Author: manu prasad

  • Social Connectivity

    Just yesterday, I read about AOL launching Social Thing for websites. Adding the service to your website gives you a navigation bar at the bottom of the page, users can sign in with their AIM/AOL/Bebo/ICQ ids and comment. They can also chat/IM, check out what their buddies are doing, and share stuff with them. According to Mashable, “Authentication goes through AOL’s Open Authentication API, which is being extended to include support for a single sign-on from Facebook, Google, Yahoo, OpenID and other services.”

    As TechCrunch mentions in its article which talks about Facebook opening its stream API to developers, the conversation wars are heating up. Facebook Connect and its potential is something I’ve written about several times before. Broadly, as a site owner, the implementation of FB Connect allows me to broadcast my content to my Facebook audience, and if they comment using FB Connect, it gets added to their stream thus multiplying the reach. As a commenter, I can share my activities on other sites on my FB stream. The opening of the API enhances the potential for FB stream conversations to happen outside FB.

    Meanwhile, a few days back, there was also a news about Twitter Connect. Obviously, since Twitter has very less profile data as compared to FB, it need not be seen as a competitor to FB Connect, but seen from a “conversation  platform choice” perspective, i’d say it still is. For those interested in how each of these Connect services work, this is an excellent detailed read.

    And what Connect conversation can be complete without the omnipresent Google. Before we get to Friend Connect, a detour. Google recently decided to give us more control of how we would be seen in a search result page – Google Profiles will now be part of search results and we can edit it. In addition to regular data, you can showcase links to your profiles on services like Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace and so on. While Google claims its just responding to users’ needs, its obviously aimed at getting more user data. However, the profiles will only be shown at the bottom of the search pages, and will not ‘save’ you if you’ve been making news otherwise. 🙂 I assumed that the Profiles so created would be in sync with what gets displayed on Google Friend Connect, but apparently its not so. But you can have a vanity url (google.com/profiles/your name) so long as its connected to your gmail id. You can get a detailed report on the new Profiles here.

    Back to Google Friend Connect, once implemented on your site, it allows users to log in using GMail/Open ID/Yahoo/AIM . Users can comment, rate etc (depending on the gadgets you’ve added), engage with other users, and invite their friends from other networks to check out the site. There are many related things I am thinking of – will Profile and Friend Connect be made to work in sync, and is Google doing the opposite of what FB has done? FB created a social network first and then decided to connect other sites with it and thus enhance its own lifestream. With Google’s many services, it has a ‘disaggregated’ social network in place – YouTube/Picasa/Blogger/(even) Reader. At some point will Profile be just the equivalent of the ‘Info’ tab on Facebook and something like iGoogle (or God forbid Orkut) serve as the aggregator of one’s conversations across the web, not just across Google services, but the sites in which one logs in using Friend Connect. Google is always hungry for more data on users, so it can build more (and truth be told, sometimes better – like the proposed new Google News) products and get more data and obviously find more ways of making money.

    Of the four, Facebook is now using its Connect on popular sites to add more layers to its existing user data  and increase the conversations on Facebook. The opening of the stream API should get us some interesting apps. We’ll have to see what AOL does with its new service, how it ties it with Bebo etc. Twitter Connect is in many ways a different animal altogether, its simplicity and existing third party applications throw open many possibilities (as always) The data just goes back to Twitter, and it can be argued both ways whether Twitter Connect can be used effectively to increase a site’s visibility in the open yet ‘noisy’ stream, but the commenting using Twitter login would be useful to quite a few people  (a wild thought – maybe Twitter should just buy Friendfeed and make that its base social network). Google Connect is easy to implement and interesting gadgets are sure to happen. The possibilities of aggregating  it into a network remain. Now I wonder if Microsoft will find new ways to connect, or will they just Vine? As for Yahoo, maybe they’ll connect with Microsoft finally!! What will be interesting is what handle you would use to connect.

    until next time, connecting people ain’t just Nokia’s job no more

    PS.  6 years of blogging. A week’s break. 🙂

  • Social Media – beyond strategy

    Unilever CMO Simon Clift, at Ad Age’s Digital Conference, spoke about the increasing role of social media in brand management, and said that the internet allows consumers to hijack conversations inspite of the huge money spent on advertising. From Unilever’s experience with Dove also comes the understanding that its not just the communicated parts of a brand that comes under scrutiny, but also the corporate’s entire set of credos – sweatshops, impact on environment are a few things he mentioned. Unilever has prominent corporate signatures in its advertising in UK. He also spoke about the increasing penetration of mobiles, of “marketing program with social benefits”, and a product centric approach.

