislike button on Facebook!Alok Kejriwal I don’t agree. I think Facebook relaxes the workplace, making it less stiff and formal. Besides, the Indian work culture is moving from disciplinary to results-based – everybody knows what they need to do. I use it for work too. I link to my blog posts on Facebook and get around 1,000 additional hits. Every job offer I post on Facebook gets me 20-30 responses. I found my current PR agency through Facebook.
Prashant Mehta People are using Facebook at work to connect with colleagues. And given that we spend most of our time at work, it helps us bridge that gap there.
I was in Dubai recently and set my status message to “In Dubai for 4 days”. In those four days I ended up having four meetings with professional contacts from my Facebook friends list.Rajesh Lalwani Facebook has further blurred the boundary between work and personal lives. On Facebook I manage communities, engage with business contacts and connect with friends and family. It has beautifully ensured that people are connected to it every second…I know people who log in every 30 minutes just to check status messages.
Rohin Dharmakumar is going to vote for Facebook as Forbes India’s 2010 Person of the Year!
14 people like this.
Prashant Mehta In the social media space, both momentum and trust are important. It’s amazing to see people putting up pictures of their kids etc. on Facebook, which I feel they would not do unless there was this trust that Facebook will not misuse my information.Alok Kejriwal The other day I met someone interesting on a flight and quite naturally said to him, “Let’s Facebook each other?” In return he said my name is so-and-so and I am from Pune. Our lives are about people and memories, and discovering people is why Facebook is important.
Rajesh Lalwani Just a few years ago who would have thought you would connect your girlfriend from 15 years ago, family and friends all together on the same platform?
Notes
Facebook was the 3rd most popular online destination, after a Google search and Windows Media Player videos, for US citizens aged 65 and upwards – Nielson
The Wall Street Journal recently estimated Facebook’s 2010 revenue at $710 million, up 40 percent over the year before
To test Facebook members’ willingness to trust complete strangers, IT security firm Sophos sent out 100 random friend-requests from two newly created accounts, “Daisy Felettin” and “Dinette Stonily” – anagrams for “false identity” and “stolen identity” respectively. In both cases 95 out of 100 accepted the requests.
According to Bloomberg, Facebook is valued at $9.5 billion, up 42 percent over July 2009, but down 36 percent over its October 2007 peak valuation of $15 billion
Microsoft invested $240 million in October 2007 for a minority stake in Facebook, according to the Wall Street Journal, beating out rival Google
Only 15-20 percent of Facebook users have ever modified their default privacy settings, according to the company.
Cross-posted at Gauravonomics: Social Media and Social Change.
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)
- 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.
- 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.
- 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
- 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”
- 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.
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.
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.
Mail Today on Why the Internet is the Perfect Hunting Ground for Entrepreneur
Posted on 13. Dec, 2009 by gaurav in Media, Trends
My article on why the internet is the perfect hunting ground for young entrepreneurs was published today in Mail Today. All entrepreneurship is about betting on the next big thing, and if you are a 20-something entrepreneur, your bet on the next big thing on the internet is as good as, or even better than, someone double your age and experience.
Mail Today published a slightly edited version of the article I had submitted. Here’s the original.
Almost two years back, a month after I turned 28, I was interviewed for a newspaper story on why IIM types were leaving behind their corporate careers and following their dreams, mixing work, pleasure and purpose, pursuing what the journalist called “lifestyle entrepreneurship”.
I wondered why I was quoted in the story. My blog about the intersection of business, society and technology was becoming prominent, both amongst bloggers and journalists. I hung out with entrepreneurs and sometimes wrote about startups. I had even blogged about launching my own internet startup before I turned thirty. Still, I hadn’t taken the plunge yet. In fact, I was on a fast track in the quintessential corporate career. I has joined the TAS cadre in the Tata Group from IIM Bangalore and stayed with them for almost six years. My friends believed that I had acquired the Tata gene, that I would never leave, that I would retire as the CEO of one of the iconic Tata companies.
But my journalist friend knew better. She saw my ennui with the good life and also my hunger for a different life, one in which there were no boundaries between work, pleasure and purpose. Within six months, I had left my old life behind, given away everything I owned to strangers, and moved to Washington DC to do research and teach a course on the intersection of internet and society as the 2008-09 Yahoo! Fellow at Georgetown University. A year later, I was back in India as co-founder and CEO of 2020 Social (2020social.com), a business consulting firm that helps Indian and international brands build and nurture online communities. I didn’t quite launch my internet startup before I turned thirty but I came close enough.
It’s a good story and I get the full attention of my audience every time I tell it. However, it’s important to ask how someone who sold cars for six years became an international expert on the internet and how it’s changing business, society and activism. The answer is simple: the internet is evolving so quickly that education and experience don’t really count; what counts instead is an obsession with betting on the next big thing and the luck to be right, at least once. Three years back, I decided that the internet was changing, and the world was changing with it, and I happened to be right. Now, I am hoping that my luck stays with me, for a few more waves that change the internet, and the world with it.
