Edelman and Brandtology have jointly brought out the second edition of its Digital Brand Index for India. Covering the last quarter of 2009, this edition of the study tracked 154,492 online conversations pertaining to 104 large technology brands contained in 306 influential channels.

Here are some of the brands that emerged on top of the charts:

From the first edition of this survey in the previous quarter, i.e. July to September 2009, Samsung(Client) is now ranked #4 among the top 10 buzziest brands in India this quarter, i.e. October to December 2009; and the only consumer technology brand to feature in the top 5 (Google#1, Microsoft#2, Yahoo!#3 and Apple #5) during the period Oct-Dec 2009. With Samsung showing a significant leap of 3 positions in the list of top buzziest technology brands, it is reaffirming to know that some of the social media work we did for Samsung India's Social Media campaign has shown results.

The study also derives that there has been an exponential 123% increase in the number of brand mentions for Samsung during Oct-Dec (6,548 brand mentions). The Samsung Corby Colour Wars contest on Twitter as part of our Social Media campaign for Samsung India is likely to have contributed to this quantum leap. Our own post-activity analyses had shown around 3000 mentions of Samsung Corby, amounting to nearly 615000 exposures.

It was also interesting to note that many of the insights shared by the report are being employed by the team in our approach already. Sharing some key insights here:

• Brands should integrate their digital communication along with their offline communication for best results
• Marketers should consider implications of timing, alongside targeting and channel selection as a part of a social media engagement program
• Conversations grow early in the week, spike on a Wednesday, and then taper off towards a weekend
• Leading online content creators (influencers) are actively being wooed by brands
• It's time for brands to build the next set of influencers who are not sceptic about direct communication, and are likely to be influenced by the sheer gesture of reaching out

Do share your thoughts on the study too.

Much of it is due to its simplicity, but equally the result of the variegated effect that many of the services built around its core offer. Here are some of the applications and services enhancing the Twitter experience that you may want to try out as well:

Twitter Clients - Using Twitter's API, these clients let you access the service the way you want. Multiple iterations allow you to choose the interface and the functions you prefer:

1. TwitterFox runs as an extension on the Firefox window itself, with Twitter updates from friends popping up at set regular intervals
2. TweetDeck is still in beta, but hugely popular, for, it lets you see all you need to on one page, for faster and easier twittering
3. Destroy Twitter allows you to operate multiple accounts, and runs on Adobe AIR, with great functionality making it a one-stop web application for Twitter
4. Dabr often called Twitter on steroids, is the most-loved Twitter application for the mobile. Being an application that incorporates user-feedback at the bat of an eyelid, this isn't surprising at all!

Finding followers & friends - You can build your Twitter-stream based on various criteria, like people who match your interest levels, those who live near you, thought-leaders from your sphere, etc.:

1. WhoShouldIFollow helps you find people with interests similar to yours as showcased in your respective tweets
2. Twellow and WeFollow are two self-serve twitter directories where people list themselves based on their interests and can so be found accordingly. Each interest tag lists out all the people in that category, charted popularity-wise
3. Twubble adds to your social-graph by listing out people who many of your existing friends may be following. It also has a locality filter to better the sorting process
4. TwitDir is a Twitter directory that simply gives you the top 100 people at any given point

Search & Track - Track and listen in on conversations happening around current events & happenings, your brand or simply your favorite music-genre:

1. Hash-Tags make your keywords search-friendly and allow you to track keywords of your choice, while TweetScan charts all conversations happening on Twitter live, which can then be further segmented by hash-tags/keywords
2. Other than the classic Twitter-Search, TweetActive and Twibuzz graph the activity on your keywords in real-time, which can then be compared with other keywords over time as well
3. Twistori tells you (quite literally) what people are loving and hating, thinking or feeling in real time!
4. Happn is a localized search which shows you what people of your city are tweeting about. It only covers Mumbai as of now from India, but it's a cool application anyhow!

Share - Share photos, audio/video, files and links with friends:

1. AutoPostr shares your Flickr photos every time they are uploaded if 'autopostr' is added as a photo-tag photo, whereas Twitpic lets you post pictures directly on Twitter, along with a message, while also keeping track of how many views and responses it receives
2. Bit.ly and Tweetburner shorten and share links and tracks views. They also let you customize links.
3. Twitsay shares audio clips, and Twitddeo is for video-sharing. Twitcam and Qik let you live-stream videos
4. TweetCube and FileSocial allow you to upload and share several kinds of files on Twitter, like mp3, avi, ppt, doc, zip files, plug-ins, pictures, etc.

Analyze - Interpret your activity and see where you're going, to understand the service and its potential better, or just to have some fun!

1. TwitGraph gives a visual progression of your statistics, while TweetStats shows bar-graphs of your ongoing weekly activity
2. Tweet Beep tracks your specific tags, etc. on a regular basis whereas Twemes tracks all active tags in one place
3. To judge volume of conversation on Twitter, Tweet-Volume tracks and compares volume for different keywords
4. Twitter-Grader and Twinfluence grade your influence based on your power, reach and authority. They employ several logarithms including factors like number of followers, follower/following ratio, power of followers, frequency of updates, engagement, etc. to reach their conclusions
5. Twitter-Friends analyses all the above, and more, and presents your engagement in a visual, interpretative manner for you to compare and analyze

Twitter Plus - There are several of these innovative services that let you do more in the same old 140 characters:

1. GroupTweet and TweetKnot are services that allow you to create Twitter groups where friends can be invited for sharing messages in a more focused manner
2. With Twitchat and Tinychat, you can create your own chat-rooms of your twitter friends for exclusive discussions that you may not want spilling over to your entire stream :P
3. AutoDMer and TwitResponse send an auto-response to every new follower, or even set updates at a regular frequency
4. Twitter backgrounds has a whole array of backgrounds to pick for your Twitter account, and also offers specific paid customization
5. Write-up lets you share longer text through a link in a Tweet, while LinkBunch clubs multiple links for you to share at one go

This list is not exhaustive, merely a selection that as a combination, works best for most of my needs, and hopefully will help you too. There are several places that link to exhaustive listings of tools and applications, like Mashable, Twitdom, et al. Which Twitter-tools have you found useful? Do add them to the list!


Happy Tweeting!

I cringe every time I read the words #FAIL , #boo or thus like on Twitter, from users who might just have given a cursory glance to a tool or barely used a service.

This is someone's brand we are referring to, a brand that's dear to someone; a service in whose creation someone has put a lot of time, effort and money. How easy it is for us, to sit at a distance and boo, setting someone up for failure, without sometimes giving the other party time/ opportunity to make amends on genuine gaps.

I find that on one side social media gives opportunity consumers to transparently share feedback, on the other, our usage of it is often knee-jerk and may I dare say, even juvenile.

Here, however, is a case of genuine customer agony upon discovering at the airport that your ticket for overseas travel; for which you paid in advance; is void. You end up buying another ticket to make it to your destination. This is what happened to my friend, and power blogger, Kiruba. The culprit - Cleartrip.com

I have often said to marketers attending my talks, workshops that how a marketer responds to negative feedback is the key to success with social media. Going on the defensive is not going to help. A mistake has been made - own up; mistakes do happen, and the moment you acknowledge and convey that to the customer, half the battle is already won.

'Resolution' is the only apology acceptable, not a verbal apology that everyone seems to offer. Now go on, top it with something that says 'We care' and you can expect forgiveness, even make friends.

Cleartrip shares how they resolved the complaint in this transparent post - transparency has become their hallmark, besides a clear, purposeful interface on the site.

Cleatrip, is rightly disappointed that not as many people shared the positive resolution, as the ones who contributed to the initial negative burst. Well, you have earned some more trust and customers in the process is all I could say to them. I have been buying regularly from Cleartrip and would not just continue but likely recommend them to more people after this episode.

Thanks Manpreet for sharing the case-study post with me.

UPDATE - 16 June, 2009 at 3.42 pm - Kiruba gives his side of the story on this blog update (2nd part of the story still pending)

UPDATE - 26 June, 2009 at 4.25 pm - Kiruba put up part 2 of his story a couple of days ago. Here it is now.

Last night, I and a friend and peer of mine, a very senior & respected public relations professional, were chatting over the phone about personal stuff and the talk swerved towards Twitter for a few minutes.

He, a Twitter newbie, probed on why are people motivated to broadcast essentially one-to-one messages over a public stream on Twitter?

Intuitively I replied:

1. In an increasingly exhibitionist world people increasingly want to 'flaunt their conversations/ thoughts' to a larger audience - ever so often the person with whom they/ we may be conversing with, over Twitter, may in fact be live with us on GTalk too
2. This flaunting is also sometimes about 'who' you are having this conversation with - the equivalent of a 'names dropping' - for fans there is a certain kick in being able to have one-on-one conversations with @gulpanag, on Twitter

Both harmless...

1. In a more productive way, a purposeful conversation that first started one-on-one, might be joined into by our respective friends and peers, adding perspective and thought - not possible in a private one-on-one tool
2. More people in the public stream who found the conversation interesting might join in to add value, and also become friends
3. We/ others could easily share links/ sources/ resources adding further value and knowledge

Collective knowledge creation and sharing...

