Category: India

  • When the mass gets social…

    While there have been many negative reactions to the way the media handled the recent Mumbai events, I came across a few interesting ones that were a direct attack on the brands involved.

    One is a Facebook group demanding that Barkha Dutt be taken off air. At the time of writing this, I can see 1666 members in the group, and some pretty angry outbursts on the Wall. The photos are quite expressive too. The others were this post, and this, which talk about the Lead India campaign by TOI, and ask very pointed questions on where the winner is, and about collective responsibilities. Since news is a daily commodity, and has a way of affecting the audience more than say, the toothpaste used everyday, the media’s relationship with the audience is at a different level altogether, and that’s a double edged sword, as the examples above show.

    It set me thinking on the evolution of media brands, and also a service like Twitter. Mass media and social media have (among other things) one point in common – they’ve both been built on a certain amount of trust. I read a newspaper/watch a channel because I trust them to verify the content they give me, provide analysis and take outs and give me enough objective information to form a perspective. They’re filters. A service like twitter works on trust, among peers, and can be a wonderful filter, but only on very few occasions does it provide original content. Though the trust factor weighs heavily in favour of twitter, the difference in scale (of content) makes a comparison quite premature. But meanwhile, social media, by its very nature, is more or less transparent. Vested interests will come out sooner or later, the system has a way of bringing it out. Somewhere down the line, mass media has failed on this count.

    In an era where news has become a commodity, media brands have had to differentiate themselves somehow to remain relevant. One way to achieve this is through packaging, which, these days mostly amounts to sensationalism. Another way is through specific properties that people identify with. In some cases, this would be the same as packaging, and in others, it would mean creating something new – like a campaign. However efforts on both counts have perhaps resulted in the erosion of trust, and a negativity towards the excesses of coverage. And that’s where an instant journalism friendly tool like Twitter stepped in, whenever the situation was conducive. And this is not going to go away.

    So what I’m wondering is whether the first brands to feel the effects of a connected social world (in India) would be media brands, as opposed to say a toothpaste or a cola brand, or even a service like banking/telecom, simply because while other product categories can use social media as a tool,  media brands instinctively start looking at the twitter brand of reporting, as competition. I’d say that twitter has always been giving news to me, at the thin end of the long tail. This time, the information was such that  it interested the massive head of the long tail, and the aggregation was something no single channel could possibly do. The interesting part of the MSM vs Twitter journalism debate is that while all those who use Twitter can comment on MSM and its excesses, there are very few in MSM who can and do speak of the pros and cons of Twitter. 🙂

    To me, mass media has to handle itself on two levels. One, at a product level, it means that mass media have to get back to the basics -making sure that it provides the reading/viewing audience all the facts required to make an informed opinion, and then going a step further than the regular ‘SMS your views’ concept, and making sure that they take a stance that’s in alignment with the audience’s views. On a brand and communication level, they’ll have to walk the talk, roll out campaigns that don’t just pay lip service to issues that the audience cares about. Social media could help on both counts. But MSM has to do this now, when its brand equity and reach is far far more than social media. I can see some action already – Eyes and Ears, and A Billion Hands.

    until next time,  reporting vs journalism

  • Local Social Networks

    I’m guessing most of you reading this use GTalk. Recently, a new service called GTalk Profile was launched. While, so far, you could add people only via their email ids, GTalk Profile helps you find other people using your location as a common point. (via RWW) For example, Bangalore, (though claimed to be in Andhra Pradesh) has about 63 profiles.

    I wonder if this kind of a network has scope, since people are very finicky about who they add, but yes, I do agree that Twitter is an exception, and this could be broadly comparable. Also, this service allows you to create profile pages, which allow descriptions, photos etc. The fun part is that Google has its own Profiles, and even a verification process, though this is used for a completely different purpose now. But I wonder if GTalk Profile will inspire Google to officially proceed along similar lines with their Profiles. A better integration of Google Talk in Orkut, with a facility for local profile search, would provide the same result. Perhaps better results, since Orkut profiles are very detailed, and users could invite others to GTalk, and provide their Orkut profile as a ‘verification’.

    While the net has seen several local social networks popping up, the mobile seems to be an equally (if not better) platform for this purpose. This is perhaps the reason we’re seeing a lot of apps that aggregate IM services on the mobile – Xumii is one such I read about recently. There are also GPS based social networks like iPoki that are being developed.