    In essence, it reiterates the decline of one way communication, consumer participation, of brands being ‘deeper’ than the marketing that is done for them. But it was good to hear it from a leading FMCG corporate. The most interesting part of the article for me, however, was this, from the author of the post

    Social media is not a strategy. You need to understand it, and you’ll need to deploy it as a tactic. But remember that the social graph just makes it even more important that you have a good product. Put another way: The volume and quality of your earned media will be directly proportional to the impact and quality of your product and ideas.

    I think that nails it. All this while I was considering social media as strategy. Now I think its more than that – its something that will make the organisation really focus on what they’re delivering to their consumers, how they are doing it – not just from a delivery platform/operations pov, but also from how socially and environmentally conscious and responsible they have been. In Mr.Clift’s words “enlightened self interest”. The ways and means of communication – brand advertising, promotions, PR etc, will follow much later.

    Meanwhile, the Marketing Pilgrim asks an interesting question – does social media really have the pulse of the people? It cites the Johnson & Johnson Motrin ads that had raised the hackles of mom bloggers a while ago, and caused them to remove the ad. Apparently a research was done later that threw up some interesting stats – 90% of women had never seen the ad, and when they did see it, 45% liked it. It also speaks of the Skittles – Twitter experiment, and a research in which only 6% of 300 people sampled had heard about it. Those on Twitter would’ve heard about both these, but the Pilgrim asks whether these voices resemble those outside at all, and how much of influence do they have outside.

    I, for one, still think social media is a good microcosm of the real world. It does give varied perspectives, and the key is in evaluating the perspectives, digging further where required, and deciding on a course of action that fits larger objectives, and not knee jerk reactions. Wonder if there would have been different results if J&J and Skittles had attempted to carry the community along in their efforts.

    But the bigger opportunity, I have always felt is that it allows brands to experiment with segmentation. On one hand, the net allows extremely targeted communication to a core segment, and on the other hand, cheaper distribution allows the brand to also communicate with different segments of the long tail of consumers. It means that brands can play different roles according to the consumer’s interests, and varying with the context, by tweaking its communication, even while sticking to its core objectives. There are new monitoring tools being developed that will aid of this.

    Most importantly, it allows brands to find evangelists in each segment and work with them to improve and communicate. Consumers who find a product interesting and appealing will communicate it on their own, adding their perspective and giving a human touch of ‘interestingness’. I’m increasingly seeing posts about marketing ideas that have differed from the norm – Penguin India’s ‘Blog a Penguin India Classic’, which I wouldn’t know about if Karthik didn’t mention it on Twitter or his blog (though I do think they could’ve done it better by using social reading lists like Visual Bookshelf – on Facebook as an app too, Shelfari etc to reach Penguin readers – can easily find that through book titles), product placement ideas for Nestle evolving from the “Mad Men” on Twitter. Cisco’s comic book experiments via Chris Brogan’s post (Webex in Marvel Comics), and Kara Swisher on All Things Digital ( The Realm, an entire comic series). All appealed to me as a marketer, and one as a bibliophile too. Social media is not one thing – the channels vary in audience, kinds of interaction etc – Facebook, Twitter, You Tube all allow new ideas ( I thought Volvo’s Twitter stream inside a YouTube banner ad was very interesting) and fresh engagement rules, and ways to break advertising and brand communication stereotypes.

    I wonder about the role of strategy in a social media landscape where many things are still unfamiliar. The standards, processes and even objectives are in most cases, hazy, and evolution is happening on a regular basis. In such a scenario, perhaps organisations should first take a long look at themselves and their customers – current and potential, and start by setting goals that go beyond social media.

    until next time, lab time

    Bonus Reads: Social Media tools popular among marketers (via Digital Inspiration)

  • Google noose?