For marketers and communication professionals like us, Twitter, and other social networking sites, are subject matter about people behaviour and how content and knowledge is being, or will be, created and shared besides trend-spotting.

It's been over a year since I wrote this piece about Twitter uses for HT. What are the new ways in which you are using Twitter?

We had released the findings of India Social Media Survey Report - Edition 1 in a hard copy format at the India Social Media Summit, end March.

The report, available for sale through exchange4media costs only Rs. 1500/- and consists valuable pieces stories and case-studies (you can send us requests for purchase at socialmediasurvey@blogworks.in and we will forward them to the e4m team).

However, keeping with our promise of sharing knowledge for the benefit of the community and marketers, we are today releasing an online version of the survey findings! :)

The Social Media Survey Report- Edition 1 attempts to capture insights and learnings from Corporates and Marketers of India, to get a sense of what's really happening on the ground in the rapidly evolving social media environment.

Results and analysis will surely help understand how peers, from across India, view social media (SM) impact on marketing & communication. This will allow the industry to benefit from shared insights and make for educated decisions.

The survey , undertaken by us jointly with exchange4media.com in Dec 2008 & Jan 2009, takes a deep dive into questions that matters to all of us:

1. Does Social Media enjoy credibility?
2. Does Social Media impact business?
3. Is Social Media based used as a sales tool? Or as a buzz tool? Or for engagement?
4. Do you believe that Social Media impacts purchase decisions?
5. Do marketers understand Social Media?
6. What about Agencies? Do they?
7. Are clients spending money on Social Media?
8. Do they intend to? :)
9. What are the top metrics that marketers believe in, while calculating RoI
10. And much more...

Find out what our respondents said? Were you one of them? :) Some sample slides are here:

You can download the full report by going here. Hope you find it useful.

Do share your feedback and any errors you might notice, by writing to us at socialmediasurvey@blogworks.in

Cheers

Brands all over the world have been using viral videos to promote their products for some years now. Take for instance our home grown viral videos, which was first initiated by companies like MakeMyTrip, Desimartini, Wrigley's Orbit and many more. These videos were a rage and in fact are quite popular in the digital space even today.

However, it is only in the past couple of years with the advent and popularity of social media networks like Facebook, Orkut, MySpace, Twitter, YouTube, Digg, and the likes that viral videos are having a spiralling effect. Take the much talked about Vodafone ZooZoo ads for instance, the ads were created for consumption off the TV screens but the impact of the videos online has been phenomenon - fans of Zoozoo are flocking on social networks just to view the Zoozoo characters.

However, at the same time all this sounds easy to do but in reality you simply just can't expect to post your video and have them go viral on their own, even if you think you have the best videos ever. These days, achieving the 'viral effect' takes serious creativity, hard work and some luck.

If you haven't heard of Divesh Mishra, here is his story. Divesh is a taxi driver based out Varnasi, he has uploaded a video of himself on YouTube talking about his taxi service. The video is simple, it gives out all the information that one would require along with contact details. The video has over 25,000 views in about 18 months, not much for it to reach the viral video charts but surely enough for a man located in a town in India trying to reach out to a global audience via a free online tool.

A really viral video making the rounds of the digital space is 'Jone's Good Ass BBQ and foot massage', a root taken by an entrepreneur in the times of recession.

However, one wrong move, and the spiralling effect can cause severe damage. Take for instance the Domino pizza video on YouTube, the video was caught by viewers so fast, that before Dominoes could even realise the severity of the situation, the video was all over the internet, making it one of the most viewed videos in the online space at the time, till it was finally pulled down by Dominos. The impact of the video - over one million disgusted viewers and a huge blow to the image of the brand. However, brand Dominoes was on top of the situation within 48 hours. Interestingly, Domino's President, Patrick Doyle responded to the situation not by issuing a typical press release but via a YouTube video.

There is enough content online that will list down ways to get 50000 viewers, how to maximise the viral effect, what to do when a viral video goes wrong, managing crisis through viral videos and so on and so forth. Undoubtedly, the best tool would be not to repeat the same mistakes made by others and learn-as-you-go.

Tiger Wood's PGA Tour is taking a step further and is hosting a Viral Video Challenge where the top five winners will be posted on the site for public voting. The effect of such a viral video could be phenomenon. Will keep you updated.

So what's you viral idea?

Key findings of the comScore study showed:

1. The Asia-Pacific region accounted for the highest share of global internet users at 41 per cent, followed by Europe (28 percent share), North America (18 per cent share), Latin-America (7 per cent share) and the Middle East & Africa (5 per cent share)




2. India has the seventh highest number of internet users with a share of 3.2 percent of the worldwide audience and as many as 32 million unique visitors in December 2008
3. Meanwhile, China tops the charts in term of number of internet audience with 1,79,710 users in December constituting over 17.8 percent of the global traffic. Following China is United States and Japan whose internet visiting population is about 16.2 percent and 6 percent respectively
4. The other countries that follow in the descending order of internet usage are Germany, UK, France, India, Russia, Brazil South Korea, Canada, Italy, Spain, Mexico and Netherlands
5. comScore’s study also reveals Google sites as one of the most popular in the web terrain in December 2008. The site had about 777.9 million visitors, followed by Microsoft sites which had about 647.9 million visitors. Yahoo! sites had 562.6 million visitors and Facebook had about 222 million visitors
6. In another comScore study conducted between September and November 2008 showcasing the top ten Indian Websites revealed that Google sites and Yahoo! sites had about 19.9 million and 19.1 million visitors respectively. Orkut came in at third place with over 12 million visitors followed by Rediff, Blogger, YouTube, Wikipedia, Microsoft and Live. Interestingly, Facebook did not figure in the top ten websites in India

Even as print and electronic are losing takers, online marketing initiatives are finding new ground and seeing good growth. Not only is the medium flexible to reach diverse kinds of audience segments, it is also much more cost-effective.

The interactive nature of online-forums and social-media platforms ensures enhanced brand awareness as well as backs retail with reliance.

Although the major part of the sales may still happen offline; online search, reviews, recommendations, etc are only becoming increasingly relevant.

This livemint story on a Google study shares some insights:

1. Technology Products - 56% are researched online but purchased in retail stores; 26% are researched and purchased online.
2. Consumer Electronics - 53% are researched online but purchased in retail stores; 28% are researched and purchased online.
3. Telecommunication Products - Approx 59% researched online but purchased in retail store; 23% researched and purchased online.

My piece of 31 December 2007 in Mint talked about Internet Trends in 2008.

Here is it again.

Which ones did I get right? Which ones did I miss?

Do share your experiences please.

I am now trying to pen my thoughts on what to expect in 2009.

Keep writing.

Blogworks - Blog the Talk discussion series was conceived to feature the best of learning from the ‘live web’ through panel discussions, talks and one-on-ones – mostly conducted online.

Blog the Talk series is presented by Ideafarms, an IT smart-sourcing company, providing enhanced business value to its globalised clients, through disrupting thinking and innovation.

Growing ambitions of enabled writers who have emerged with the advent of blogs; prolification of digital printing technology; adoption of digital reading; a plethora of tools to disseminate, market and promote content online, among other things, have all led to the emerging phenomenon of 'self publishing'.

Having tasted popularity with their blogs, but not necessarily succeeded in monetizing their blog journals, or to seek even greater authority and stature as thought leaders, many are taking the natural next step by publishing a book.

However, most of the traditional publishing industry, particularly in the India context, continues to operate exactly like it has for years - submit a manuscript; they seek 6 months to revert - rightly so, given that they receive hundreds of unsought manuscripts and quality control is highest priority. However, there is no guarantee that your manuscript will even reach the right hands and be evaluated for its worth. Although some publishing houses have started to look at blogs for content/ writers, but publishing contracts have, so far, been awarded for 'popular' content.

Simply put, writing contracts are not easy to come by. What does an eager author do? Enabled Publishing, as I like to call it is the route that many are choosing.

Read this interesting piece published in Mint recently - large, new players are stepping in too.

Joining me today to discuss the phenomenon is my friend Ajay Jain.

Recently he chose to go with enabled publishing, to publish his first book: Let's Connect - using LinkedIn to get ahead at work.

I wanted to benefit from the learnings and asked him...

All thoughts expressed by participants are personal opinion of respective speakers and do not represent the views of Blogworks or any other company/ organization.

Rajesh:Ajay, congratulations! Tell us about the book.

Ajay:In the world of social media, LinkedIn has emerged as the hottest professional networking site in the world leaving all competition far behind. And India is their third biggest market after the US and the UK.

It is not a user’s guide; it talks of the bigger picture. So don’t expect screen shots, or tutorials on how to use the site. But it does cover the usability factor to the extent you generally know how the site works.

The following extract from the back cover of the book may be a useful read here:

LinkedIn has made the world of business a much smaller place. The contacts you seek are no longer separated from you by six degrees; the number is down to one, two or three in most cases if you are on LinkedIn, by far the most successful and vibrant of all professional networking sites.