    In India, I’ve come across mobile specific social network apps, like Qeep. I’m still a little unclear about whether Trackut is into location based social networking. Meanwhile, mobile services, as well as manufacturers, are adding/preloading social networking apps. At&T ‘s My Communities, and LG’s association with Rocketalk, in India, are examples.

    Of course, the regular social networks we’re used to like Facebook, My Space happen to be the ones with the strongest internet presence. Understandable, since there’s a familiarity factor, after all, its only the platform that changes. But they’d do well to add apps that help localise the experience a bit. I wonder, though, whether this trend will replicate itself in India, or whether the disparity between mobile and internet penetration will reflect in this too. I’m thinking about a Big Adda app being preloaded into Reliance mobiles.

    Sometime back, I read about a service called belysio, a social mapping service that uses location based technologies, which notifies you when your contact is near. Now Nokia has come out with Friend View, an experimental location and micro-blogging service. After the recent Orkut-Talk integration, I wonder if Google has plans of moving into local social networking. With the mobile versions of (originally) net based social networks, mobile based social networks, manufacturers’ preloaded apps, this should be an interesting space. What I’d really love to see though is our very dear micro blogging service, Twitter make some rapid advances in local social networking.

    until next time, and then, location based dating? 🙂

  • Hail Whale

    …and as the world watched with bated breath, Twitter said ‘no deal‘ to Facebook. The primary reasons cited were the worth of Facebook stock (which was a key component in the payment) and the fact that Twitter wanted a shot at building revenues. Now that the deal is off, Mashable has a take on who Facebook should actually be looking to acquire. Among the lot, my picks would be Imeem and Jaxtr.

    Technically, Facebook also has a status updating mechanism built into its new design, but despite its massive popularity as a social network it hasn’t come close to the popularity that Twitter has managed to gain – a whopping 343% YOY as on Sep 2008. More than a billion tweets have been tweeted so far. The fun part is that both these popular entities have been struggling for revenues. So, what makes Twitter so popular? I think the one key factor is the simplicity. Although we’ve gone beyond the ‘what are you doing’ part, whatever has to be done has to be still within 140 characters. But there’s no limit to the number of characters you can find there. 😉 One more factor is the amazing army of twitter based apps that seem to increase in leaps and bounds daily. While Facebook has apps that are (in general) what could be termed as frivolous, the majority of Twitter apps (there are exceptions)  either enhance the service or utilise the service to provide a new dimension altogether.

    I saw a couple of interesting posts on how Twitter could develop further. The first, an article on Business Week, took examples of other microblogging services, and the second, on TechCrunchIT, wtites about how Twitter can become the single post office of the variety of services that we use on the net – the aggregator + conversation model that seems to be working well for Friendfeed.

    Meanwhile, after some consideration on the deal, I think I might have liked to see my facebook updates automatically sent to twitter, and the comments on them shown on FB too. I’d have liked to see the follow function used on Facebook, so that I can have some level of filtration before being friends. In fact Twitter already does that for me already, a kind of filtration, a sort of checking the person out for shared interests, wavelength etc before adding on FB. After all, Twitter is ‘permission based stalking‘, and fast paced tweet streaming of many to many. Facebook would complement that perfectly by being there for one to one interactions.

    Twitter is a trust economy, where one person judges another’s credibility and expertise over a period of time through his tweets. And this one to one relationship then replicates itself over and over. The wisdom of crowds makes it easy for a bluff to be called. This is the basis of twitter’s community. Yesterday’s Twitterstream of Mumbai’s events made me realise a few things. Rather, it reaffirmed a couple of notions, and made me question my faith on twitterati, much to my grief. It reaffirmed that while Twitter is great for breaking news, it is extremely difficult to filter out the ‘noise’ and get ready information. It reaffirmed that traditional media, especially television channels, have a powerful tool in twitter, but they need to step out of broadcasting and develop a unique mechanism for twitterverse. Lastly it reaffirmed that inspite of the fail wails when the fail whale appears,  Twitter is loved and respected as a news source enormously. The uncomfortable part, I realised that a ‘dark side’ beckons even on twitter, tweople are people after all (duh), and are not incorruptible when it comes to using a situation (however tragic it might be) to divert some attention to themselves.

    until next time, any system that humans create is fallible ?

    PS. a round of applause for @vinu & @dina some priceless work on a dark, crazy night…and day!!