    The A.P. will work with portals and other partners who legally license our content and will seek legal and legislative remedies against those who don’t. We can no longer stand by and watch others walk off with our work under misguided legal theories.”

    That’s what Associated Press Chairman William Dean Singleton said, in what is obviously a salvo against news aggregating services like Google. The ‘misguided legal theories’ here refer to the ‘fair use’  legal doctrine that news aggregators and search services have been using to use snippets of articles. AP’s concern is that many of these services have been making revenues out of packaging these stories. Also, while AP does have deals with Google and several other engines for some of their content, apparently search throws up material not covered by these agreements.

    Interesting to note that AP had sued MoreOver (Verisign) for snippeting and linking to its news, and Google had signed a deal with AP 2 weeks prior to that. That case was settled, though I have not yet been able to get details. AP now has plans to launch own news site – a “new search pages that point users to the latest and most authoritative sources of breaking news”.  It suggests a system to track content – one that would create, in effect, “fingerprints” of content that could track usage and links. Journalism Online is another entity that wants to help newspapers and magazines charge for their content online.You can read the interview with Steven Brill, who has started it with two others, here.

    Google’s contention is that they’re directing a lot of traffic to the news sites, and any newspaper that doesn’t want to be part of Google News can do just that. Scott Karp says at Publishing 2.0, Google has played to its strength and wrested control of the distribution of news. Interesting comments too. Google allowed users to find content that they wanted, and became the start page when people wanted to find something on the web. That’s something media companies still aren’t doing right, and in between, Google managed to push in the ads, and make a few dollars. Erick Schonfeld, at TechCrunch has an interesting take on this – he points out that (in the US) Google News is behind Yahoo News as well as the sites of the NYT, and Google is actually exposing news, and helping other sites make money too. He argues that while Google does play a part in getting traffic to sites, ultimately it is the content that gets readers and sets the price. Jackie Hai explains how the “The AP syndication model works in an economy of information scarcity, whereas the web represents an economy of abundance.” I recently read about Google Web Elements, which allows Google products to be added to any website. That includes Google News and takes distribution to a whole new level.

    Though the AP issue is mostly an American one, there are similar sentiments being echoed in Europe too. According to NYT, Belgian Danish and British newspapers want Google to reach agreements with them before using their content. Though each country will have its own dynamics as far as news distribution and maturity of media platform goes, these cases are sure to set precedents.

    The media landscape is changing. Its not just that old media is changing rules to figure out revenue models. Its about an airline becoming a content ‘publisher‘, individuals becoming advertising mediums, services like TwitterGrep popping up to utilise the instancy of Twitter… and so on. As Jackie Hai mentioned in his article, the participatory web has blurred the lines between content producer, distributor and consumer. We play all three at different times.

    The measures that newspapers have or are making to earn revenues on the web seem to be insufficient. That includes online advertising, micro payments etc. I increasingly feel that a repair might not be enough. Perhaps a complete overhaul is the ask. The fingerprinting does spark a thought about the role of individual journalists, and the importance they should have in the new system. The web is increasingly becoming a relationship based medium where personal equity and trust are currencies. Perhaps the corporate newspaper needs to be replaced with a more human and humane network, perhaps it should create a core competency on the web in specific news sections – these could be geography based, maybe there is an opportunity for an aggregator in the challenges of hyperlocal news.  Perhaps it can even be category or genre based. Traditional concepts, but built with a social web perspective. Perhaps they should build a legion of citizen reporters who are paid according to the quality of their contributions . After all there is always a need for quality driven and trustworthy news and analysis. The need remains, but the readers’ wants of delivery platform, timing etc have changed.