That also explains why IIT-IIM types look towards the internet when they choose to step off the corporate treadmill and start something on their own. The internet has been the ultimate playing ground for entrepreneurs because the best internet startups start off as bets on a future that hasn’t arrived yet. It’s possible to start small, with two or three friends, work out of coffee shops and bedrooms, and build a working prototype that promises to change the world, in all of six months. It’s also possible to get some good initial traction online, a thousand beta users, a dozen positive reviews, and even some positive press, leading to interest from a few venture capital firms, or from the acquisition teams at the big tech companies. Build it and sell it, after all, is an established business model for internet startups.
If you don’t want to sell your startup too soon, you can build a global business sitting in Gurgaon. If you build the next cool social networking platform, no one will notice if it’s built in New Delhi or New York and, with the maturity of the software-as-a-service model (SaaS), location is increasingly becoming irrelevant for business software as well. I only have to look at the number of Indian startups offering SaaS-based collaboration tools for global clients (Zoho, Deskaway, Uhuroo, Cynapse, YouSuggest) to know that still more will follow, and soon.
Finally, the domestic market itself is maturing beyond utility-focused, transaction-led, ticket-booking internet startups. The Indian internet space has significant gaps when it comes to building a compelling vertical offering combining rich local content and a vibrant local community. We still don’t have an Indian citizen journalism community, a thriving Indian travel or consumer review community, or even a vibrant cricket or Bollywood community.
Do note that I’m not talking about building an Indian Facebook or an Indian LinkedIn or even an Indian Twitter. Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter are also going to be the Indian Facebook, the Indian LinkedIn and the Indian Twitter. I’m talking about combining local content and local community on the product side and internet, mobile web and SMS on the distribution side, which is best done by an Indian startup, with an intuitive understanding of the Indian market.
I am betting that even more IIT-IIM types will be betting that they will be the ones to crack the code and build the next generation of Indian startups. May the force be with them.
Cross-posted at Gauravonomics: Social Media and Social Change.
What’s happening in social media on climate change
Posted on 04. Dec, 2009 by Achintya in Trends
Background
I follow Indian Express and almost everyday when I pick up the morning daily I see something being written on Copenhagen 2009 summit. Then there was the Blog Action day on Oct 15, 2009 when thousands of bloggers wrote about climate change the same day. Hence no prizes for guessing but a lot is happening over environment in social and traditional media. Therefore I thought it would be interesting to see how specifically social media is helping us make our planet a greener place to live.
Scope
Honestly social web is seeing a lot of activities on climate change and a greener planet. There are a bunch of facebook apps, many websites and applications on organizing events and creating petitions, online communities targeting environment and wild life etc but I would specifically like to focus on social applications targeting aggregation of environment related news and influencer platforms. The reason for the preference is that some of the most popular efforts in social media for environment have gone in these two directions.
News Aggregation
Various websites are using different models for aggregating environemnt news. The most popular of them is using the digg.com model for aggregating news. Users bookmark the environement related news they like and others curate/vote for their favorite news. The most popular news gets features on the homepage. Ngopost.org is using this kind of model in India. Then there is care2.com which is also the largest environment promoting online community and uses this kind of aggregation model. Care2 in fact does a lot more than this. It has a online petition site where people can start their own petitions and sign the petitions they support. Members can donate, read expert’s views on healthy living etc.
The other popular model is importing stories and news feeds from top news websites and blogs. Greenedia.com for example, aggregates blogs, podcasts, videos by experts on green living, climate change, global warming and other topics who have been vetted by Greenedia. Experts can submit their credential for contributing to the platform or users can suggest popular blogs to be tracked by Greenedia. Alltop.com is another popular website which uses this model for many topics like food, photography, health etc and it has a separate platform for aggregating news on climate change.
The third news aggregation model is something that was adopted by change.org for Blog action day where they asked everybody to register and write on the climate change. Presently their homepage features the link to the most popular web platforms that participated in the event and also gives links to all the participating blogs.
Influencer Platform
Influencer platform are a great way to generate opinions, gain traffic and trigger word of mouth. Presently the platform getting most attention and traffic is change.org which has an influencer platform called ‘Changemakers’. Users can nominate influencial people whom they want to see as the changemakers and others vote for the nominees. The selected changemakers will then be invited to write on the platform and their opinions will be pushed through change.org’s network of partners, bloggers and activists.
The other types of influencer platforms are ecorazzy which aggragates news about what celebrities are doing for environemnt. With news like ‘Brand Pitt to donate various hats to charity’ and ‘Roger Moore continues his battle with the Foie Grass Industry’, this brings another way of getting influencer’s say. Similarly Huffington Post has a environemnt news category called ‘Green’ which showcases celebrities taking about various environment related issues.
2020 Social builds and nurtures online communities for Indian and international clients, connects their customers, partners and employees, and helps them achieve their business objectives.
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