Category: Digital

  • Tweets w00t

    I’ve never plugged plugins before, but in this case, I’ll gladly make an exception, because its so damn useful. Quite a while back, after installing the friendfeed plugin, I remember asking on Friendfeed whether there was a WordPress Plugin that could pull in any sharing of a blog post. Think of the trackbacks we have for blogs, and then imagine if we had a similar mechanism for Twitter, Google Reader, Delicious or any of the sites we share stuff on.

    Mashable wrote sometime back about the concept of Tweetbacks, and thanks to the magical way in which web 2.0 operates, the bridge from fantasy to reality was quickly created, and the WP Plugin creation was called yes, Tweetbacks. Dan Zarrella, you’ve heard this before, you’re awesome. 🙂

    I’d recommend it strongly to all those bloggers who are familiar with Twitter (actually even those who aren’t) and would like to see who’s sharing your post there. Its an absolutely hassle free plugin- easy to install and adds another dimension to connecting with people and conversations. And now, Dan has built another plugin called Tweetsuite, which adds a load of functionalities. Testing it out now. Suggest you do too.

    until next time, hoping for a Reader and delicious plugin 🙂

  • News out of the paper

    Its not exactly breaking news that newspapers are almost in desperation mode now (no, don’t throw ink at me, this is in the US market context) to make sense of the wild wild web, as the very public who used to pay for the print editions now want it on the web, and more importantly for free. An issue that newspapers are still grappling with. So, with fears of revenue models collapsing, RSS feeds, PDF editions, user generated content, podcasts etc are now being force fed into print journalism regular usage. (How American Newspapers Used the Internet in 2008).

    The point to note is that the internet with advertising as a revenue model is not going to be the salvation, web entities which rely on that are also going to be in trouble. There are some experiments happening in the news space online as well – News Mixer is a great example, it aggregates content and has integrated Facebook Connect for users to comment on stories. The integration eliminates anonymous handles and also means that it can highlight the views of your friends so that you can know what their take on a story is. (via RWW) A member of Yahoo’s BOSS team has found a great way to use Twitter’s search function and relevance (different tweets to the same story) for fresh news and come up Tweet News. Ice Rocket’s Big Buzz pulls different live sources (Twitter, Flickr, You Tube etc) on to a single page. (via Steve Rubel) In fact, I see the last one as a sort of threat for Google News – real time news, a scenario which can be extended into the larger context of Google Search soon, because I don’t think Google has cracked real time yet (from what I see around).

    Meanwhile, hyper local entities are being created to fill the gaps being created by local newspapers shutting down. But while the monopolistic doyens are struggling, there is a paradox happening, new media empires might be getting created as web entities are making forays into print- The Printed Blog, is launching a twice-daily free print newspaper in cities across the US aggregating localized blog posts. (via Wired)

    In fact, though the state of the Indian print media is not the same as in the US, the same phenomenon (web to print) is happening here too – Mutiny, which started in 2006, and wants to be India’s Huffington Post, launched its print edition a few months back. Burrp, which started with restaurant reviews, and later expanded into lifestyle events, and TV listings, apparently have a few print plans of their own.

    So there must be potential  in the 2 cents of journalism (Seth Godin’s excellent post on the death of newspapers) even as there is the danger of ‘right now’ news. Seth Godin rightly says that “The web has excelled at breaking the world into the tiniest independent parts.” The challenge for newspapers will be to find the 2 cents that they can provide and people will pay for.

    In India, low figures of net penetration mean that the US levels of ubiquitousness will take a while. But the mobile could be a bigger threat in the short and long term. Various players like SMSGupshup, MyToday, Mobme etc already offer subscription based services, though the source seems to be mainstream media sources. Newspapers have long relied on distribution might to thwart specific competition. But with a digital platform, that is nullified. From my consumption needs, the only thing I cant seem to find online are the hyperlocal news (that also includes local retail deals and discounts – eg. Springfield had a 60% off sale in bangalore last week, try searching for  it online). So far, in India, all the tiny independent parts that Godin has spoken of, haven’t been brought online. In that sense, the net’s utlity is incomplete in an Indian context. The real threat will start when that happens. With their huge network of reporters/other sources, is there a digital revenue model for newspapers in the real-time and/or hyperlocal news space?

    The double whammy for newspapers is brought out due to the fact that advertising is the major revenue source for most newspapers in India. Most of the brand ads that I see in English dailies is targeting the young urban dweller. This segment is becoming increasingly net savvy, and I feel that brands will figure this out in the short term.

