Category: Social Media

  • Serendipity in the age of data explosions

    One of the reads I look forward to every week is Neil Perkin’s curated list of posts from across the web. And unfailingly, I get at least a couple of articles that offer me food for thought, and in general, giving me much better fare than the two kinds of automated services I am familiar with – one based on my interests, and the other based on my social connections’ shares.

    A fortnight back, two related articles caught my attention – the automation of online advertising and the client side data revolution, both of which point to how user data is going to be harnessed by increasingly efficient tools built by technology companies. Data that goes beyond the cliched demographic criteria and moves towards personalised marketing that encompasses evolving factors like real-time and social.

    This actually made me think of the joys of serendipitous discovery-the kind that happens when I go book shopping (in a real bookstore) and find a book that I had never heard of but am likely to cherish-and its future in a world of ubiquitous and easily manageable data.

    And guess what I found in Neil Perkin’s list last week – this amazing post at HBR about AmEx’s Nextpedition – a travel service that doesn’t have an itinerary and instead is full of surprises. Towards the end of the article is a clue on how the future could create a well crafted mix of the two – to deliver randomness we will have to be on better terms with randomness. Powered by massive amounts of data, an experience that will be exactly the right measure of customised randomness.

    until next time, a cliched appendage – serendipity 2.0. 🙂

  • Clear Blue Oceans

    The last week, I encountered a few ‘brand response scenarios’ – two of them in which I was directly involved, and one where I was just an onlooker. Since this is an area where I also spend considerable time, as part of my job, I thought I’d share some perspectives too.

    The first one involved a hotel booking. After reading excellent reviews on TripAdvisor and skimming through a well made website, I decided to send them a mail. For 2 days I received no response. I noticed that they were on twitter, and send them an @ message. No response from there too, though they continued to update with promos and news shares. In the meanwhile, I also sent a mail to an alternative id given on the site. After more than a week, I got a response, by which time, I had already booked another place, which responded in less than 24 hours. A deal of about Rs.25000.

    We bought a new television from a retail chain after seeing an offer in the newspaper. As the regular story goes, they delayed (from their committed time) by more than 48 hours and (uncharacteristically and quite reluctantly) I made a huge scene at their outlet. In the meanwhile, I also posted on their FB wall (as a response to the image of the ad which had lured me) and sent them an @message on Twitter. The FB response took more than 48 hours and asked me to send a mail to a certain id. The product had been delivered by then, and I told them that. The next day, a tweet response followed, asking me what the problem was. 😐 No deal lost, but no love lost either.

    In ‘Who Cares?‘, Godin talks about exactly these kind of scenarios, and from there I quote, “Caring, it turns out, is a competitive advantage, and one that takes effort, not money.” The third scenario is an excellent example of this at work.

    Much has been written about it already, so you can read the posts, linked to below, to understand what the Cleartrip Hurry Algorithm ‘controversy’ was all about. This isn’t the first time I have regarded Cleartrip’s approach with admiration, and for good reason. This time, not only did they thank @jackerhack who pointed them to a blog post that trashed the new initiative, they also responded to that post and wrote a post of their own clarifying what they were trying to do, not just on the post itself, but also in the comments section where many people raised questions. Cleartrip has set such high benchmarks in this regard that all of the above are now standard fare expected from them, and I probably wouldn’t have written a post. 🙂 But once again, they went further. A week after this incident, a new post announced a redesigned feature that not only solved the problem the users had with it, but made it even better with more information. The result? An update on the very post that had complained in the first place. #win

    Cleartrip was listening, but then so are a lot of other companies. The difference here is caring enough to respond (externally) and creating an organisational will (internally) that works on a user problem and solves it. Not one time, but as a process.

    until next time, know response…

  • Social + e-commerce ≠ Social Commerce

    The last 2 editions of Kuliza’s Social Technology quarterly impressed me with the breadth of perspectives as well as the understanding of the subject that the authors displayed. So when I was asked if I could contribute to the third edition, it was a pleasure.. and a challenge. The result is on Page 25, but if you are interested in social platforms, I’d advise you to sink into your chair and start from Page 1 🙂

    Social technology quarterly Vol 1 issue 3 

    View more documents from Kuliza Technologies

    until next time, get social?

  • Consistency and cohesion

    Google’s Search Plus your World once again made me think about consistency, (in terms of a brand’s voice) a subject that finds frequent mentions here.

    Consistency in branding has been a golden rule for a long time. But by now, brands would be used to seeing their messages layered with the contexts and perspectives added by users on social networks. Considering the transient nature of the feed and search capabilities, and despite their inherently ‘viral nature, brands could still console themselves a bit about reach.

    After all, despite the march of the social networks, Google was (and is) still easily dominant when it comes to specific search, and brands could still play a few SEO/M games. But now, Google is accelerating its social fusion into search; the layering will happen here too, and the incumbent search gaming tools would start getting blunted.

    In this context, I wondered if brands should probably move from consistency to cohesion. Consistency was a good tool in a mass media era when one way distribution and a linear flow of information ruled. In this era of collaborative media, cohesion factors in context  – time/place/person etc to the brand’s message. It lends flexibility to the brand’s voice, qualifies it, and helps empower internal and external customers. So, rather than getting an OCD over exact phrases, colours etc, the brand custodians could work on how best to package the brand’s core DNA in different settings. Then, even if consumers don’t share as-is, at least the brand’s perspective would be context relevant. Your thoughts?

    until next time, consistently cohesive

    PS: My guest post on afaqs last year lists some advantages of this approach under “What happened after the TVC ended?”

  • Good cop, bad cop

    Identity in era of social media proliferation was something I brought up in last week’s post. Since then, my office has shifted, and I have to travel a little more to get to the new place. Instead of going below the elevated highway, I take a shorter route that gives me elevated views every 5 minutes thanks to ‘amateur’ humps. But the traffic is better. Traffic and violations – that’s the connection.

    A few months back, a video on the Facebook page of the Bangalore Traffic Police made headlines. The cops asked for help in finding the errant car driver. (I’m not sure if they did nab him) Since then, I’ve seen increased participation on the page, with users adding photos of traffic violations, ad campaigns on safety and questions being answered by the cops themselves, though that’s occasional. In many cases, numbers of vehicles are clearly visible and I’ve seen one in which the cops have noted a violation by a fellow officer, uploaded by a user. This, and the brouhaha over the London cops naming and shaming those involved in the UK riots last year made me think about individual identities beyond virtual social and in to real social.

    Though we are still at a stage where even a person’s social, let alone all online activities cannot be comprehensively tracked and measured, technology on that front is rapidly catching up. In the near future, real world tracking technologies will probably catch up too. We’re already seeing signs of the worlds colliding. It is then possible that the social identity of a person would include his real-life actions too and a ‘Klout’ would probably have a holistic ranking of an individual, one that includes traffic violations and philanthropy and so on. 🙂

    This is probably one area where brands will then have a head start, because naming and shaming them is something many of us already do via social platforms. I wonder if we will be more lenient towards them after we get a dose of identity warfare.

    until next time, coping with cops