And it has leveled the playing field in ways one could not have imagined. The community of LinkedIn users can now be used by anyone for accessing faraway markets, landing dream jobs, raising capital, attracting the best of talent, building corporate brands and more. What you can achieve is limited only by your imagination and effort. The ingredients are all there to whip up something profitable for yourself.

And it is not rocket science.

This book is full of ideas, real cases and suggestions on how to get LinkedIn to work for you. Because, as you will see, LinkedIn works for you even as you sleep.

Rajesh:Do share, why did you think about publishing the book yourself? Why not go with a mainstream publishing house? You have the necessary credentials, you write well – you would have found someone to publish the book for you.

Ajay:I figured this is not a book that can be sold through conventional means; key to its success would be a direct and social media marketing strategy. And there is probably no publisher in the world who would make such an effort; I know of publishers who have come out with books of a similar genre in the US but have asked the authors themselves how they planned to promote the book. In other words, the author has to be the CMO of such a book too.

It would have been fine to let someone publish the book, and I promote it. But the dampener would have been the commercial side of it. Publishers typically pay an author 10% of royalty, and that too after a lag running into many months. Neither the quantum nor the cash flow would have been enough to sustain any marketing campaign by me as the author. I thus decided to self publish it, keep a higher margin for myself and invest that money into marketing. I have already recovered the investment in the first print run by selling only 40 percent of my stock. This would not have been possible with a publisher where I spend on promotions and he keeps the cream of the profits.

Rajesh:So what were the various options you considered for publishing/ printing the book?

Ajay:I did consider print on demand offered by companies like Lulu. But this was an expensive option and would have turned away buyers. Yes, there is no initial investment here but the consumer is more concerned with the end price. Publish on demand works best for niche titles and coffee table books which have a relatively lower offtake. I decided to settle for self publishing by seeking out designers, editors and printers myself (I have considerable experience in such production) and made a go of it. I had to apply for an ISBN number which I managed; you cannot sell any book through trade channels without this.

Rajesh:So finally what happened?

Ajay:The book is out, in select stores but more importantly being offered directly on my blog www.techgazing.com/linkedin (where you can read sample chapters and get reviews, access the media kit and get ordering info) and Amazon. I have come out with an e-book version of the same, and have sold a substantial number of these too.

Rajesh:What were your key learning from the exercise?

Ajay:Lots. And some are still learning-in-progress. Here go some:

1. Setting up a distribution network through brick and mortar stores is a big challenge. I have still to overcome it.
2. A need to ensure the printer is an expert at cutting and binding books as it is a finer process than for a magazine or a newspaper.
3. Setting up online stores on Amazon.
4. Getting ISBN numbers and printing barcodes.
5. The economics of the game: Up to 55 percent of your cover price goes to the distributors + the cost of sending books to their warehouses. You can imagine how much money one is left with after sending books to the US to Amazon: they keep 55 percent + you ship to them at your cost. Add to this the cost of editing, design, printing, promotions etc and you realize why books are profitable only when they have sold a certain minimum number.

These trend prediction things are scary I think. I mean how many of them will be egg in the face? :)

I was taking a peek at my first post of last year, summarizing possible online trends for 2007, to see where we stand - let me know your thoughts:

1. Online will gain ground rapidly - am I imagining it or so much really happened in just one year?
2. Marriage of mainstream and blogs - expect more of it this year.
3. Experts and thought leaders joining the blogosphere - too little really.
4. Aggregators will have an important role to play - expect more of it this year.
5. Human intervention to bring out what’s special - Mahalo - people powered search, is gaining ground; social bookmarking has gone mainstream.

   Sanjay Trehan, NDTV Convergence had an interesting comment at a panel discussion I moderated recently - a study suggests that usage of organic search actually declined by 6%, on the other hand people finding content directly or through bookmarking went up 4%.

Do you smell Mobile-Internet as the thing to look out for this year? Other than consumption of Internet via the mobile - I think we can expect more mobile friendly sites and blogs - mobile enabled communities might be the thing to watch out for.

I was chatting with Gaurav this morning to plan the next Blog the Talk discussion, which I thought should be around Mobile-Internet aspects covering micro blogging tools likeTwitter; community enablers likeSMS Gupshup etc. and how they will likely impact marketers.

My last meeting of 2007 was with a friend who runs one of the leading mobile marketing companies in India. We spoke about possible threats to the traditional short code business, and also the opportunities that the new environment promises for companies operating in the mobile space.

I was invited to share my thoughts on Internet Trends in 2008. I am putting a part of the text today (will perhaps put the full text tomorrow), but you can read the complete piece and more here.

Here we go:

Each year, a few trends gain momentum and reach tipping point. The mobile phone is one such change of recent times. Will 2008 be the year of the Internet? It promises to be an interesting year as a lot of the hype around blogs, consumer-generated media, Web 2.0 settles down; as the lines between the mobile and the Internet blur; as technology seems less overwhelming to the masses. The great thing that 2007 did was take away the fear of technology from many. Thanks to networking websites such as Orkut, people who would never venture beyond their email boxes are “poking” each other on Facebook.

So, what to expect in 2008? Here’s my list:

1. Internet marries the mobile: Affordable handsets allowing EDGE and WLAN connectivity, combined with huge penetration of mobiles, would likely ensure that more and more people are consuming the Internet on the go.
2. Always-on Internet: High-speed connectivity through mobile, exponential increase in Wi-Fi hot spots and talk about rapid deployment of WiMax, all promise always-on Internet connectivity.
3. Life shifts online: We are romancing the government with online filing of tax returns; applying for passports online; meeting friends online and enjoying peer-to-peer gaming. What’s more, the Internet is fast becoming the new operating system—you don’t need software, just a device to access the Internet.

Day-before yesterday, I moderated a panel discussion on "The Internet is becoming the locus around which all media converge, and the growing role of search engines’" at the FMCC and Cross Border Media's conference on ‘Monetising your new media platforms’.

On the Panel were some of the coolest people in the business:

1. Sanjay Trehan, CEO, NDTV Convergence - whom I was meeting after a bit. It was great to catch up and hear about stuff that NDTV is doing/ planning.


2. Parminder Sigh, Business Head - Technology, Google India, who has recently joined Google, moving from IBM. Interesting things they have planned for Orkut, other than dozens of innovative things that Google is always up to. Needed too - Orkut is down to number 4, from number 2 position that it held until a couple of months ago...on Alexa.


3. Rahul Nanda, COO, Webchutney - he must be the most composed man I know. Great times ahead for Webchutney with recent investments from Capital 18.

We had a fun chat and some of the things we discussed:

1. Changing role of mainstream media in times of user generated content; adoption and move towards convergence by traditional media houses.
2. Search has become the new ‘clipping’, impact on purchase decisions.
3. Future of search: vertical; people; added layer of human intelligence
4. Many-many more...

Sanjay highlighted an interesting study that suggests that usage of organic search actually declined by 6%, on the other hand people finding content directly or through bookmarking went up 4% - interesting to say the least.

An exchange4media update on the event is here.

Here is an initiative from Indica V2 Xeta - Xeta Shootout, attempts to benefit from insights gained by engaging the Prosumer? and to get their participation on the communication and product.

So, what is Xeta Shootout? Simple: Lights! Camera! Action! Make your own Xeta commercial and win an Indica V2 Xeta :).

The idea, a brainchild of Gaurav Mishra - the brand manager for Indica and a marketing writer - seems to have evoked keen response. I like the fact that the entry doesn't necessarily have to be a video, pictures and storyboard) on a document or presentation works well for an entry, making the appeal more broad-based.

"1839 people have registered at the website and we have received 70 entries and 476 messages," said Gaurav in my conversation with him. Not bad at all, I think. They can expect more as there are still 9 days to go - contest open until 30 November 2007.

There has been debate about how far should marketers go with official use of consumer generated media but you won't know until you play some. This one is a nice start.

It has previously happened with mobiles and email - as social networking becomes mainstream, misuse by miscreants and anti-social elements is bound to happen. A very sad incident in Mumbai last week was an early indicator. I pray something like this never repeats itself but it will take responsible conduct from all stakeholders...

Soumya - a Blogworks regular brought up an interesting and relevant question. In brief, he asked..."marketers want customers to share more and more information, so they could use it to there advantage. How does the customer protect herself? How do brands and consumers find balance in this environment?"

My own assessment of the matter was a little different, suggesting that "Users (read youth in particular) seem not 'bothered' at all about sharing information on the net. To the contrary they are taking great delight in doing so (and that worries me about their physical and financial safety). Online media owners take a lot of personal information (though there are promises of data protection and all that but slips-ups are known to happen) but if you look around, that's NOT the information that jeopardizing users. What is really jeopardizing them is open conversations about the tiniest happenings in their lives. Sometimes I wonder why would they want to bare their entire lives, but we are living in an increasingly exhibitionist world and communication tools are enabling that.

Different companies and brands are using the said content in public domain - for research, engagement but brands typically don't stalk. Yes, what is needed is transparent and ethical conduct by brands. They are beginning to understand the value of engagement over quick returns.

Youngsters, many who have adopted the net as their primary means of information and communication aren't sometimes even aware of the impact and consequences. These are social challenges of today and will need tackling through counsel, education and responsible conduct by all stakeholders - particularly the marketers and media owners. Let's have some of the responsible ones roll out campaigns to address these very real issues."

