Category: Digital

  • 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?

  • 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 🙂

  • 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 😉

  • Figuring Social Media?

    Recently, Jeremiah Owyang wrote about Intel’s community efforts, which also throws light on the join vs create debate that has intrigued me too, for quite sometime. Intel’s marketing manager is of the view that companies should join active communities, rather than trying to create them at corporate websites. The two examples used for Intel’s efforts are those it did at Digg and Slashdot. There’s also the middle path, start the conversation on social networks and then take them outside to you own site, but I’m not a big fan of that either.

    I have a feeling that the reluctance for brands to join (as opposed to create) is because of the lack of control it entails. On their own website, it’d be easy. Besides, a neutral venue (like a social network) means that a brand cannot restrict its conversations to spokespersons it chooses, like British Airways and Virgin Atlantic found out to their dismay. There’s probably another reason why companies prefer their own websites – with company websites, it’d be easy to define and track ROI, based on the clicks, time spend etc, but how can ROI on activities on other sites be defined and calculated? Of course, there are ways to track online reputation, like Trackur, for example, but I wonder what metrics should be applied to figure out the effectiveness of an activity. After all, its no longer just a linear (banner – click, though that seems to be working well on social networks too) set of activities that happen on social networks now. But again, ROI entails that its an investment. From some of the activities I see on social media, I doubt whether many brands see it that way. Also, I agree with what’s discussed in this post – that ” The problem with trying to determine ROI for social media is you are trying to put numeric quantities around human interactions and conversations, which are not quantifiable”. While the ‘how’ is indeed a debate, we also need to be clear about what we measure. Here’s a great post by Dina on the subject on ROI, in which she also explores the things that should be measured.

    I think its too early for brands to take examples of others’ activities and use them as a template for their own activities. After all, according to this article, a majority of marketing guys are still learning the media,  and apparently, close to 90% of them who are involved in programs are not measuring the ROI of theor efforts. Or maybe ‘too early’ is a wrong phrase, with the dynamic nature of social media, perhaps the time for fixed templates is over. Perhaps, there are only broad indications and inferences that can be derived, but brands would have to evolve their own set of activities, and their own methods of defining and tracking ‘ROI’ on social media, basis their strategic intent. (Nike seems to have done a smart job in that respect) ‘ROI’, because, I can’t think of any other term that would mean ‘results for the efforts made’. In this context, I’d also recommend this post very highly – the 5 critical responsibilities of a social media expert.

    But perhaps, as this article notes, it needs to start way earlier, like companies allowing employees, access to YouTube, facebook etc in office, and understanding that the media consumption habits that digital natives have created are also creating changes in business environments and communication methodologies. Maybe that’s a good place to start a reworking of business strategy.

    until next time, the medium is the message

    PS. A great read on how remarkable companies are creating consumer evangelists (download pdf) (via Himanshu’s blog)

  • Tata Sky – life after plus

    I did wonder what was cooking when Aamir first appeared in the Tata Sky Plus teasers. But in the end, i felt that with this different service (a personal video revorder, that allows you to pause, record and rewind Live TV), and two brand ambassadors, they could’ve really made a great, extended storyline out of the entire thing. Roughly put, approach the ‘centre’ from both Aamir and Gul’s perspectives, and then show them together to give an ‘Ah’ moment to the viewer. I wonder whether the recent Airtel experience scared them away from using the teaser concept for too long, but with two celebrities, they really needn’t have worried.

    httpv://in.youtube.com/watch?v=g1nTg6bJRPE

    The TVC storyline was quite decent, and brought out the concept well, though we did have an interesting discussion on whether Gul Panag ended up looking like Freddie Mercury (with the moustache) in ‘ I want to break free’. The ‘landing page’ of existing Tata Sky users also has an interesting conversation between Gul and her friends, which again brings out the features of the service quite well.

    Considering that Dish TV now has a 53% market share in the DTH market (via Trak.in) the upgradation strategy is a smart move. The kind of audience that would go in for a DTH service should easily consider upgradation, only, the future of TiVo ( the pioneer of a comparable service in the US market, the biggest difference being ability to forward Live TV – yes, skip ads!! ) is far from rosy, if we go by this report from Wired. Apparently only 3.6 million of the nation’s 36.2 million DVR users go for TiVo, after 11 years of existence. Also, their revenue model is shaky, with advertisers not too interested in the kind of units it offers. But TiVo’s been trying hard, and have ties with Amazon and Netflix, to allow TV users to stream movies and TV shows. Netflix uses postal delivery, online streaming, a set top movie player and HD streaming as methods of didtribution.

    In the light of this tie up, it was interesting to see a local tie up made between NDTV Lumiere and BigFlix, by which some titles from NDTV Lumiere’s extensive acquisition list will be available on the bigflix site on download to rent/own options. It’s an addition to BigFlix’s existing portfolio. With BigTV, this is like TiVo having the resources of NetFlix inhouse. Thats BIG. Comparing the net penetration and DTH penetration in India, perhaps BigFlix would expand faster on the DTH tie up route, than a net downloads route.

    But yes, if the internet penetration in India shoots up drastically, we can see a different kind of tie ups happening, like the one between MSN and Endemol, for an online interactive show. I also read about a service called Clearleap (via Startup Meme), which delivers videos from numerous sources to the television, thereby expanding consumer options.

    With Tata Sky Plus being an upgrade from regular DTH, it will be interesting to see how fast Big counters, and whether it adds a tie up with BigFlix. Tata Sky meanwhile, perhaps needs to scout quickly to figure out a good partner to strengthen its offering.

    until next time, watch it