• Change 2.0

    The world, or at least most of it, has been applauding the success of Obama’s social media strategy, stating it as one of the big pillars of his victory, and rightfully so. A look at his homepage would tell you that he is very well connected to the social media scene – ‘Obama Everywhere’. ‘Organise Locally’ (my.barackobama.com) and “Welcome Hillary supporters. Get involved” are two things that impressed me much, the signs of a man who knows wants to carry people along. StartUp Meme has a post on the Facebook stats of Obama’s activities. Obama has 4 times as many supporters as McCain on Facebook.

    Meanwhile, in the case of blogs, 500 million blog posts for Obama vs 150 million for McCain. The ratio is almost 4:1 again. On MySpace, 844,927  friends for Obama compared to McCain’s 219,404. On Twitter, Obama 118,107, John McCain’s Twitter followers amount to 4942.(all data courtesy RWW, and Trendrr) On an aside, Trendrr seems to be a neat service, will use it more, and post.

    And for those who thought that this brilliant use of social media was a campaign stunt (as many brands tend to), Obama has launched Change.gov. (via Mashable), where he is attempting to have conversations, right from asking people to share their election stories and their vision for America, to outlining his own agenda. The two properties of the social web I find most appealing – transparency, and the wisdom of crowds.

    But social media, after all is a tool. Yes, a tool which can take the brand to great heights, but only if it has a strong product/brand at its foundation. And there lies the brilliance of brand Obama. Adage has a great article by Al Ries on the attributes that made Obama’s campaign a colossal hit – Simplicity (of the keyword – change), Consistency (create and maintain the positioning of ‘change’ agent, so that the word is associated with him more than others), Relevance (forcing the competitors to fight on your comfort ground). I was also very impressed with this article on afaqs by Vijay Sankaran, which gave 10 lessons that marketers could learn from Obama. Excellent lessons all, i especially liked the one about relinquishing control.

    The brand was so strong that several of my friends became fans of Obama on Facebook. On election day, I saw a photo of college kids in bangalore wearing Obama tees, and carrying Obama placards.

    As a person in India, the real benefits that Obama can get me are not much, but in addition to becoming America’s messiah, he might have also become social media’s messiah, and virtually, nothing could make me happier than a web 2.0 champion who happens to be the President of America. Yes, Obama, we can!!!!

    until next time, i hope change is a constant

    PS. For those reading this, make a start, join ‘Connected Indians‘. Hopefully we can change India too.

  • Via Milano

    ..and as part of our Italian/Continental weekend dinner festival, we thought we’d knock off Via Milano from the places in Koramangala we haven’t been to.

    Via Milano is just off the Sony World Junction, when coming from the Indiranagar side, take a left at the junction (after Lifestyle), and then take a U -turn, since this is on the same side as Sony. There’s valet parking, and i guess enough parking for 2 wheelers. Or you can be like us – park in Lifestyle, window shop a bit and then walk to Via Milano. 🙂

    Via Milano is on the 3rd floor, and would give a spectacular view of the Ring Road. I am guessing, because in spite of several pleas, they refused to give me window side seating, even the corner one occupied by Mrs and Mr.Invisible Man throughout our meal, since I believe they reserved it. The cynic in me (and the wife, no she’s not a cynic) claim its the tee+cargoes+unshaven look that puts me at the receiving end of such treatment. I don’t see why, if there’s no dress code, and I can pay.

    Anyway, the ambience is quite nice, and I liked the erotic female anatomy illustrations that they’ve hung on the walls. The staff is quite courteous. So they said no to my window seat request with a smiling face. Oh, okay, I shall try not to be mean. They did give us the welcome wet napkin and a bread basket. Thank You.

    They serve alcohol, and have an elaborate menu just for that. Though there seems to be a lot of starter options, there are only 2 soups. Since we preferred a thick one, we asked for a Crema di lenticchie, stracci di pasta integrale, olio d’ oliva all’ aroma di porcini. Haha, don’t worry they have an English explanation too, for us genteel desis. That’s green lentil soup (dont let me catch you muttering daal!!) with home made whole wheat pasta, olive oil, porcini, mushrooms. They also give you olive oil, chilli oil and one more ( i think balsam oil?) in ‘Borosil’ test tubes. Though i was reminded of my science lab experiences, i tried the chilly oil and it did add to the soup’s flavour.

    For the main course, there’s pasta, antipasta and pizza. Both of us decided to go for pasta. So I ordered a Tortelloni di pollo, funghi, crema, erba cipollina (chicken filled tortelloni, mushrooms, fresh cream and chives) and the wife ordered a Penne con sear fish, pomodoro, capperi, olive, melanzane, semi di finocchio alla siciliana (penne sicilian style with sear fish, tomato sauce, capers, black olives, eggplant and fennel seeds) The food was good, no qualms in admitting that. The slight sour cream and mushrooms in the chicken dish complement each other very well, the tortelloni is so soft it almost melts in your mouth. And it shattered the bland expectations I had, in a very nice way. The fish was also made well, and had a dominant tomato flavour, though it was not spicy.

    There were quite a few dessert and coffee options, but the window affair irritated me enough to skip it. In fact that was the single thing that spoiled the entire experience, and made us feel ‘cold’ towards the place. But you should drop in at least once, because the food is diferent, and tasty, it does ‘excite your senses’ (their tagline) and in spite of the ‘falling over each other service reserved for foreigners’ that i detest, the service is pleasant.