I am not suggesting that my comment had anything to do with it, but almost on cue, this email from BigAdda, where I am registered as a user, popped in a couple of days later.

Great start, but currently going out to existing subscribers.However, I think there is an opportunity for the local social networking sites, many of whom had perhaps found the carpet pulled from under their feet with the huge response to Facebook, to engage target audience with differentiated communication even as they tweak products to match FB etc.- BigAdda has gone for a mega interface and feature makeover recently, bringing in many Facebook like features.

An Outreach campaign, including:

1. Advertising - for those who have the bucks BigAdda; MingleBox :)
2. School & College Outreach
3. Media Outreach
4. Peer and Celebrity Messages - Do's and Don'ts for a safer SN experience

..might win them the crucial trust, in a game that's at the moment not taking them anywhere. I am talking something on the lines of what Seagram's does for responsible drinking.

India is fairly big and many of these players are perhaps hoping to capture the 'not-yet-on-social-networks' traffic. There are a set who are on Orkut; another on Facebook, then there is migration from one to another. But, there is still a large population, in non-metros, smaller towns, or even in metros that owes no loyalty to Orkut or any other platform. "If I could get them to adopt my network first, they and their friends would likely join and stay.", could and should be the logic for many of the local players. The game's just begun, not anywhere close to finish!

The next round might just go to the most 'trusted' social networking site. Who will seize the opportunity (to not just gain subscribers, but maybe also save lives in the process)?

Guy Kawasaki on Internet, Investment and Investors.

How this edition of the discussion came about still seems a bit surreal to me, but the entire sequence of events again validated something that I have always believed – truly successful people are often very approachable; that they reply to their own mails - find time to do so, however busy they maybe; that there are no degrees of separation - that we really live in a connected world…

I discovered Truemors a couple of months ago, wrote a brief post about it and followed it with a mail to the Truemors team regarding their Truemorist programme. I got a reply back from Guy and that's how we got in touch. Won’t waste your time with details but I asked Guy if he would consider being on Blog the Talk, he agreed, simple and straightforward - tells me a lot!

Delighted to have Guy Kawasaki - successful entrepreneur, global investor, best-selling author and columnist. Guy doesn’t really need a formal introduction, but here goes anyway:

Guy is presently located in Palo Alto, California.

The talk is typical 'Guy' - simple and straightforward; and a little different... this one was done over email so more like a Q & A. Enjoy!

All thoughts expressed by participants are personal opinion of respective speakers and do not represent the views of Blogworks or any other company/ organization..

Rajesh Lalwani: Guy, thanks for joining us on Blog the Talk today.

Web 2.0(!) - Blogs; Social Networks; Forums; Widgets - we have seen them connect people, add value at more than one level, but has the new Internet scene also become an information overdose? Do you think there would be consolidation? How would one simplify?

Guy Kawasaki:Thanks. There is overload, but that's what it takes to have a few winners emerge. There's no way to simplify - well, maybe there's one. Have ‘experts’ pick the smartest and dumbest ideas and then throw away the smart ones and do the dumb ones.

There isn't a way to predict the winners. It would be like being around billions of years ago and predicting what forms of life would survive. Only God would know, and we aren't God.

Rajesh Lalwani:Smiles.

The whole of the internet seems to be congregating on Facebook. There is a new application getting added every half an hour (figuratively speaking). One doesn’t really need to go anywhere else to do anything. eCommerce possibilities look immense. What are your thoughts? Is FB here to stay? What do you think is happening here?

Guy Kawasaki: Facebook is just-about the most exciting thing I’ve seen in years. The integration of its parts is so well done—for example, how it sucks in your Entourage address book to send invitations. It could become the way a large percentage of users interact with the Internet. In a sense Western Union should be PayPal, and AOL should be Facebook.

Rajesh Lalwani:Tech purists feel technology by itself is capable of achieving a lot of this simplification, what is the scope for human intervention - Digg; ChaCha and
many others are as much about people as technology. What are your thoughts about this?

Guy Kawasaki: Tech purists are the worst people to ask about this!

It's like asking a carpenter if everything can be fixed with a hammer and saw. Technology can accelerate, extend, supplement, but it cannot replace human interaction. Ever notice that the companies that spend the most on CRM have the worst customer relations?

Rajesh Lalwani:'Bubble’ is what one is hearing yet again - is it a bubble?

How will, in your opinion, these platforms monetize? Are the valuations going over the top again?

Guy Kawasaki: It is a bubble, and a bubble is a good thing.

It makes people want to start businesses. If we all carefully thought out every possible contingency, we'd never try anything.

Rajesh Lalwani :“The business plan will emerge!” Does that thought still hold true then?

Guy Kawasaki: Yes, more than ever though I think it was never true that people wrote plans and strictly adhered to them.

Companies that survive had plans that emerged. Companies that didn't survive didn't. I doubt that Steve and Woz ever wrote a business plan. What was YouTube’s business plan: give away infinite storage and bandwidth to copyright violators?

Rajesh Lalwani:What do you look at when you decide which new business your company will invest into? How important is the entrepreneur in this?

I was reading this TechCrunch post about Evan Williams, Twitter and Kevin Rose, Pownce - the comment about the fact that both were 'liked a lot in silicon valley' caught my attention - how much of the early adoption on a product would be basis such liking?

Guy Kawasaki:I look at a product or service and imagine if I would use it. Not a theoretical MIS manager, but if I personally would use it. If I wouldn't, then I probably wouldn't invest.

Being liked a lot in Silicon Valley isn't a prerequisite for success because popularity usually occurs after success. It doesn't cause success. At the start, most entrepreneurs aren't even known.

If I had to choose between being liked and having a great product to make a company successful, I'd choose a great product. If you become a billionaire in Silicon Valley, you will be popular-albeit with the wrong kind of people or for the wrong reasons- but people will suck up to you.

By contrast, if you have the greatest personality in the world but your product sucks, it will still suck.

Rajesh Lalwani:Indian software professionals have been on the technology forefront on the world scene and bar Hotmail, we haven't seen too many big Indian successes on the Internet. What do you think could be the reasons?

Guy Kawasaki: Maybe it's because Indians are too smart, too diligent, and too sincere. Maybe in order to achieve successful with ‘Internet companies’, you have to be full of crap.

Rajesh Lalwani:Are Indian investors risk averse in general?

Guy Kawasaki: There are lots of Indian VCs who are investing in US Internet startups created by Indians and non-Indians. I don't think race plays any role in investment decisions. Three things you can depend on from VCs are
color-blind and gender-blind greed.

Rajesh Lalwani:Would you consider investing into Indian entrepreneurs/ Indian companies?

Guy Kawasaki:Sure, why not?

In fact, I would prefer investing in Indian entrepreneurs and companies because they are smart, diligent,and sincere. We have:

1. simplyhired
Kaboodle
2. Xora
3. cFares

... already in our portfolio.

Rajesh Lalwani : Any current favorites of yours - technology products; companies; ideas.

Guy Kawasaki: I love "credit card" startups. That is, companies you can start with $25,000 or less. Truemors was my experiment in this. This is the Ycombinator theory, and I like it.

I certainly don't think that a company funded with $1,000,000 is forty times more likely to succeed.

Rajesh Lalwani:Any sectors that that you maybe specifically are interested in? Not interested in?

Guy Kawasaki:Garage is primarily a West-Coast, IT, software, and clean-tech fund. We don’t do life sciences.

We’re looking for companies that are raising $1-2 million in a seed or Series A Round.

Rajesh Lalwani: What would you expect as part of a proposal that someone may want to send and what criteria do you normally apply to selection?

Guy Kawasaki:The ideal proposal is a three paragraph email with a link that leads to a working prototype. End of discussion.

Rajesh Lalwani:Any investment limits Garage normally doesn't invest beyond?

Guy Kawasaki: We are a small fund, so companies that will require $10 million to break-even are not for us. I’d also like to be rich in this lifetime, so this narrows our focus some too. :-)

Rajesh Lalwani:Lol. Any plans to visit India soon?

Guy Kawasaki:No, sorry. I was in Mumbai earlier this year and loved it, though.

Rajesh Lalwani:Any of your current/ upcoming initiatives that one should be looking out for? What are the plans for Truemors?

Guy Kawasaki: Truemors is my baby.

I love the idea on two fronts:

1. The democratization of information so that anyone can be a journalist/editor
2. The blogosphere has universally condemned the idea-which makes me even more dedicated to make it succeed

Rajesh Lalwani :That is super cool. Yes, I already added the version ;) – the link's here.

Can't resist asking you this...

Are you an iPhone fan? Any experiences/ thoughts you want to share?

Guy Kawasaki:I don't have one. I can't stand AT&T's data network performance, and I really need Exchange server compatibility.

Rajesh Lalwani:Smiles.

Guy is clearly not buying an iPhone yet. Neither am I, for different reasons though :).

BTW - Do read this iPhone review by Guy, to get an update on his AT&T experience.

Thanks a lot Guy! Do look forward to having you here in India, sometime soon. Cheers.

Dear all, please take the conversation forward.

