• Social Factories

    What self respecting social media blog could let the Facebook redesign slip by without a post dedicated to it. Now is a good time considering that Mark Zuck has deemed that we shut down our silly protests and just accept his virtual reality. Inspite of short term solutions offered, well meaning advice, and groups consisting of millions of supporters, Facebook was unruffled, plodded on with migrating everyone to the new design, and was perhaps quite sure of the premise that there wouldn’t be an exodus of users because of a design change. I, for one, am not unhappy with the new design, since functionality has been improved (for me) but at the cost of a relatively (since Fb was never known to be easy) ‘cosier’ design. I also thought that apps suffer a lot since they are relegated to a separate tab, and are not automatically seen when i visit a person’s profile. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing.

    I was quite intrigued by Startup meme’s smart comparison of the new Facebook design and Vista, and possible strategic implications. The possibility of Microsoft’s increasing interest was further fueled by a TechCrunch article I read recently. It raises a good point of how, to a functionally conscious generation, Windows and Office might be dispensable, in favour of the likes of Facebook, LinkedIn etc. With the rise of collaborative tools, and cloud computing in the horizon, this might be bad news for Microsoft, especially since the success of Windows and Office has always been taken for granted. In such a scenario, a Facebook collaboration (and perhaps acquisition later) makes a lot of sense. After all, Facebook is trying to become a web OS, as this post suggests. Its a great read and goes on to wonder where the Facebook browser is. But to get back, all this means Facebook would open up a crucial second front for MS. 

    The interesting part for me is who will influence whom more. Microsoft, to me, has been an old style capitalist product company which just sends out factory made stuff without listening to consumers, while Facebook, notwithstanding its latest design move, is a ‘social’ service that listens to consumers. Hey, Mark Zuck did write a post to address the plebeians, and as Mashable points out, 4 out of his 6 posts has been to address user concerns. But with 1% MS in its lifestream, Facebook quite firmly put down the user created anti new design rebellion, I wonder if its a change in attitude we witnessed. If MS influences Facebook than vice versa, it could be fatal to both. Or perhaps Mark Zuck is just promoting this movie, just like this Facebook app does. 😉  Speaking of Facebook apps, a new one – Rock the Vote, allows Facebook members to register their names in the voting list, online. (via Startup Meme)

    While on social media and design, there’s been some activity happening on Friendfeed too, they released a new beta version recently, changed the design, and after listening to user feedback, made additional tweaks which were appreciated. The new beta had shifted the navigation structure from the top to the right, and made provisions to organize friends into different groups. Two additional features are photo hosting, and allowing users to view the FriendFeed stream of other users easily from the interface. Following user feedback, the navigation bar was moved to the left. But I think the best addition would be the grouping of same stories. What used to happen was thats everal people used to share the same story when it broke, now the first share will be shown with the option below to check out who else shared the same. The options below is for all services – a tweet, a delicious share, a google reader share would all be displayed. This would go a long way in reducing what makes up a large portion of ‘noise’. Nice to see good changes and the importance they are giving to user feedback.

    Sometimes, I wonder whether organisations, including social media ones, are just like a ‘famous people’ stereotype. Do they stop being friendly and have lesser conversations when they become famous?

    until next time, when socialism turns to capitalism…..

  • The new brand ambassador – you

    Sometime back, I saw a press release of an entity called AdBhai. It is positioned as a no-frills classifieds portal and according to the release, has implemented Google’s Friend Connect. It means that you can use your Orkut/GTalk id to post comments on the site, giving the entire thing a social twist.

    I have come across quite a few interesting sites which link shopping to social media. There’s Tribe Smart, which allows you to make a profile and use crowd wisdom to know about the product. And its not just a product, it could be a website, a movie. In the process, you end up meeting people who share similar interests. Skimbit is a browser add on that allows you to make a project page you can configure, for your purchase, add products from different sites, and then allow others to rate these.  Another startup working on a plugin based model is Notches, which works on two fronts – allows product sites that tie up with it to add review buttons to its product pages, and users who have downloaded it can review any product from any website. (via Center Networks) Meanwhile, there’s a very interesting online music sale model at PopCuts, which rewards you for spotting trends early. You can buy a track, and when someone buys it from then on, you get a cut. A very cool idea, I thought, and would like to see how it pans out. Just like the earlier site, you start meeting people who rock to the same tune.

    Mashable has written about a widget based service called TurnTo, which works on the concept of social shopping. Deviating from the path of the above two, this one lets you add people from your existing circle of friends. During TC 50, which I’d written about earlier, a couple of startups working in the social shopping/reccomendation space were showcased. One was GoodRec, which shows users reccomendations of restaurants, books, movies nightlife, and displays the location on a map. It allows you to make reccomendations, which can also be shared on Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed etc. According to StartupMeme, GoodRec scores over the existing player – Yelp, in terms of usability. Another player, who is into ‘social’ based decision making is CityVoter, which ‘allows insiders who know a city best to share their insight with information, ratings, and reviews on everyday decisions’.The other startup is GoodGuide, which aims to provide users with information on social, environmental, and health related aspects of consumer products. With people becoming increasingly aware and conscious of the environment and the impact of their lifestyle on it, this is a good space to be, especially because of the clutter of ‘green’ goods that have been hitting the market. You can read more details on them here.

