• She’s just not that into you….

    The moment he saw his ex-wife at the party, he cringed. A confrontation between ex-wife and current girlfriend could never end well. But even he hadn’t imagined the scale of disaster. The moment his girlfriend saw the other woman, she told him, “Honey, she’s so beautiful that I don’t think I can think straight anymore”

    until next time, love is blind, among other things 🙂

  • For a few dollars more…

    This won’t be the first time I’ve written about Twitter’s revenue model, and I suspect it won’t be the last. In fact, the last time I wrote about it, it was in the context of the deal that almost happened between Facebook and Twitter. Its been a couple of months, so I thought its a good time to check what both have been upto on the subject of revenues.

    There was a scare recently on how Facebook is going to make money by selling users’ data, but that turned out just to be misinterpreted statements, based on a demo that they did at Davos to show real time crowd insights, and had nothing to do with the Engagement Advertising model. Facebook has been growing very fast, (stats) and though this is claimed to be a demo, real time insights (permission based) from the exact target audience could indeed add a lot of value to brands, and any other entity that could be interested in data. Market research firms should actually be working with Facebook and starting to develop pools specific to their client’s audiences. With Facebook implementing the Friendfeed style ‘Like’ feature, the tools are becoming as simple as possible.

    Meanwhile, I also wonder about the data that could come from the sites that have been tied through Facebook Connect, especially since there are some big names in their respective fields. This could reveal a lot more about the individual’s interests – basis his interaction with the other sites, and that data would be easier to handle since in many cases the site’s content would dictate the context, unlike the generic data that could be picked up on Facebook itself. This would be an interesting space to watch, and that’s an understatement.

    A simple yet possibly history making story of how Twitter was made. And in another simple yet profound statement, Seth Godin described it as a protocol. And yet another good one which describes it as a social experiment. Which then raises the question of how a revenue model can be made for this protocol or experiment. As someone once said, “Twitter is what you make it to be”. There are pains too. Twitter’s humble origins and the scale envisioned may not have made a vision mandatory then, and there is also talk that Twitter could ‘go for years’ without earning, but to survive in the long term, Twitter does need a vision, one that’d then give some direction for its revenue model.

    There have been many entities trying to use the stream for transmitting ads, adCause and TwitterHawk, being the latest, but honestly, it does seem like a force fit. But I’ll admit that the location+context based approach of TwitterHawk does seem very interesting. In fact, there have been many apps built around Twitter, some of which require the user to give the Twitter password to use the service, and there have been security problems thanks to that too. Hopefully that’ll get sorted out once OAuth is implemented, perhaps we’ll see a new generation of mashups too, leading Twitter towards a revenue model. Here are some very interesting thoughts on Twitter, including searching conversations based on category, and a marketplace around conversations and real products. Its interesting to note that brands have already begun experimenting with Twitter, and with tangible expectations, as the recent Dell promo of exclusive deals shows.  More likely to follow that model with the launch of TwtQpon. In this context, check out CheapTweet too. Meanwhile, here’s a good set of thoughts for Twitter revenue.

    Twitter Contest-Denuology Entry94 Update

     

    With enterprise versions (Yammer)and even college versions (Wiggio), Twitter needs to hurry, if it does not want to lose out segments altogether. This story about Twitter thinking about charging brands is turning out to be true. I can imagine those social media evangelists within organisations groaning already!! But all the best, and we await the Business Product Manager. 🙂

    While Twitter scores on the real time aspect (my opinion since I use both) Facebook offers a lot more easily available data on an individual’s demographics, interests etc. The other parameter is that while Facebook is being adopted by the masses easily, Twitter does require a bit of getting used to. Facebook might have to sweat a bit to crack real time, and Twitter would have to do many things – consider scaling up groups to other regions, have better ways of segregating conversations and data mining.  But in the end, it all does seem to boil down to using real time information of potential/existing consumers, with precise demographics and interests based targeting.

    We keep saying that social media and its tools are all about the human touch, and the personalisation. And brands utilising these platforms should understand that. I wonder if the same applies to revenue models too, and whether this extreme customisation will mean that both these networks will find it difficult to conceptualise and then implement, revenue templates, that will fit all.

    until next time, money makes the social world go around 😐

  • Headcount

    A whole multitude of them were swept away in the deluge. Others calmly stayed rooted, with the serene acceptance of a ‘Here today, gone tomorrow’ philosophy. They didn’t seem bothered, he thought. But he couldn’t afford the complacency. After all, with the hair being lost every time he bathed, he was one who’d become bald!!

    until next time, a hairy tale ending please?

  • Brands & Associations..