If you missed the update on my previous post, here it is, up and about. Coming up this Sunday - a Blog the Talk Exclusive! Guy Kawasaki on Internet, Investment and Investors.

Guy Kawasaki’s thoughts on today’s Internet scene; Facebook; Truemors; the ‘Bubble’ - and why is it a good thing; Indian entrepreneurs and whether he will invest into them – pretty straight! Hope you enjoy. See you.

Technology tips to get started with business blogging and more – the FOSS way.

How does one introduce someone who was on the Internet before the term World Wide Web was even conceived? Someone who has participated in the net scene when the total Internet population in the country was not in millions, but in dozens – ok, let’s make that a few hundred? When search was still about gopher?

Delighted to have Kishore Bhargava - the original geek; FOSS exponent, the guru behind Gadget Guru; I could go on…

It was in one of Kishore’s talks, about 2 and half years ago, that Blogworks really took seed. I have never believed in coincidences, so I don’t think it was one that I attended that talk. Since then, a dear friend, Kishore has been around to counsel & guide.

Today, on Blog the Talk, Kishore helps us understand some of the pertinent technology related issues that we need addressing when we think about business blogging. Technology issues in a language that’s friendly and English you and I understand.

I must point out that keeping with, not just the Blog the Talk tradition of conducting these talks over IM, which we did, this conversation was actually conducted in true Bhargava family style, over IM, but sitting face-to-face. Discussing ‘way forward’ across the table, but actually punching the Questions and the Answers over an IM. Fun it was… :)

Enjoy!

Yours truly continues to be based right here too, in New Delhi ;)


All thoughts expressed by participants are personal opinion of respective speakers and do not represent the views of Blogworks or any other company/ organization.

Rajesh, Blogworks: Kishore, thanks for being on Blog the Talk.

We have spoken about this earlier…

Among the most crucial aspects that need consideration following an organization or a brand’s decision to go forward with a blogging or a similar initiative is: Which blogging engine to use? Which technology platform? What are your thoughts?

Kishore, Linkaxis: Thanks Rajesh. That’s a loaded question – it will need a long answer.

- First of all, the important question to ask is why do I need to blog? If there is a compelling reason, coupled with a well thought out strategy, then setting up the technology behind it is actually quite trivial

- There are many options to choose from. You have a plethora of free sites which offer templates, plugins and all the stuff you need to get you started or you the have the choice of setting up/ creating your own

Rajesh, Blogworks: I hope you are not saying set it up on a free blog site, but that there are several free options available in terms of engines; management systems; templates that one can play with on YOUR server, right?

Kishore, Linkaxis: Yes, that’s the point; if you are serious about it, then you really need to setup a blog on hosted/dedicated server and certainly not on the free servers and free services available.

If you just want a quick and dirty job, then go to any of the free engines but if you want a real blog for your organisation, then set it up on the server, ideally where your corporate website is hosted, as blogs.mycompany.com or mycompany.com/blog. The idea is to never lose focus of your brand.

By hosting on a free server, you may still be able to do some amount of branding, but the real impact is when all the stuff resides on your site. Of course, there are tons of other advantages, which we will discuss as we go along.

But just to give you an idea, there would even be issues in legal position if the blog is not your property?

But, coming back to the question.

Rajesh, Blogworks: Please do elaborate on the legal bit before we move on…

Kishore, Linkaxis: Ok take a simple example, if I have a blog on a free engine and I place a company advertisement on it. If the provider says that you can't have advertisements on the site, then they can actually just turn around and shut the blog down.

This is known to have happened in the past.
Content on a free site will be difficult to copyright and protect. Disclaimers, Privacy Policy etc are all under your own control, if hosted on your server, rather than being the ones that the provider enforces.

There is also the issue of the total service offering on a free site, one will never be able to get access to the RAW logs of traffic, and therefore, never have accurate web analytics.

Rajesh, Blogworks: To me the most important part has always been just the message that we are sending out to the world on the seriousness of the initiative - the perception of a free blog site is so non-business like.

Also, forbid a service is down/ taken down for any reason (like it happened last year) you don’t end up losing your business blog, a very crucial piece in your internal/ external communication outreach programme now.

Kishore, Linkaxis: True. Ok so coming back to the question of which platform does the corporate use for a blog.

The answer is they host their own blog on their own server. In order to do this a corporate will need a blogging engine or platform. There are many options to choose from there.

This is where I tend to favour the Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) and community. There are commercial engines available, but the real innovation is happening in the FOSS world.

Take for example what would today be the most commonly used blog platform on the Internet – Wordpress (WP). Wordpress has tons of features, fantastic templates, and a vibrant community of developers and users supporting it

Rajesh, Blogworks:You mean ‘free’ software?

Kishore, Linkaxis: No free and open source. I mean, that which costs nothing as in ‘muft’ and that which is ‘free’ as in freedom or ‘mukt’

Rajesh, Blogworks:Freedom to do what?

Kishore, Linkaxis: You have the freedom to do pretty much as you please. You can share it with your friends, you can examine the code, and you can change the code to improve it. The list just goes on and on.

Kishore, Linkaxis: Apart from Wordpress there is also Moveable Type (MT), which is also a great engine.

Rajesh, Blogworks: Yup, we are on MT.

Kishore, Linkaxis: But at the end of the day, you need to ask, where do I get my support and where are the skills to help us manage the site?

Rajesh, Blogworks: Let’s just talk about these two, what are the key differences?

Kishore, Linkaxis: In principle the two engines are very similar. They form the basis of what are known as Content Management Systems. There are really several hundreds of such engines and the main difference between them is the platform or programming languages used along with the database used.

MT uses a great programming language called Perl, which was originally designed as a scripting engine for text manipulation and automation of mundane tasks by System Administrators but it is now used for just about any job. I have seen some amazing applications written in Perl.

The only problem with Perl is finding people who know it well and who can exploit its true power.

Rajesh, Blogworks:Why, is it a difficult language?

Kishore, Linkaxis: Perl is not really difficult, it’s just that not many current generation of programmers know anything about it so it gets ignored and used mainly by old-timers.

Rajesh, Blogworks:Hmmm, you just called Guru, an old timer!

Kishore, Linkaxis: You must also understand that a 30 yr old in the IT industry is considered an old timer.

Rajesh, Blogworks: You will have to explain this to Guru I think, lol.

Kishore, Linkaxis: Guru and I are about the same age.

Rajesh, Blogworks: Lol.

Kishore, Linkaxis: On the other hand, WP uses the one thing that really gave a boost to FOSS. What is popularly known as the LAMP - Linux Apache MySQL and PHP.

Perl is considered an old language and is just not used by most. Only the really, smart guys use it.

Rajesh, Blogworks: ;)

Kishore, Linkaxis: What is very popular today is this language called PHP. This was designed from the ground up to be a web language and is therefore just more suitable.

Kishore, Linkaxis: Wordpress is based on PHP and the PHP community world-wide is HUGE!

Rajesh, Blogworks:Is the technology the only difference between the two?

What about paid/ unpaid; what about the key area of support - as a business I need support, doesn't matter, many times, if I need to pay to assure that.

"When it rains, it pours!" Right!!!

We have an exciting line-up coming up in our Blog the Talk Series.

1. Check back from anytime late Sunday evening - 15 July - to read my conversation with Kishore Bhargava on "Technology tips to get started with business blogging and more - the FOSS way".
2. Then next Sunday we have an exciting talk lined up with one of the foremost names, globally, in entrepreneurship, venture funding, business blogging and what have you - "Who, who???", I hear you say? Yes, but wait a bit, a little suspense never hurt anyone. Promise to tell you Tuesday.

   We discuss "Internet, Investment and Investors".

UPDATED: 12.54 pm - 18 July 2007. Sorry, couldn't do this yesterday. So, here's the promised name. Joining us on Blog the Talk, Edition 4 is his straightforward self, Guy Kawasaki - an India first? Not sure but definitely a Blog the Talk first. Hope to see you then :).

Hope you enjoy.

Yesterday when Priyanka called me to speak regarding iShare - the new content platform from Rediff , I was quite excited. For this is the second major initiative from Rediff, on the blog & social media front, in an equal number of weeks...

Rediff was, I think, the original Indian blog platform years ago (now Rediff iLand), so to me it is only natural that they are taking the lead on the social media initiatives. Two weeks ago they launched Rediff Blogshowcase - allowing bloggers to share an RSS feed, even as they continue to blog from their original platforms. I do believe aggregation is the way forward, though I think this particular initiative will still be adopted by the casual blogger , which is fine because that's what the large population wants to be... write and be read by more people. No business, advertising revenue etc ambitions...

Coming back to iShare, I tend to agree with Amit Ranjan's thought "I for one believe that there is a strong case for Indian versions of Flickr & Youtube to gain ascendancy inspite of the popularity of the global sites." Though not in all categories. Early days to say more about iShare, but I like it. Also I am a bit old fashioned and really like to see content by 'Categories'. Tags are great, but sometimes Categories are what you need - say I quickly want to see just uploaded 'Advertisements' and nothing else - iShare lets me do that with zero effort and I like that :).