    WOM is no longer a buzzword, it has become a fact of life, if not in ‘low involvement’ categories, at least in ‘high involvement’ ones. Amazon has recently been using passionate Kindle users as brand ambassadors.We are on our way to what this post (quoting from a report) very correctly describes as an ‘influence economy’. As more and more users enter the social realms of Facebook, Twitter etc, their purchase decisions are becoming increasingly influenced by their social peer group. I come across this regularly on twitter – social based decisions on everything from restaurants to laptops and mobile phones. The post also gives a simple path for brands to get invloved in this process. But the essence is that brands need to be truthful, transparent, listen to their customers, be accessible, and most importantly, have a great product, for the reality is that communities cannot be bought. It has to be earned, and this post has a few tips on that. RWW has shared some data on super influencers, from a McCann study done  among 17,000 active internet users in 29 countries.

    Though brands are only beginning to take consumer voices seriously, it is great to see market leaders like Unilever and P&G understanding the limitations of current consumer research procedures, and making efforts to embrace online buzz. Meanwhile, HUL has introduced the concept of a customer ombudsman in india. The ombudsman works on behalf of the consumer and will tackle all cases that cannot be dealt with by Lever Care. A wonderfully radical move, which shows why they are market leaders. Read all about it here.  While on the subject, there’s a company called BazaarVoice, which helps brands create business value out of the positive consumer PR they generate. As fanboy cults emerge on Facebook and impromptu brand wars (among consumers) occur on twitter, I think this space has great potential. Speaking of Facebook, they’re also using users as brand ambassadors in Germany. (via Tech Crunch)

    until next a sociaholic shopaholic?

  • Ride with a view

    The regular route that I take to the office, and one back. There are buildings, homes, people, shops, and trivia that I don’t notice when I pass them regularly every day. Its not that they’re not interesting, but somewhere down the line, they have become routine, a part of the landscape, something that I take for granted, without putting too much of thought into. It took an auto ride to make me see all this in a different light. Perhaps it was because I wasn’t riding.. I didn’t have to pay attention to the road, and had all the time to leisurely watch the scenes and the life unfolding in them.

    And that made me think whether the same applies to people too. The different people that we interact with, at work, at home. Over a period of time, do they become a routine in our lives? Unidimensional characters in our mind, who have been moulded by our own biases and subjective judgements, and so set in that mould, that we fail to see a human being with its own values, feelings, and a life that’s being lived in myriad interesting ways. Does our perspective become so set in its ways, that we take the people in our lives for granted. And we have to wait for life to give us an auto ride to make us see them from a different vantage point?

    And then, what about people who always take auto rides? Do they manage to have a different perspective, but one that still gets set over a period of time? 🙂

    until next time, look around

  • Yodel Tales

    I’ve always wanted to catch a big web entity’s brand campaign. No, Zapak and Rediff are not included because those were more product feature led campaigns, mail or to a lesser extent-gaming (because that was more a concept). I did find a few instances of ambient advertising from Zapak interesting though. Unfortunately the same cannot be said of any rediff ads. It is disappointing because given Rediff’s eminent status among Indian sites, it would be great to see it create some brand ads based on the Indian internet scene, and to cement its position. Having said that, Rediff has created a lot of this equity already, so maybe they don’t feel a necessity.

    So, I was happy to note that Yahoo is planning a campaign in India (via Ideasmarkit), though again, its product centric- Yahoo Search. You can catch the TVC here. The idea is to show that sometimes every second matters, and Yahoo Search gets you results faster. Taking this further, Yahoo hopes this will make the audience choose them as the start page. This move is understandable, in a market dominated by Google’s search. But I’d say that Yahoo could’ve thought of a much more creative way to say this, than making fun of a man’s speech defect (stammering)

    That being said, Yahoo seems to be taking India very seriously, since they have even launched (in limited beta) a social network targeted at the college going audience in India – SpotM (via TechCrunch). It has SMS integration with anonymous chat that will let users correspond via SMS without revealing their phone number. The other key development is the testing (again limited beta) of a new front page. (via Contentsutra) I like the fact that Yahoo is acknowledging user needs – the fact that they are emphasising apps from Yahoo and from third parties, including a dashboard with a way to view email from multiple providers, also gives me a perspective on confidence in their own content and services. 

    So I’ll have to wait to see that brand campaign. I would’ve loved to see the Yahoo purple campaign in India. The idea lends itself to a variety of activities, most notably on Flickr. I wonder though what’s the status on the city specific sites that Yahoo came up with sometime back. I, for one, thought it was a pretty neat idea. Let’s hope Yahoo hits a purple patch in India soon. 🙂

    until next time, Y!

  • In Heat

    She was quite hot. As he prepared himself for what could be a long night, he rubbished the theory that a married couple’s interest in each other waned over time. He still loved his wife as dearly as before. So he was quite worried when he found her hot. He looked around for the thermometer.

    until next time, fever