Month: November 2008

  • Twitt…er, pay?

    Would you pay for Twitter?’, a very good question, asked by Walt Ribeiro, at his blog. It made me think, and I came to the conclusion that I’d pay (though it all depends on the price). Apparently, I’m in a majority. There’s possibly no ‘pain’ that Twitter is addressing in my case, unless I count the need for every human being to communicate. But I can do that on Facebook, and if its streaming conversation I want, there’s friendfeed, or Kwippy. But yes, twitter has a charm of its own, especially when you start with so many interesting people who share different interests of yours.

    The revenue model for Twitter is something that has caught the imagination of a whole load of people, since everyone, I think, is keen to prevent an ad based model. (yes, including me). The Twitter CEO also agrees. And in a lesser way, there have been discussions on the revenue models of Facebook and Friendfeed as well. A good read on this here. Meanwhile, I read an excellent article, which had a P&G digital guru stating that marketers don’t belong to Facebook. In his own words,

    “What in heaven’s name made you think you could monetize the real estate in which somebody is breaking up with their girlfriend?”…. … We hijack their own conversations, their own thoughts and feelings, and try to monetize it.”

    A superb perspective, I thought. He goes on to wonder who said this (user generated media in general) was media, since all consumers were doing were trying to talk to each other. Its a wonderful line of thought, and when I think about it, I’d have to agree with him. But it makes me wonder about the nice folk who built Twitter and Facebook and Friendfeed. While they are nice people, I doubt if they had such massive charity in mind. They build the infrastructure, they bear the costs, I’m happy using it…for free. I go into a coffee shop, and pay money for the coffee, that’s the basic service, I never wonder if they work on a freemium model. I watch a movie in a theatre, pay money for it, and only grumble when they show ads. I suffer both kinds of monetisation, and still go back. But when the Fail whale happens, i rant, and threaten not to go back. Thankfully, I do go back.  I wonder if there’s something wrong with this scenario.

    So, monetising FB, Friendfeed, Twitter – why is it such a difficult thing? Is it because there’s no tangible value in them? But there must be, considering that millions use them everyday. In fact, I read a post yesterday that shows an example of tangible value created by Twitter. But then, the moment there’s a payment mechanism or an ad model discussed, there’s usually a user revolt. I still remember the extreme reactions to magpie.

    A very long time back, someone thought of leveraging the audience that uses content, that became the fundamental way of running media businesses. Newspaper, television, radio businessses have not been built on content, they have been built on monetising the audience that uses the content. Then, a long time back, the web came into being, and someone started a price war that started at zero. So we had free content, free mail, free IM and we were generally happy. Over a period of time, some learnt to monetise, and Google learnt it so well (hell, without content!!), that it built a Google economy, which I agree, might be an inevitable future. But while the ‘customers get everything for free and advertisers pay for Ad Sense’ model is great for Google, I wonder if it’s fair to demand the same of other services that subsidise our conversations with each other.

    Every UGC driven medium – Flickr, You Tube, Twitter, Facebook etc needs to find its own way of leveraging the audience. Template solutions might be a thing of the past.  Like I replied  to a comment on an earlier post of mine, I know quite a few twitter clients, while i know only one for FB. Facebook ‘s services compels users to visit the site, Twitter’s simplicity doesn’t. Every service is different. Ads are obviously not the greatest of solutions though both Facebook, and You Tube are increasingly going along that path. (Here’s an excellent read on Facebook monetisation) Twitter should find its own way of leveraging the audience its gaining daily. I personally thought the research based model that has been started by SocialToo is worth a shot, as one source of revenue. LinkedIn is already doing it. I also saw Twitpay today, and think there’s potential in it.

    Meanwhile, I feel quite like a hypocrite when i consider services like Twitter Image, which is based on Twitter and charges $100 for a customised Twitter background, while Twitter doesn’t have a business model as far as we can see. I desperately want Twitter to crack their model soon, after all with 2500 plus tweets, there’s a lot of me in Twitter. If Twitter dies, a part of me dies too.

    until next time, a sharing caring world, reluctant to share costs?

  • Life…streaming

    I always wonder what the ‘hard disk’ capacity of the human brain is… maybe we’ve or will figure out ways to quantify it, but unlike the mechanical one, or even ‘Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind’, it will be a long while before we can get to choose what the brain keeps and what it send to the recycle bin. Maybe, by that time, they will also figure out how to ‘upgrade’ the human brain’s capacity.

    In terms of memories, we’ve been doing it forever, from clay tablets to computers, the aim has always been to store information, though processing and artifical intelligence did get into the picture later. But having notepad and word documents with dates and activities seems a strange way of documenting life.