I didn't quite understand what Ajit Balakrishnan meant by "It’s like combining properties of YouTube and Orkut,”. It didn't come across like that to me - YouTube, Flickr and 'your pick' of music site but 'Content Platform', not like Orkut or an obvious networking site. Sure networking will evolve around similar 'likes' etc. but that's an outtake of the content. Maybe there are plans to add new elements soon.

Anyway, I have INSISTED that some of my friends, associates, clients join up Facebook and see what is happening - it is too damn fascinating - that's another post though.

I discovered Truemors a few weeks ago but hadn't been able to post anything on the site yet. Today I opened my account with this post essentially asking if Facebook is likely to post a threat to Orkut's social networking leadership in India.

If the number of friends adding me on FB suddenly is any indication, then it does seem possible. I was seeing that when I wrote this about new beginnings in social networking. FB hadn't announced opening of 3rd party applications then and post that has been nothing short of a flood.

Do vote on the Truemors post here and comment if the same is happening with you.

I could build a case for virtual communities and cite several examples even from our very own Orkut. But I’d rather share a live instance that may help validate.

We were recently approached by our friends who run Radio Schizoid, an India based Internet music station that plays trance, for a possible assignment.

Suddenly, in the last month or so, everyone is talking about Avatars - looks like they have arrived. Kris messaged these cool links on Twitter yesterday - Gizmoz.com , Voki.com

Strangely, I had punched this post last evening but couldn't upload it and here we have a story that appeared in The Financial Express today - on avatars.

See the film and tell me what do you think...

JuxtConsult's India Online Report 2007 is out. Read this post from Agencyfaqs on findings. The full report can be ordered here.

More on this later...

UPDATED - 5 July 2007, 10.25 am - Sources- India Online 2007 - Juxt Consult Study; The Economic Times; Blogworks.

1. 30 million + users


Grew at 28% year to year
Only 37% from top 10 cities
19-35 years age groups account for only 67% of them
66% come from SEC ‘A’ and ‘B’
Only 17.5% come form ‘IT’ functional background
Only 41% prefer to read in English
83% regular users (once a month)
6 million + ‘fast’ connections - not broadband, but not dial-up either

2. 10.8 million (43%) have purchased online


76% more than last year
84% have bought a travel product; 56% have bought non-travel

3. Social Networking – 44%


14% + of Orkut users are from India? – high stickiness among youth
Facebook is single biggest gainer
Niche communities have strong stickiness
Caferati; Venturewoods; Desi Pundit etc.

4. Search usage high – 85%




5. Blog recall still low but high consumption through search


Credibility will only go up as experts join in
Still predominantly English, but local language is coming in

"It's just an easy way to see what words or phrases are showing up on Twitter and how often. For example, 3,800 folks have twittered about being sad and 13,000 people have twittered about being happy. Clearly, Twitter users are happy people. Is that because they drink coffee (14,200) about three times more than tea (4,610)? Who knows..."

Like many others, I too have been thinking about marketing applications of Twitter, but how does one track and measure the going ons? Another very interesting mash-up, Twittervision, of course, pops messages on a map and you can, if you had the time, follow these messages. But how does one get a quick, number/ dashboard view?

I think tweetVOLUME has interesting implications. I tested the following brand names and found these many mentions of:

1. Nokia - 1490


2. Sony Ericsson- 84


3. Motorola -188
4. Mercedes - 138


5. BMW - 243

These numbers are of course dynamic and may have changed by the time you land on the site.
Also, I am wondering, when are these mentions 'from', in terms of timelines. BTW , you can compare up to 5 words at the same time, on a dashboard view. Marketers, particularly addressing youth, may find this an interesting way to monitor buzz.

There are 843 mentions of India. Twitter is yet to catch on here and that's clearly the reason Indian brands hardly find a mention, but hey 'Yoga' is happening @ 781 mentions.

Now if someone could tell me the Tone of Voice: Negative - Neutral - Positive. Greedy, ain't I? :)

Go, check it out.

Read more Twitter stuff, here.

Users are going to love this, I think. Quick after Twitter comes Guy Kawasaki plus Will Mayall and Kathryn Henkens' Truemors.

The concept is simple "Tell the World' - post your rumors, news, and sightings, and anyone with web access can read and rate them within minutes". However, Truemors wants to see 'true' rumours that are relevant, add value to people and maybe entertain. The site rightly doesn't want gossip, which on the other hand mostly deals with individuals. I would suggest you read the detailed, but engaging, about us section before you get started.

It would be interesting to see how and what they moderate though.

Get started you can... by leaving a message over phone, IM, web interface and email.

Go spread some!

I spent some time on them in the last couple of days. It's early days yet, for both, and I would be keenly watching to see how they shape up.

Groups - or addas as they are called on BA - I visited, still have very few members and it might be some time before they achieve critical mass. CI doesn't have groups, unless I missed out, and continues to attempt building the community around blogs - more on that in a bit. Both looked very similar to Orkut in terms of features, so I wasn't really sure on what's the incentive for anyone who's already on Orkut (a large number now) to move to either.

As a matter of fact 2 clear trends I have recently noticed on Orkut:

1. It's become more mainstream and a somewhat older population is now beginning to adopt it too (I was fairly embarrassed until recently, to acknowledge that I was a member on Okut and would quietly lurk around, watching life go on around me). Now it's a bit like Ryze + loads of much younger people.
2. If youth who were already on Orkut are choosing to adopt new communities too, (they are not abandoning Orkut) then one community that I think finding traction is Facebook. It's more aspirational - the lure of a more global member-base, coupled with familiar Indian faces (many who have studied or are studying overseas) already friends with global buddies... making them more accessible to new joins. There's also more that can be done on the site, so many seem to be adopting it because they are perhaps now more comfortable with the concept of SNA and think they can hold their own etc.

Coming back to Ibibo and its blogging initiative - I think, even though they have given their 'rewards programme' a new twist by bringing in the criteria of interactivity and quality, and that is DEFINITELY going to clean up the place a lot, will it become a serious blogging platform? I don't think so! Here's what I think, but I need to go back a bit, first:

It was to be a monthly discussion but its already been 4 months since the launch of Blogworks - between our new business discussions, talks & workshops, writing the blog; (and of course) meeting our work commitments & deadlines :), we haven’t been able to keep that promise. Do hope that the content from the discussion below will make up for the gap. We hope to be more regular though (there are a couple of discussion already in the pipeline).

Much has also changed in the last few months- just the term blogosphere has become partly redundant, it’s about Social Media or Live Web now, broader in what it covers. Social Networking and User Generated Content (UGC) have been gaining mainstream status. In view of that, it was pertinent that we discussed: Impact of Social Networks and User Generated Content – an India perspective.

How long is a week? Very long if you are talking about social media, UGC and SNS - in the days between we had the discussion below and actually took it up - Social Networking Site Minglebox has received $ 7 million funding from Sequoia Capital and YouTube has announced revenue sharing! It's not for nothing that I call social media the fastest running animal on the planet!

Joining me today are(alphabetically):

1. Alok Mittal, Canaan Partners – Alok, a friend, former client 2 times over, is a Partner with Canaan - an early stage venture fund with focus on internet, technology and BPO space. A first generation entrepreneur, Alok is also a founding member of Band of Angels India - an organization comprising successful entrepreneurs looking to invest in seed stage businesses. Alok’s community blog Venturewoods attempts to bring the Indian venture community closer together. Alok is located in New Delhi.
2. Amit Ranjan, Slideshare – Amit Ranjan, of whose product I am a great fan, is the co-founder & COO of Slideshare(www.slideshare.net). Amit keenly follows emerging trends in the consumer internet space in India and writes a blog called Webyantra about the Indian Web 2.0 space. Amit is located in New Delhi.
3. Prerna Gupta, Yaari.com – Founder & CEO of Yaari.com - a social networking site for Indian youth. Prerna has led Yaari through rapid growth and widespread media coverage since its beta launch in October 2006. Prior to founding Yaari, Prerna was an Associate in Summit Partners' venture capital fund in Palo Alto, CA. Prerna is an economics graduate from Stanford University and presently splits her time between India and the US.
4. Yours truly moderated and I am 'still located in New Delhi :).




5. Blog the Talk Edition 2 is in association with IMPACT - The Media, Advertising and Marketing Weekly, which will, starting this week, carry the text for its readers over 2 issues. Thanks Team IMPACT.
6. UPDATE- I am delighted to renew my association with HP - India (Hewlett Packard) . The Personal Systems Group - Commercial of HP India, which is responsible for business notebooks, business desktops, handheld devices and more would now be associated with Blog the Talk. Thanks HP ! :)

Hope you enjoy the talk and participate with comments and feedback:

All thoughts expressed by participants are personal opinion of respective speakers and do not represent the views of Blogworks or any other company/ organization.

Rajesh:Alok, first of all let me congratulate you and your colleagues on your new investment in iYogi! I think it’s an interesting next generation outsourcing concept.

Let me begin by asking you… networking on the net isn't new - sites bringing friends together, dating and matrimonial and even business networking sites have been there forever; but suddenly there is a lot of buzz about user generated content (UGC), content communities, social and business networking - communities are emerging all around. What brought about the change?