    PPS. A few interesting Twitter based services I’ve come across recently. In addition to this amazing laundry list, there’s TweetBeep, TweetScribe ( mechanisms similar to Google Alerts), Tweader (that threads Twitter conversations), TwitteRel, JustTweetIt (find users with similar interests), Twitrratr (a grading system that helps the + and – tweets on a person, topic etc, though the system is very simplistic), TwitWall (to share videos, mp3, photos etc), Splitweet (handle multiple twitter accounts and brand monitorizing) Tweeple Twak (in addition to the Qwitter and CityTweets type of data, it tells you how your followers have expanded over time and geography). In fact, as this post shows, you can pretty much link everything using Twitter. In fact, Twitter could even become your virtual personal assistant. 🙂

  • News..yes. Papers?

    Rupert Murdoch recently stated that the doomsayers predicting the end of the newspaper industry are off the mark. According to him, online readers also need news form a source that they can trust, and that’s what newspapers have always been doing. He agreed though, that newspapers would have to change from the ‘one size fits all’ approach to cater to readers’ demands. He mentioned his plans for WSJ, to offer three tiers of online content: free news, a subscriber-level service, and a third “premium service” of reader-customizable “high-end financial news and analysis.”

    The newspaper, or a very close electronic cousin, will always be around. It may not be thrown on your front doorstep the way it is today.

    On the whole, I tend to agree with him. However, I also feel that newspapers would be missing the point,  if they see this as just a change of platform. Its a mindset change, not just in terms of news delivery, but also in the way they approach business. After all, even the biggest names, like NYT , Gannett (publisher of USA Today) , are not in the pink of financial health.

    Before we get to that, a few varied ‘heritage media’ (print) trends. On one hand, we have publications like Christian Science Monitor and PC Magazine and many others switching to a primarily online only presence. On the other hand, the NYT opened up a couple of APIs, releases an AIR based news reader, the Guardian buys PaidContent, and offers full text RSS feeds, the Financial Times’ new site design resembles a blog, and some magazines are even rolling out Instant Messaging functionality. Over to India, Live Mint and Business Standard have recently launched podcasting (via WATBlog), India Today added Cosmopolitan to their existing list of digital properties and Business Standard has launched a branded Instant Messenger – BS Buddy (via Medianama). In essence, newspapers and magazines seem to be looking a bit more seriously at making the transformation from real to virtual.

    So this is a good question to ask – what’s the next step for news? To start with, they could take a good look at this list of 10 things that every Newspaper/Magazine site must do. This itself would be completely against a few things that they’d consider sacred – most notably, link sharing and responding to comments. Broadly, I’d imagine it to be a two pronged approach

    • figure out how to deliver their content on digital platforms, and that might even lead to changes in the kind of content they gather, and the way they gather it.
    • figure out a business model that can leverage the content they have – subscription/ advertising/ both.

    First the content aspect. A lot of publications have been experimenting with citizen journalism. They’d do well to check out tools like CoverItLive. Instead of randomly adding a ‘blog’ section to the website, make it work. Get enthusiastic journalists to blog. Get regular bloggers to do guest columns on specific topics of their interest. Promote them and the content they add to the site. This would help them being aggregators who also serve niche interest communities. What is equally important is to bring about a systemic approach to making journalists regard their story as just a start, and getting them to take ownership of making it a conversation. There are advantages in it for them – new story ideas as well as a better understanding of their readers. Yes, Twitter can help in the conversations too. These changes in news gathering techniques might very well change the quantity and quality of newsroom staff. This makes a great case study.

    The business aspect. I read a a very insightful article on how the entry of print publications into the digital medium will change the balance of power and wealth in the link economy. This process has already started. But before that, I think they have to see themselves as news sources, rather than just the newspaper on the web. This would influence how and where they position their ads, and would help them deliver better value to advertisers, as well as readers. While on this subject, I think online ad networks that include newspapers (with various editions and publications) along with independent blog/ blog networks that complement/add on to their content, might make sense. I remember NYT making a sort of conglomerate in association with 3 other newspapers, sometime back. There are other business models too. For example, there are community funded reporting services like Spot.us. (via RWW) Do check out this link for a very radical approach.