    Vernacular dailies might be a better off in this regard, since even if net penetration in their major markets accelerates, (read about the government’s rural internet plans here – CSCs) vernacular content is not yet at challenging levels. (the IAMAI-IMRB report on rural and state of vernacular content in India). There is an opportunity for newspapers here, especially the vernacular ones and even those which can translate English content into vernacular.

    until next time, selling news on platforms

    PS. Toy for you -HP’s Tabbloid – start your own newspaper 😉

  • Web 2.0 and transience

    As I am wont to do at infrequent intervals, I came up with one of  those  quirky connections – this one, for Tata Sky. I mentioned on Twitter that “aamir’s ghajini character could find Tata Sky Plus’ features quite useful-pause, rewind, record 😉 wonder if they’ll make a TVC with that”. In the days that followed, Asin has been extensively used in the Tata Sky campaign, so now I’m hoping thay actually make that TVC, complete with the Tata Sky helpline number tattooed on Aamir. 😉

    It led me to a tangential thought on social media. (the FB, Twitter variety, not business networking like LinkedIn) In what might amount to blasphemy, I wondered whether brands should make desperate efforts to be ‘engaging’ in social media. They need to be there definitely, but perhaps its only to know what’s being talked about them, and why. They perhaps need to be there more for reactions than actions. This also saves them the challenge of generating interesting ‘engagement ideas’ at all times.

    Why did I think all this? Because I realised that the engagement is being created by users themselves, for each other. For non web 2.0 brands, the engagement is most likely a result of something that’s been done offline. A TVC, a billboard, a radio jingle and so on. Must say, this perspective on how to use twitter for Marketing and PR made me think too.

    At one point, web 1.0 used eyeballs as measurement, that’s an idea thats not going anywhere great? Web 1.o gave us many great websites and lessons, but in a few years time, we jumped into web 2.0. The attention span and shelf lives for most things are becoming smaller. Is web 2.o just a transient phase that is needed to get us to another version? The optimist in me (which is usually bullied into submission) says that when a certain version is reached, the engagement and revenue models will manifest itself in an uncomplicated manner. (now you know why it needs to be bullied). Maybe the baby steps of getting connected are meant for simple things. Maybe it is only meant to let businesses know  that a connected world can shake up existing models. Maybe there’s some growing up to do, some discovery to be made, before revenue models and engagement by brands can happen as a regular occurrence.

    Or perhaps I’m going out of whack and being impatient. Center Networks has a good comparison of Web 1.0/ 2.0 revenue models and profitability. As this good post sums up in a different context

    New business models for media require entirely new exchanges of value — it’s not about finding new ways to balance the old equation.

    Perhaps the more meaningful discussions lie in figuring out how the basic pillars of web 2.o – connecting, sharing, collaborating-  can be used to build brands. The ‘How to use Twitter/Facebook for Marketing/PR’ are based on tools, and that would mean that we’ve been confusing tactics for strategy.

    until next time, discover 🙂

    PS: A few things that I thought were good to share

    Discovery Is The New Cocaine – Going Beyond Engagement

    View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: discovery ux)

    Social Media PR vs Social Media Marketing, and in context,a tool – CoTweet, that’d be a help to teams handling a brand on Twitter.

  • A brand is a …….. the search is on

    A few days back, Manish had an extremely interesting post titled ‘Image vs Algorithm’. It questions the relevance of ‘brand image’ in a scenario where people just ‘do a google’ when they need information about a product or brand.Yes, I know that you don’t google when you want to buy a razor or a soap, such brands would still need some good old marketing communication and POP to help swing the purchase decision in their favor (though adverse information, and the net’s ability to disperse this information would still affect them), but how about the considered purchases, where Google does its share of the work in giving information to consumers? More importantly, what does this mean for all those brands that complete their entire revenue model online?

    Wikipedia defines brand as a “a collection of symbols, experiences and associations connected with a product, a service, a person or any other artefact or entity.” (for some interesting branding quotes, drop in here, courtesy @shefaly). Earlier there was a large degree of control that the brand had on all three parameters. The internet, however, made the experiences of consumers shareable, and that has now started shaping associations – forcing official brand custodians out of the control seat, because a search for the brand throws up not just their official communication, but blogs, microblogs, images, videos, and what consumers have to say about them and competitors.