Alok: Thanks. I think the move towards consumer generated content has been gradual and limited on a geographical scale and people want to contribute quick byte-sized content - a la, discussion boards etc.

Myspace extended the frontier in terms of user expression. I think You Tube is perhaps the most extensive example of this, and driven by:

(a) Broadband

(b) Focusing on content which already exists with the users in a form that can be shared.

Prerna: The idea has been around for a while but I think what really brought around the change was when a few sites, mostly well-funded, executed the idea in very clear and simple way and had effective marketing to make their sites tip.

Amit: The community aspect being mashed up with the content is what seems to be spurring the growth at this stage. As Alok said, the content already exists; people are already creating it; now the ability to share that content in a social context has added the impetus.

There are pure SNS (Social Networking Sites) sites where networking is the end and there are content oriented sites where SNS is the means and not the ends.

Rajesh: Alok, how much of this unleashing has to do with the possibilities that Google AdSense and other contextual ad options brought along? That the owner of a community had, for the first time, at least a possible option of moving away from transactions or selling display ads, which may not always be a possible option?

Alok: I think that’s an interesting survival technique and helps in that context. However, that’s too small a stream for a reasonable business, especially as you get to rich media sharing, you definitely need something more as source of revenue/capital.

Rajesh: But do you think that to some owners it has given a dream to make it big.

Alok: I doubt anyone has made big with adsense…

Rajesh:(Laughs)

Rajesh: Amit and Prerna, how much of this SNS phenomenon of real people sharing personal lives and data is to do with a sociological change of a generation that has grown up with the net and doesn't much care about who is reading about them, their lives?

Prerna: I don't think everyone using these sites has ‘grown up’ with the net but people are adaptable and the freedom is addicting, especially when sharing information about yourself so readily gets you widespread affirmation from peers.

Amit: Psychological and cultural reasons have certainly contributed to this trend; also the fact that Internet adds a hugely convenience dimension to everything - be it ecommerce or friendship.

The convenience of interacting with people in asynchronous mode. Synchronous and direct interaction on a one-to-one basis is great but for many a people, it’s intimidating.

Alok: Ya, I guess that’s why I leave post-it notes for my wife (smiles).

Rajesh: (Smiles).

Amit: Good one (Smiles).

A few months ago, it had announced plans to pay users for uploads. Well, it's happened: This TechCrunch update yesterday informed me of a formal announcement from YouTube of its revenue share plans. While being seen as a positive step, a notable miss from the announcement is inclusion of 'pre-rolls' - brief ad plays before start of a video- that way ad messages would have reached the audience watching video embeds on thousands of blogs which pick content from YouTube, but that's going to have to wait it seems - tech concerns some say! Read the original TechCrunch story here.

The programme has some interesting features:

1. An 'integrated browser' opens web pages inside the reader...
2. While 'Auto discovery' ensures that I don't have to click any additional buttons to look for RSS feeds
3. Save a feed as a 'Channel' under the selected 'Channel Group'
4. The reader allows users to view 'Articles' by category; author; published; source; flagged; title; read...
5. When I like something? I simply move it into 'Archives' for future reference - I find this quite useful
6. The feature I love most however is 'Watches' which allows users to track conversations by keyword so all articles from feeds collected that have a certain or a set of keywords get separated under a given watch. I can add as many as I like...

Check it out! You can download i-Fetch here!

More about RSS and other terms here.

Question I am asking is, how many messages will BBC put on the site in say, an hour, but then do users really stay on? Or they keep coming and going like I did just now, so there's a new audience after each few messages.

We are looking for these inputs:

1. Name
2. Location
3. Your profession
4. Blog URL
5. Subjects your blog is focused on
6. Traffic statistics for last 3 months - mention tool/s used; geographical; demographic data that you may have available;number of email subscribers etc.
7. Page Rank
8. Present advertising you feature
9. Advertising regarding any products/ services/ subjects that you would NOT like featured on your blog
10. Anything else you may want to share (about 100 words)

Thanks and looking forward to hear from you.

Please note that this is not:
1. A pay-per-post offer and wouldn't infringe upon your editorial integrity


2. Writing in to us doesn't necessarily 'include' you into the panel or guarantee any advertising

It is the age of sharing, providers are trying to help users unleash the power of content, both fresh and archival, by providing friendly platforms...
The first one to do so was Slideshare, of which I have always been a great fan, and joining in is Scribd - an online directory where anyone can upload. Its embeddable PDF player allows users to publish and view documents in your web browser.

I can see people brushing off virtual dust from old documents and sharing them with the world. Not only documents, the site takes Word (.doc), PDF (.pdf), text (.txt), PowerPoint (.ppt), Excel (.xls), Postscript (.ps), or LIT (.lit) files.

Features allow users to add tags, titles, embed content into other web pages & blogs etc. An interesting feature is, Slurping, which allows users to directly import content from other websites.

Oops, but what I do we have here, someone else has uploaded MY presentation (kidding, for now)...

We have a collaborative experiment on at Blogworks...

Together with my colleagues help, I am hoping we can scan and reach out more interesting developments from what I have started to term, the fastest running animal on the planet, Social media:

SpockThis one came via Namita, who first read about this on Googlerz:
- This yet-to-be opened for 'public at large' people search engine is already making waves - thanks also to the fact that they have managed to secure series A funding to the tune of $7M from Clearstone and Opus Capital Ventures.

Driven by the logic that 30% of all internet search is people related (celebrity searches are constantly leading search numbers). We are yet to get our request approved but believe, from what we have read that it works well, for searches for people ranging from very popular to even lesser known who have some web presence...

Post search, Spock sorts out duplication, based on identical or similar names, gives the person a permanent profile page, auto tagged based on information collected from blogs, wikipedia, social networks etc. These can then be claimed by users, who can add/ edit the tags.

Currently, the spock websiteallows users to leave a request for invitation to test the beta version.

And while, you, like us, wait for the invite to get approved, read more here.

Google introduces polls in Orkut Community

Google's social networking site Orkut has introduced polls in its communities. Any member of a community (not necessarily the moderator) can now initiate a poll. The credible part is that while the poll can be deleted by the creator member or the moderator, the contents of the poll itself cannot be edited.

Click below to read Freaktitude.com, a technology blog that details how the Orkut poll works. Click here.

Although Orkut has come under heavy scrutiny with media and government agencies, a poll tool such as this can be a boon to research freaks! However, ensuring that a real person is polling might remain a question mark!

Top 10 Largest Social Bookmarking Sites March 2007
Here are the top 10 largest social bookmarking sites ranked by a combination of Compete and Quantcast data.

Even as many (most) of the strategic initiatives on the social media strategy, we crafted a couple of months ago for our client,StyleKandy.com, which gives an insider’s view and buzz on the fashion and lifestyle scene, await a few enablements, her team has gone ahead and uploaded some cool slide-shows on Slideshare from the recently concluded Lakme Fashion Week and others. They keep partnering many of these top-line fashion and lifestyle events from time-to-time...

1. Hottest Trends at LFW
2. Hottest Parties
3. Backstage ;)

1. This one's from the Salsa India Festival held in Mumbai - after all our new mantra for Stylekandy- Life's in Fashion! - is as much about 'Life' as it is about 'Fashion'! Cheers!

1. Technorati is today tracking 70 million weblogs
2. About 120,00 new weblogs each day, but also 3000-7000 splogs (fake or spam blogs) being created every day
3. 1.5 million posting a day - spikes in post during significant world crises, which is expected as blog posts reflect and capture developments around us
4. 22 blogs among the top 100 - up from 12 in the prior quarter, shows growing acceptance and popularity.

   The report also validates something that we have been speaking about regarding growing credibility and latent consumption of blogs through search results:
   
   "the audience is less and less likely to distinguish a blog from, say, nytimes.com -- for a growing base of users, these are all sites for news, information, entertainment, gossip, etc. and not a “blog” or a 'MSM site' "

You don't need to use the mouse, once started: Press 'Tab' to get a parallel button on the side; press 'Enter' to get one below. You can change text as you go along, add buttons, share online or through e mail or print. Neat I think.

Found it through this post by Jason Clarke of Download Squad.

Search is here, search is big!

I moderated a panel discussion yesterday on 'Internet in India - the role of search' hosted by exchange4media.com on occasion of the launch of their first book - Gold Sift – Leveraging Online and Search Engine Marketing, authored by Vikas Malhotra.

Even though I generally played a good boy, my formidable panel didn't disappoint. On the panel were 3 brand owners/CEOs from the Internet space (Niti Batra,Dinesh Wadhawan and Sanjiv Bikhchandani; 2 successful Internet entrepreneurs - Alok Mittal, now with a leading early stage venture fund and Sidharth, who leads a prominent interactive agency, and the author of the book Vikas.

For me the conversation was a learning. I am not summarizing what was said as you can read it here and here.

I wish someone from the media planning and advertising fraternity had shared their perspective on my audience question " How do planners and advertisers (particularly the offline brands) see search marketing and how are they planning to use it".

My key take-away - there is an opportunity in vertical search - like that thought.

Vikas shared an interesting statistic - only 8% of the Internet is presently searchable - opportunity? Challenge?