    All of the above cost us just less than Rs.1000, inclusive of tax. No mineral water included, since you can pick that up from Spar (Lifestyle). 🙂 A lil cheap, but I’ve had enough of being fleeced over a Rs.13 bottle of mineral water, all over Bangalore’s eating joints!!

    via Milano, No.607, Asha Plaza, 3rd floor, 80 ft Peripheral road, Koramangala, Bangalore – 560034 Ph. 41309997/4

    Menu and Photos at Zomato

  • Social Aggregation – Birds of the same feather…

    I installed Flock quite sometime back, and even used it for a few days. I was quite impressed with the social aggregation, and the sheer number of sharing sites it was tying together on a browser. Flock has recently released version 2 of the browser, though the Beta was launched back in June. The major updates are MySpace integration and Media RSS accessibility, a standard developed by Yahoo that syndicates rich content like photos and videos. (via Tech Crunch)

    However, it puzzles me that I am still unable to figure out why I didn’t stick with it. Though adding all the services- from blogs to photo sharing to status updating services is a tedious exercise, it’s something I managed to do. Its load time is greater than others,but I doubt that’s the reason. After having thought about it, I figured out a few other possible reasons

    • the sheer lethargy of changing the preferred browser, especially since there are a few plugins in Firefox that have made life much easier. (but i just read that most of them should work in Flock. Yes, it has the Awesome Bar too, something that has proven to be extremely useful)
    • the existence of a web/ desktop client based service like Friendfeed which does a fair bit of social aggregation
    • a browser plugin like Yoono which does roughly the same job as above

    While I am now a fairly good user of Friendfeed, I haven’t used Yoono much.  But I did read a couple of days back that Yoono has announced support for IE and is adding Imeem and MySpace.  It is also adding an interesting shopping widget soon.

    Anyway, as if all these weren’t enough, I also read recently about the launch of Sobees, a social desktop aggregator. Both Flock and Sobees have a very useful picture uploading feature.Its interesting the social aggregation wars being fought on several platforms – browser, desktop, browser plugin, web.

    Meanwhile, there are other browsers popping up. Mac users can check out Cruz, a multi pane social browser, about which I read here. There is some work happening on Mozilla’s Minefield.

    So now, i am wondering what will work for me – Flock 2.0, or the combination of Firefox and the Yoono plugin? With Chrome’s awesome speed, only one of the above alternatives will survive. Meanwhile, I’ve noticed that Chrome and FF don’t really take to each other. Invariably FF develops problems when Chrome is run simultaneously. Anyone else having the same issue?

    until next time, browse

  • Carp

    The apartment parking slot. The kid saw him parking the two-wheeler, and asked, in all innocence “Uncle, why don’t you have a car?”. He smiled. The kid continued “I have one. All my friends have too. Only you don’t have.”  He knew the kid felt sorry for him. He felt sorry for the kid too.

    until next time, mere pas gaadi hain, bungalow hain….. 🙂

  • Social Advertising

    A post on the WindChimes blog sparked off an interesting argument on whether banner advertising on Facebook is called Social Media Marketing. But before we step into that, a quick look at what Facebook has been upto recently.

    Facebook recently announced that users had uploaded 10 billion photos on the network. Considering that Facebook’s not a flickr or picasa, this gives an indication of the quantity and quality of users’ relationship with the social networking service. Facebook also recently announced its Fb fund recipients. Read about this effort to help seed innovation here. For those who want to check out Facebook as a desktop app, check out Visual Sage. (via Startup meme) Facebook Connect has also been in the news recently. It is scheduled to launch on Nov 30. You can check out CNN’s Facebook Connect implementation – for the post presidential debate discussions, here. There are also links to the implementations of CBS, Red Bull etc. And the last ‘collateral’ links to a wonderful take on Facebook friendship, and this on social networks, revenues, and brands’ expectations from them. Meanwhile, Facebook can draw solace from the fact that it was the social network of choice of 1/3 of the  US online retailers interviewed. (from a study by Internet Retailer and Vovici via WildBlueSkies)

    As far as advertising goes, the inclusion of Microsoft Live Search into the social network is quite a significant development. Goes without saying that along with the search results, a few ads would also be thrown in. 🙂 Looks like win-win, for both Microsoft and Facebook. (with their revenue/cost concerns).

    And now, whether Facebook Ads are social media. I’d say (technically)any advertising on a social network would automatically qualify for social media marketing, since advertising is a way of marketing. Now, with specific reference to Facebook, as part of its redesign earlier, Facebook had also categorised the different kinds of ads that can be purchased. Out of the 6 categories mentioned, #5 is akin to a first generation banner ad.  I’d written about some unique features of Facebook Ads earlier. Like I’d mentioned in that post, this normal banner ad has been given a cool social twist by allowing users to give it a thumbs up/down and give their reasons for doing this. Let me go a step down and ignore the rating. Connecting my profile and actions to the kind of ads served, it gives the ads at least some contextual connection, and hence appeal.  So, in practise too, I’d consider banner advertising on Facebook a part of social media marketing. On Magpie, over on Twitter, however, I’m still in two minds.

    until next time, social soul searching