    Most of the brand lessons and theories we have evolved are from an age when communication from the brand and consumers’ individual experiences were the only parameters of judging a brand – which perhaps meant that brands like Coke took decades to become a super brand. With the advent of the net, and social media, the brand’s consumers are taking to each other. I’d touched upon this topic a while back, and mentioned the paradigm shift presented by Saatchi’s Lovemarks concept-  from “You->Your Brand->Consumer” to “You->Consumer->Their Brand”, which perhaps explains the success of internet brands like Google, Yahoo, Facebook etc. These brands have had evangelists almost right from the time they started, and the best type- consumer evangelists.

    In many ways, the 4 P’s of marketing are still relevant – the net allows very little room for ‘fluff’ around brands. WYSIWYG is a better way to be for brands, which means the product has to be fundamentally strong, and solve a problem/satisfy a need. Price comparisons are a click away, so a brand’s selling price has to be in sync with the value being offered to the consumer. The ‘place’ can be viewed from a digital perspective too – making sure the information about the brand is available easily to access and share, and if a sale can be made online, ensure that it taps into all possible sales avenues online. While the original intended meaning of ‘promotion’ still holds, perhaps its also time to ‘promote’ the evangelist consumers of the brand, helping them to share their experiences, and giving them the recognition they’d appreciate. And i’ll be a bit presumptuous, and add a lil P of my own – Pertinence (which is quite connected to ‘Place’) , “Relevance by virtue of being applicable to the matter at hand”, because we are already quite into the ‘real time web’, and heading towards the semantic web rapidly. It also means that marketers would do well to acknowledge the fluid nature that this gives their brands – in terms of what a search result (and we’re  getting social on search too) would throw up, as well as the changes that would entail in the associations formed in the consumer’s mind.

    until next time,  here’s to a piece of the consumer’s mind, and for peace of the marketer’s mind 🙂

    PS. Building a brand vs building a business. A good read.

  • Authority doesn’t figure

    The measurement of social media, or rather the lack of it, is a topic that promises to be carried over to 2009 too. I shared this article last week on Twitter, because i felt it voiced most of what I felt on ‘authority’ in social media. Coincidentally, I was also checking out Twitority – an ‘authority based Twitter search’ engine, at the same time. The first article lead me to Chris Baskind’s post on the same topic. Though I’m sorely tempted, I’m going to refrain from using block quotes from that post, because its an excellent read and you should make the effort of clicking the link and reading it all yourself. 🙂

    The new search engine has used the number of followers as a measure to decide authority. TechCrunch promptly suggested the number of RTs (ReTweet) as a better indicator. But while it does place more importance to the tweet than the tweeter, I agree that the number of RTs is just a function of the number of followers. IMHO, we’re barking up the wrong tree – popularity instead of authority. Are they connected? Yes. Are they the same? No.

    If they were the same, Twitter users should still be cheering newspapers and television and all those thingies which we call mass/traditional/heritage media, because they obviously have more ‘followers’ than the aggregate of all Twitter users. But yes, you noticed that Twitter did add a bit of value during the Mumbai events (most recently). So there’s something that’s different about this social mechanism. There’s a uniquely customised experience that we build for ourselves on social media over a period of time. Like Chris Baskind says so wonderfully in his closing  “the ad hoc nature of social media atomizes traditional concepts of authority. We may establish trusted networks, but it’s the relevance of information which really matters.”

    Shefaly threw a good pointer when she replied to my article share with a link to a post of her own. Among other things, she discusses the ‘quality of interactions’, and a four point selection criterion that she uses to ‘follow’ people, but the most important part of the article to me, was the reference to the strategic intent behind what we do on social media. (I’d argue with her on the finer points she raises on this, primarily because of the geography independence that separates virtuality from reality, but I’d completely agree that intent should drive everything else)

    A personalised, trusted network that gives me contextually relevant info (among other things) is what I get out of social media, and to me, ‘authority’ somehow just doesnt capture the way I feel about this very human network. And its not just the term. It makes me feel that maybe we are guilty of taking the term ‘follower’ a tad too literally. In trying to be ‘thought leaders’ and such, the human ego is perhaps trying to thrust upon social media a set of metrics which don’t belong. Authority reminds me of circulation, readership, listenership, viewership, and so on. Maybe its just me, but haven’t we walked that path before? Lets try a different path please.

    until next time, desperate measures?

    PS. Check ‘Mumbai’ on Twitority and you might get a clue on where ‘authority search’ will lead us

    PPS. 2009 (for now) will see this blog with an altered content strategy. The 3 posts per week are being cut down to 2 – one each on Monday and Thursday, but I shall try to post a few interesting links in addition to this. Please don’t sulk 🙂