    Which, i am guessing, is the reasons I stick to Twitter, but am always on the lookout for lifestreaming tools, like the one I have installed here. Its quite twitter heavy but also pulls information from my blogs, and a few other online accounts. I am also hoping to add Facebook status messages to it soon, since that’s also a good chronicler of happenings. This one does that too, but I’m yet to find a way to integrate it here.

    In case you’re wondering why this fascination for lifestreaming, think about how you feel when you see an old photograph, hear an old song, meet an old friend.. there are so many associations it throws up.. I bet you can recollect most of these associations now – the dress you were wearing in the photo, where you got it from, where its journey with you ended, why were you looking happy or sad; where you heard that song first, the mood change it causes in you and why, what was generally happening in your life then; under what circumstances you became friends, the fun you used to have together, shared incidents and so on…. Well, I, for one, am not sure, how far back I will be able to remember, what I’ll be able to remember, and for how long… and these things are important to me because together they are what is known as my life.. and it’d be sad if I couldn’t remember the details of my own life, through my own mind or its accessories… thats the reason behind this fascination for lifestreams… maybe its to do with being a sucker for nostalgia..maybe its the way I am built…

    I think it would be quite soothing at a later date, to sit back and read up the stuff that brought me to where I’d be then.. to better understand who I was, and perhaps figure out why I did what I did, why things happened to me, and so on..in essence, hunting for a pattern in the chronicle of a human life…

    until next time, the sum of our lives….

  • Web 2.0 and the need for a direction…

    I’d written briefly about the changing nature of blogging earlier, as part of another post, and since that’s a constantly evolving subject matter, I thought this would be a good time to add on to it. A good time, because I read an article recently that Google Friend Connect might be ready for launch. ‘Google Friend Connect lets you add social features to any website or blog’. The press release states that “Visitors to any site using Google Friend Connect will be able to see, invite, and interact with new friends, or, using secure authorization APIs, with existing friends from social sites on the web, including Facebook, Google Talk, hi5, orkut, Plaxo, and more.” That set me thinking on directions, because while i absolutely agree that the blogosphere is alive,well and kicking, this is sure to give it a whole new twist. Another point to note (in the article linked above) is that the nature of blogging is changing, and more rapidly. I feel that the lines between blogging, microblogging, social networking etc are blurring at a dizzying pace.

    So, what is it changing to? I remember a post by Dina, a while back, on the future of social networking, in which her 140 character response was “Networks based on & layered around location, access, presence & context. Those that enhance real-world interactions. Enabling choice, privacy and control”. I also agree that wih web 2.0 we have managed to create a great social platform.

    These networks/platforms could be blogs (powered by say, A Google Friend Connect), microblogging services (customised by you, using tools like Twingr), or social networks – not just the regular ones we’re used to, but unique versions like Sixtent, a very useful tool for those who like distinct boundaries between their personal and professional lives, which allows you to share different sides of yourself to different sets of people, basis your comfort levels and privacy requirements, or Mixtt, which attempts to infuse more reality into social networks (via Startup meme), or Zahdoo, a socio-cognitive utility that ‘takes the social computing to the next level by giving users insight into popular and collective mindset while retaining the relevance and significance to the user’s lifestyle.’ (via IndianWeb2).

    The time is definitely ripe for the social networking scene and social media in general, to get a rejig of sorts, and condense into something that can be more useful to our existence, in both real and virtual terms. Without the creating of this value, the interactions provided by social media might become an exercise in itself. Good, but way below the potential. This rejig could help wonderful services like Twitter evolve robust business models. Now, these business models might differ from the traditional ones that we’re used to, but that’s fine, after all, the businesses themselves are hardly the ones we are used to.

    Social media is a kind of disruption to the regular web we were used to, and like any disruption, it does require time to evolve in a direction that supports itself and its stakeholders- whether they be users, developers or investors. But given that money is intrinsically linked to our daily existence, perhaps its time to take sterner looks at where we are heading, unless of course, we are heading towards another disruption!!

    until next time, i shall start with some personal analytics, courtesy me-trics 🙂

  • The Best Goodbye Ever

    And once in a while a movie comes along that makes you want to write a note on it. No, Drona, Karzzz, LS2050 don’t exactly fall into the category that I meant. 🙂

    A lot of discussion happened before I saw Dasvidaniya, mostly on twitter, and many thanks to one person who put the idea of a review in my head. I might have let laziness overcome me if not for that. And so, while i will not go about doing a long drawn review, I shall try to pen down the thoughts that came to me as I watched the movie.