Much as I have wanted to, haven't been able to post anything in over a week - just been running around chasing assignments; spoke at another seminar at FMCC; moderating a session tomorrow and partly because I hurt my neck (in all probability attempting a headstand during yoga :) - fine now, though I was a bit tentative in class this weekend). The last made me wonder, how it must be for the really popular bloggers... what if they are not well and can't post :)!

Anyway, a short break from blogging never hurt anyone I think...lol.

The first in our series of Social Media Workshops' is tentatively scheduled for Friday -23 March, 2007 in New Delhi. There are a few details that still need to be finalised though. This offering would allow individual (and group) representatives from corporates, advertising and public relations agencies (anyone interested) to not just understand but also give them a touch and feel experience through a 'do it along' tutorial.

To me it means...

1. Content is king- irrespective of whether you are a large production house, a citizen journalist or a backyard film director, compelling content will earn you money. So far the latter two variety were happy with just visibility, but with a plethora of options to upload content on, it has become important for You Tube to ensure that it invites quality content - it is no fun to log on and not find anything of value -people will simply move on.
2. With a revenue share in place (based on number of views?), production houses would likely put-up quality content and that may further change how we consume news/ entertainment etc.
3. While server space may be cheap, You Tube will likely have fewer people clogging the community with junk, if they believed there is monetary benefit in uploading quality content.


Let's await a formal announcement.

Time(s) surely (are) is changing. Time.com moved to a new Web 2.0 format this week...

Amongst others, Time.com's star bloggers Ana Marie Cox and Andrew Sullivan will write 'Swampland' and 'Daily Dish' blogs respectively. There is 'The China Blog', but no India Blog, yet! Maybe someone from Time will read this and bring about change :).

The new site is, of course, RSS, podcast and mobile enabled and like many others in mainstream media, Time too understands the power of social media - embedded at the bottom of each story are RSS Feed; Digg; Del.icio.us (I still cannot get the URL of this one right at first attempt) and many other ranking/ bookmarking buttons.

The site features a Most Popular list but I couldn't figure out how it is compiled.

So there we are, Time's credibility coupled with new media transparency and speed - let's see where it takes us.

It has been a busy start to the year and even as the 'Cool List of 2006' post remains pending still, I have been thinking about what possible trends/ consolidation to expect online/ on the Indian blogosphere this year:

1. Year before last a client of mine was disapproving of my team's effort to get her brand visibility online. She thought it was 'easy' to get featured online and therefore didn’t count for much. I was quite amused by the reaction, as my own online experience had assured me of the medium’s power - my online writings have always been seen by more people; commented upon by more people; they stay around longer; can be linked; emailed... I can carry on. Coupled with the 'ease' of web 2.0, where I can do anything myself; put up anything on You Tube or Digg the power multiples, making the world truly flat. You are as good, as you really are! I think the online medium has arrived and will gain ground rapidly
2. When we launched BlogWorks.in last week with the Blog the Talk series, IMPACT weekly agreed to carry the content in a 2 part series. We were able to reach an entirely different community of readers through the exercise and the talk was read by a much larger audience, in addition to those who were already online . I like this marriage of mainstream with blogs. As blogs produce more and more compelling content, the trend is going to gain ground
3. I chanced upon a celebrity CEO's blog the other day. Very newbie, but very promising. I could see myself writing a blog a few months ago, struggling with template back-ends etc. but soon that became a thing of the past and I could actually concentrate on the writing part. I can see more and more experts and thought leaders joining the blogosphere and as that happens, credibility of blogs is going to go up too

Let's begin with a 'tool': "You Tube for Powerpoint" - for me, the beauty of Slideshare is in its simplicity. After years of struggle to reach across presentations in PPT, Acrobat and whatever formats, this one enabled me to, by allowing me to simply 'upload and share' - simple as that. Once can also embed in your blog or share a link etc. There are that they could do better, of course, but I can see that they are working on them - they are fairly small and therefore reachable - you leave a message on their site, they bring about change.

To me, as an executive, the value of this tool even surpasses that of You Tube (not to be confused with the much larger impact that You Tube indeed has. ). It's amazing to see the different uses it is being put to. Sample this:

The world has moved on. From just a checklist that needed a communication to be evaluated on whether it covered '5 Ws and the H', the very dynamics of crafting a media release have changed in the last few years. Not just is it pertinent to create specific media messages for specific audience, emergent media has brought about the need for new formats in which we need to deliver media material, say the press release. The importance and value of Hyperlinks, Tags, Social Bookmarking, User Vote on Content, for online content to be found through search and otherwise, has been understood.

I think I was needlessly worried when I wrote this post about Second Life. It just amuses me now - read this AdRants post, linking us to this :).

Indian marketers are beginning to acknowledge the fact that blogs are here to stay and are trying to explore how they can be used for marketing. The fact that US, and some of the other markets, have been exploring this domain ahead of us, offers learning...

Whilst unethical players bring dis-repute to any industry, the very premise on which Conversational Marketing is based, gets challenged if ethics and transperency are compromised - the impact is prompt and usually severe.

To help marketers & advisors know what would be the right thing to do as also to protect the consumers rights, WOMMA (Word of Mouth Marketing Association) has released a discussion draft for public comment' of its 'WOMMA Ethical Blogger Contact Guidelines - prompting us to remember that: Consumers come first, honesty isn't optional, and deception is always exposed.

1. I will always be truthful and will never knowingly relay false information. I will never ask someone else to deceive bloggers for me.
2. I will fully disclose who I am and who I work for (my identity and affiliations) from the very first encounter when communicating with bloggers or commenting on blogs.
3. I will never take action contrary to the boundaries set by bloggers. I will respect all community guidelines regarding posting messages and comments.
4. I will never ask bloggers to lie for me.
5. I will use extreme care when communicating with minors or blogs intended to be read by minors.
6. I will not manipulate advertising or affiliate programs to impact blogger income.
7. I will not use automated systems for posting comments or distributing information.
8. I understand that compensating bloggers may give the appearance of a conflict of interest, and I will therefore fully disclose any and all compensation or incentives.
9. I understand that if I send bloggers products for review, they are not obligated to comment on them. Bloggers can return products at their own discretion.
10. If bloggers write about products I send them, I will proactively ask them to disclose the products’ source.

Many of us have been tracking this, but if you haven't yet heard about the Walmart 'fake blog' controversy that both Walmart and Edelman found themselves embroiled in recently, go here (Excerpt: ...a blog ostensibly authored by a couple traveling across America in their RV and spending nights parked in WalMart parking lots turned out to be a fake blog, the brainchild of WalMart’s PR counselors at Edelman).

Not just did it impact credibility for Edelman's me2revolution initiative and Edelman per se, Steve Rubel, who writes his very popular Micropersuasion blog and is now employed by Edelman, also found himself at the receiving end of brickbats - this is what he had to say.

The controversy is far from over as these (1, 2) would suggest.

Tricky, the blogosphere, and leaders will need to tread with even more caution. Richard Edelman has acknowledged the error and brought about change.

Focus is on WOMMA code of ethics.

We are all learning...

Update 03 November 2006: Edelman Membership Put on Review

(WOMMA has responded this week to issues of disclosure and ethics surrounding Edelman’s recent blogs for Wal-Mart by placing Edelman’s membership on review. The following letter was forwarded to Richard Edelman and Rick Murray on Monday- text here). Source: www.womma.org


Original post is here.

From the time that Alok first mentioned it to me; to reading his post; to the time that someone sent me a link showcasing a virtual demo on it; to the time that I finally logged on to test it out myself, Second Life has compelled me to think more and more about the future.

Second Life is quite surreal - a virtual world where you choose who you are, meet real people (behind their chosen avataars), test out real products (in a virtual environment), spend real money to buy virtual money that allows you to buy not just virtual land and virtual stuff but lets you conduct real business and also convert the virtual money, you may have earned, into REAL money. Fascinating but also a bit scary.

I signed up, but haven't ventured in, yet. There are reasons - let me share:

I think of Second Life as Sims meets the Terminator series- vision of a future that is dominated by techonology so much that there are two classes of people - one who understand technology (rulers) and others who don't (slaves) :). Second Life makes it very real. Growing the way it is, the day may not be far that to succeed in business you have to be on it? A marketing device that you cannot do without! I don't know.

My points:

1. People who do are not comfortable with technology have a distinct disadvantage (but then, like someone said just now, that's true even today :) ).
2. The economy of the future will be controlled by a 'company'? How powerful will that company become.
3. I have been reading about 'game-like elicitation methods' of research (which I am quite fascinated with) - you think you are playing a game but your mind is being mapped; movement patters sharing with the researching party who you are, what you may buy. Doing so with virtual money on Second Life gives the company much more power to read the mind, spending habits, so much other data - all the time that one is on it. Wow - how may it be used?
4. Even as we are beginning to wonder about work-life balance as we find it difficult to cope with demands and rigours of our present day life. It doesn't seem to likely to get any easier and then another life that demands more time and attention (which it will get because it promises to earn us more money).

I am not sure about what else, but I haven't stopped thinking about the implications and am still coming to terms with it - though I must confess it is the most powerful one that I have come across lately.