    The recent (and sometimes) drastic measures taken by Indian newspapers shows that its not as impervious as it was considered. That gives more reason to prepare for a changing landscape. To start figuring out consumption patterns ,  multimedia possibilities, cost implications, distribution dynamics and revenue streams on digital platforms. Maybe they’re all waiting for PTI to fight Google, or is it Yahoo Buzz 😐

    until next time, a new sprint

  • A plus cases on Twitter

    Last week, @aplusk beat @CNNbrk in the race for one million followers. In plain English, Ashton Kutcher, an actor, challenged CNN on Larry King Live – who would get to a million followers first – to prove a point that an individual could have a reach equal to a large network on Twitter. Twitter joined in the fun, because unlike the norm, users couldn’t unfollow either of the parties, of course smart tweeps found a way out anyway.  Point taken, AsKu, though the irony was that until a  week back, the CNN account was not run by them, though for sometime they’ve been managing the account through the person who created it.

    For more than two years, the CNNBrk account (for breaking news) had been created, maintained and run by a 25-year-old British Web developer who just wanted a way to beam short news alerts to his cellphone.

    And that’s the beauty of this user driven service. Something that I fear might change with the ‘mainstream’ spotlight and the rush of real celebrities. Its only a matter of time before a new celebrity thinks of a new stunt. But it is to be noted that  Kutcher is donating 10000 mosquito nets worth $100000 to a charity. In fact, one week before that, I’d read about Hugh Jackman’s donating AUS $100,000 to charity via Twitter, the charity to be selected via Twitter pitches.

    Now, I’ve always maintained that users should figure their own comfort levels and use the service accordingly. But I also feel that a sudden influx of people with no intent other than rooting for a celebrity might be the kind of inorganic growth that will work against the service and its more regular users. This could range from a disruption of the service due to the load to a change in the ‘culture’ of the service.

    Kutcher’s point was about getting a reach higher than a media giant. I’ve always had a problem with numbers – followers, updates etc as a means of measurement on Twitter. I find it a paradox for a place which became popular because of a qualitative measure – conversations. CNN will deliver breaking news regularly, and (as someone suggested on Twitter) Kutcher followers will just have to wait for those occasional Demi photos. Reach has been an index to sell traditional media space, is that the benchmark Twitter wants to take forward?

    There was a very interesting post on Tech Crunch on whether Twitter should remove its follower count. Like I tweeted, I’d agree. Once upon a time, it was a medium to share an instant – something you thought/read/saw/felt to make others smile/think/share their own expressions. With growth came the ‘how a tweet might cost you a job’ and ‘5 ways to increase sales with Twitter’ theses, and the instant was lost. Perhaps you will ignore that as a subjective grumble. But think of the times you see the ‘need 5 more followers to get 500. please RT’ and what you feel then. What happens when that’s the norm and the service changes to accommodate and encourage that culture because that’s what helps them make money. [Note: I’d love for Twitter to make money, but I’m sure they’ll find better ways]

    While on celebrities and Twitter, closer home Gul Panag has been quite active on Twitter the last few days. The Twitterverse has had its share of imposters and has been trying to ensure there’s no ‘identity crisis’ this time, so much that poor GulP might have one soon. This tweet of hers caught my attention. (Oh, okay the dimples too!!)

    gulp1

    Spicy Jet news. Poor them. It reminded me of a post I’d written sometime back on ‘Social Ambassadors‘ – what would happen when the transparency of social media met celebrity bloggers? In this case, micro bloggers. In fact, micro blogging is even more ‘dangerous’ since the interaction is real time, and not like a PR draft that can be posted on ths site, and replies given in a few hours or even days. This becomes all the more important if celebrities use social media as a personal broadcast medium to their fans. Of course, brands can use the media to their benefit too – for example, create conversations between celebrities (a Twitter conversation between Aamir and Gul basis their Tata Sky TVC would be fun), use celebrities to communicate beyond the obvious advertisement etc.

    The challenge is for celebrities too. Perhaps it will also make celebrities more responsible when making endorsement choices. (It would be fun to ask SRK/Aamir why they switched soft drink brands in between.) Also, can celebrities retain their ‘interestingness’ when they are in touch with the fans all the time, unlike a traditional system when news about them was less abundant?

    On an aside, when celebrities move to direct-to-crowd platforms, what happens to the go-between media for whom they were the news makers, and we were the news consumers? And what happens to the micro celebrities on Twitter? 🙂

    until next time, when twitter streams meet mainstream