    Though readership of dailies (with very few exceptions) continue to drop, I don’t think newspapers are in their death throes in India. But should they wait for that? A good brand takes some time to build. There’s a reason why more people in India visit Rediff and Yahoo and even the web 18 properties than Indiatimes/ Times of India group properties. I’m hoping to see something like Instablogs join the big league soon. Brand loyalty in the real world need not translate into brand loyalty in the virtual world, especially when you’re dealing with a (by now) commodity called news. And as newspapers would know from their real experiences, once readers are used to a certain way of consuming content, it’s difficult for a competitor to sneak in. It would pay well to learn from mistakes – of those aborad who might have waited too long to transform. After all, what doesn’t kill you doesn’t necessarily have to make you stronger. And I’m not sure if newspapers would like to be part of the thin end of the long tail of news consumption, with pure play web entities occupying the head.

    until next time, save paper, save the environment 🙂

  • Bigg Loss?

    At the beginning of this season of Bigg Boss – Bigg Boss 2, I had wondered how many brands would involve themselves in the reality show. I was hoping that they’d not stick to obvious brand placement and make themselves a part of the story. I noted about eight brand plugs, though there might be more, since my viewing waned towards the end. I had some uncomfortable introspective moments when I caught myself watching four guys in a reality show. Now, its difficult to figure out whether brands got a good value out of these associations, since we don’t know the kind of financials involved. So, I’ll restrict myself to my takeouts as a viewer.

    • Airtel – Airtel gave away tees for the Delhi Half Marathon, a very clear case of ‘Here, wear’, but salvaged a bit by making a task out of it – all the inmates asked to run (combined) a distance of 21 kms without stopping. I think there was a charity link too. 175 comments generated here for the episode, I didn’t see Airtel there. Airtel also had its ringtone as the wake up tune on many days. But the one that worked best for me was the scroller that happened whenever two inmates who were sulking with each other started talking to each other. It read ‘Barriers break when people talk’. Of course, when Sambhavna and Payal were involved, it usually led to more fights, but I wouldn’t take it against Airtel.
    • Fevicryl – I remember Fevicryl only from one episode, but it left a mark. As a task, the inhabitants of the house were asked to make gifts for their fellow inmates, using some basic items and Fevicryl. The interesting part was how the inmates made stories out of the various things they made for each other. A few of them still remain with me like fevicryl decorated diyas being given to “light up someone’s world”, and a very ethnic design made to ‘remind someone about India’ always. The offering of Fevicryl was weaved into the narrative of the show, and it resulted in some good conversations. Impressive stuff, Fevicryl.
    • Dettol – sigh, ‘what can you do with dettol’ was the question asked as part of the task. How imaginative! The task fizzled out even before it started. The ‘babies’ track was boring as it is, using Dettol to wash the nappies was a force fit.
    • Vanish – Hey, someone actually came up with the idea that I’d proposed for Tide, starring Rakhi Sawant. The task was to wash clothes with vanish, and Monica mentioned the dirt removing capacity of Vanish. Actually, they should’ve got Payal and Sambhavna to do this, they washed the maximum dirty linen in public. Not bad, not great.
    • Kinetic Pleasure – With a generous sprinkling of ‘Why should boys have all the fun’, this task had the girls riding the vehicle around inside the house. Impossible to miss, but depends on how much was paid. If visibility was the agenda, consider it achieved.
    • Max New York – I’d already mentioned their good use of the ‘Shandaar Budget’ board. Since everyone ends up wanting more budget, the line ‘Karo zyaada ka iraada’ fits well there. There was also a task, based on the line, in which the inmates had to give a speech on how they were best suited to win, and what they’d do with the prize money. In fact, I noticed that later, when the inmates discussed their plans (after they got outside) they invariably mentoned the line too. One of the better usage in the show. Good work, i thought.
    • Mainland China – A few days before Diwali, they sent dinner for the housemates. It was a pity that one of the inmates (forget who) complained about the food. Ouch!!
    • Chevrolet – Chevrolet gave away an Aveo U-Va car for the ‘Bade Dilwala’ of the house. Turned out to be Rahul Mahajan. Since this was given away only in the end, but was discussed on every eviction day, they did get some good visibility. The product connect (Saif’s Chevrolet ad focuses on the interior space) was decent.

    In this context I have to also commend in.com for the exclusive online tieup. While some of the efforts were decent, there is still a reluctance on the part of brands to refrain from one way communication of their message. Tang (in the first season) was just there, the story and the communication happened organically. I would have liked to see brands weave themselves into the context and have their communication as a result as opposed to the start point.  But I wouldn’t be surprised if all the brands were happy to just ride on the popularity and viewership of Bigg Boss, and just have themselves seen in the show. So, what did you think of the product placements?

    until next time, karo zyaada ka iraada? 😉

    PS. If you can remember any more brand placements, please let me know via the comments section.