    The film worked for me, and the major portion of the credit would go to Vinay Pathak, who has carved a niche for himself, that no other actor can occupy now. It started with Bheja Fry and a few shades of that character can be found in this too. While the basic story idea has been used several times, it is the actor and the situations that makes it endearing and believable.

    It’s the story of a relatively uncomplicated human being, but thanks to a single situation that arises, his life is forced on to a much faster pace than he’s used.  My heart went out to him, when he asks ‘Why me?’ . That one sentence captures the angst of a man who has lived all his life doing the right things, but is yet treated unfairly even by the cosmos. Meanwhile, he lives his life based on a day to day ‘Things to do’ list that he religiously maintains. A meek person who is pushed around by everyone and life, the list is what gives meaning to his life, right from buying vegetables to repairing his momma’s hearing aid to several mundane things that we would regard as well, mundane. But like he himself says, he is not ambitious. Even when pushed, his dreams (in the beginning) are only a car, saying No to his boss, a foreign trip etc; yes, nothing great, but it’s typical of the man’s character, and you end up liking him all the more for it.

    Through the journey of one man, the story shows how simple human existence can be, if only we let it be, how it is possible to love unconditionally, if only we let it happen, and how there is an innate bond between human beings, if only we care to show it. But like a couple of characters in the movie show, at some point, the selfishness that we see around us, and perhaps within us, has created in us, a cynical outlook, and we force on ourselves, a complicated existence. So much so, that (like in the movie) we’d not believe that when, after a dozen years, someone wants to visit us, its only for the pleasure of seeing us.

    Yes, it is possible to live, without strings attached to everything we do or say; and by living so, it is possible to create great joy not just in us, but those around us too.. someday, hopefully, we can live this lesson.

    until next time, time is running out

    PS : So, some might turn around and say “Oh, The Bucket List”, and to those I’d say, for the majority of Bollywood lovers who understand Gunmaster G9, this works way better. 🙂

  • Micro Ambassadors

    The recent twitterguru polls conducted by itwote was a neat social experiment. The idea was to choose the person on twitter (in India) most loved by all. In that sense, the number of followers a person had or the number of tweets did not, though i did feel that the person with more followers did have a distinct advantage. Incidentally, the person with the maximum followers did win, though I’m still debating my point, with myself.

    However, the social experiment for me was completely different. It had to do with what I think would be the long tail of twitter popularity. While the final nominations were only 5 people, the amount of nominations were much larger. It made me realise that in the vast set of twitter users, many of us look up to others, pay attention to what they have to say, follow the links they share, in essence, extend to microblogging, the milieu of blogging.

    But there is a crucial difference – the twitterstream. Which means that in some ways it is also a broadcast medium. So, while I may not follow a blog because it predominantly covers stuff I’m not interested in, and therefore end up missing an interesting conversation that happens there, such a scenario is less common on twitter. So, my reach on twitter would most likely be more than my blogs.

    So, I was wondering about the concept of micro ambassadors. Let me show you through an example. The movie Dasvidaniya. We had a lot of discussions around it – the origin of the word, the website, and thanks to chupchap, I realised that the dasvidaniya website had, in addition to the Facebook and Orkut groups a very cool application, that tied in with very well with the movie – a Thing To do list, and by connecting friends, it could’ve made a very good social viral. Yes, there are many such apps, but this one has a context. I know at least 4-5 more people who were equally interested in the movie. And we were playing out the role of micro ambassadors. Now this might be a small number to begin with, but with an interesting app, and the long tail of twitter popularity, we sould’ve convinced at least a few to watch the movie.

    The value add here is that as a regular twitterer, I know other twitterers who’d be interested in a particular subject. What does it take – a few free tickets, in other words, product sampling. The duration of the micro ambassadorship should be decided by the kind of product, and the experience time it requires. In the case of the movie, it would be say, a couple of weeks.  A group of people passionate about a product./service, convinced about the value, spreading the news to others who’d be interested. While there are many stories of blogs being used for a viral spread, I haven’t come across many on twitter. It perhaps is a lack of awareness.

    But it raises a question for me. While I believe that both blogging and microblogging have their unique place on the web, does twitter, because of the way it is used, lend itself more to brand usage than blogs? Micro ambassadors, because they may not have the ‘star value’ of bloggers, and are relying on the long tail of popularity on twitter. Is it even better than social networks, where there perhaps might be constraints like viewership being limited to real life friends? I’m also wondering about new networks like Afinito (via Startup Meme), a service that connects you to other people with similar interests, or Orbius, a ‘safe and controlled environment for brands and companies to connect with their customers’.

    What do you think?

    until next time, now for a revenue model 😉