    When we met sometime back, Nikhil asked whether I’d noticed the smudging of the Coke logo in a scene from Slumdog Millionaire. I hadn’t, and we weren’t sure if there was something to it. A few days back, I saw this article in Campaign India, which spoke about Mercedes and Coke rejecting an association with the movie, and demanding that their ‘association’ with the movie be smudged/deleted – Mercedes, because a gangster is driving it (passenger – Mahesh Manjrekar, during the cricket game-police chase scene) and Coke, because it is offered in the slum (as a ‘carrot’, before they are taken to the beggar camp). The article ends with

    While the average brand manager would have been delighted with the seeming ‘free’ publicity, executives at both Benz and Coke took a deep breath to consider the dangers to the brands. There would certainly have been some short-term gain, but was that gain worth it in the context of possible long-term damage?

    Possible long term damage?! I wonder if Mercedes-Benz has this set of parameters, which a potential customer has to fit, before he is given the keys. Maybe they do, I haven’t tried buying it, but then what about resale? What about proxy owners? On to Coke, do they restrict their distribution channel to areas which their specific target audience resides in? Does a pet bottle self destruct when it recognises economic/living conditions that it would not fit in? Does Coke actually mean that when i am thirsty, I’d not have a Coke because Jamal, a slumdog, had it in a movie??!! So, what exactly are we trying here? I am going to focus on Coke, because with their price tag, Mercedes-Benz can afford to be elitist, but Coke??!! Besides, at #22 in the Virtue’s most social brands of 2008, this is hardly the kind of mindset I’d expect from Coke.

    I understand that a brand has a certain target audience (in terms of demographics-SEC) it keeps in mind while designing communication. Good, it gives focus. But aren’t we going a bit ahead of ourselves when we think that consumers really have the time to check out all possible associations of the brand, especially these one off occurrences? (unlike say, the Indica – taxi phenomenon)

    At a time, when people can shoot what they want and load it on YouTube/Flickr and get a few thousand hits before the brand manager can say ‘Cut’, what sense does such policing make? Really, how much can you control where your brand is seen and what is being done with it? (Remember Diet Coke + Mentos)

    Almost 20 lakh views. That’s viral. Smudge that!!

    IMHO, this is exactly the kind of restrictive thinking that brands cannot afford in such times. Coke could’ve easily converted this into a ‘From Slumdog to Millionaire – Coke (Always/The Coke side of life/Open happiness)’ stance. But what do I know, I’m just a normal consumer 😐

    This very interesting adliterate article talks about empathy, and how brands try to understand consumers but never try to see the world through their eyes. By starting out with this perspective,

    We would then perhaps have a collection of real and individual stories about people who are from the group we are seeking to influence. These would be real accounts of real people’s lives.And to get those stories we would need a new approach to engaging with people directly and without fear.

    Instead, as he correctly states, we try to lump our audience into easily manageable categories, so that communication then becomes automatically an easier job. The old media scenario and the systems of distribution therein, had a way of making this perhaps the only way. But with the proliferation of niche TV channels, the web and social media, brands can now break the big lump into almost individual pieces which gives each potential consumer a unique relationship with the brand.

    Based on their context, a single brand means different things to different people, and fit into their lives differently. The sooner brands recognise this, the more meaningful their communication can become, to the consumer.

    until next time, open up 🙂

  • My corner in space.. and time…

    …and it was another Sunday when i lazed around, watched some TV, saw a movie on DVD, blogged, micro blogged, and read. In this case, i finished reading ‘Space’ by James Michener. In case you aren’t familiar with his works, he writes huge sagas, and in this case, he uses human characters and their lives to bring out a tangibility to what was in my mind an abstract – Space. (used in the context of the cosmos)

    I really didn’t do anything world changing, and as most weekends go, this could be classified as a wasted weekend. Of course Calvin would object. To use one of my fave quotes “Weekends don’t count unless you spend them doing something completely pointless” or that wonderful “A weekend wasted is not a wasted weekend”. Anyway, it led me extrapolate that to the life being lived, especially because these days, i’m coming across a lot of literature built around setting goals, giving a meaning to life, and so on.

    I think we all fight our battles with the universe, and most usually end up choosing comfortable corners from where we proceed to watch the stories unfold. The size of the corners is one of the things that vary with each of us, another is the extent of our activity in these corners. The rest of the world is a blur. Take the things that you are interested in, put them in this corner, and you should get the blurriness of the world I’m talking about. What makes these corners sometimes uncomfortable is our comparison with others’ corners and our perceptions of its comfort. Also our comfort needs vary over time.

    In our corners, what we do is of consequence to a limited number of people. This number is perhaps, the measure by which we end up conferring tokens of greatness on people. A few words in ‘Space’ caught my attention

    ..you and I live on a minor planet attached to a minor star, at the far edge of a minor galaxy. We live here briefly, and when we’re gone, we’re forgotten. And one day the galaxies will be gone too. The only morality that makes sense is to do something useful with the brief time we’re allotted.

    And that sums up the paradox quite well. What I do is meaningful in the finite time I live in, and is futile in the infinity that I exist in. And as i try to make sense of that paradox, I am also reminded of Floyd’s ‘Time‘. I’d admit that I am frittering my life away, if only I knew what the starting gun was for.

    until next time, keep running… 😐