Tag: Apple

  • Weekly Top 5

    This week’s stories include LinkedIn’s Android app and its developer platform, Bing’s increasing market share and Bing Business Portal, Facebook’s ownership and Open Commute Project, a few apps on the iPad, Larry Page’s reorganisation in Google, acquisitions by Google and YouTube Live.
    [scribd id=53092158 key=key-22pklg2rd5su5v2ybspz mode=list]

  • Weekly Top 5

    How To Get Your Ex Boyfriend Back

    More: How To Get Your Ex Boyfriend Back

  • Internet and People States

    The Economist has an excellent read titled ‘The Future of the Internet‘, where it details the possibility of a Balkanisation of the internet, by forces such as Network Operators, countries, and closed platforms. Quite an irony, as they point out, since the internet was supposed to be a great unifier.

    I realised that so far we had been dealing with entities that had a geographical constraint – all forms of media, languages, culture etc. When brands entered alien markets, they adapted to suit the needs of the local population – sometimes in terms of communication, sometimes in terms of the product/service itself.  So I guess, it would be futile to expect that we would solve a challenge of this magnitude soon, considering that the internet has been around for only a relatively short amount of time. (cool infographic)

    But what struck me was that though the factors mentioned above are indeed distinct and relevant ones, what about users? Thanks to the long tail of content, people are able to get content tailor-made to their requirement, more often that not. They are also able to create content and share it with specific people. When I see e-groups, closed blogs, newsletters, and increasing privacy options on existing networks, I wonder how much of Balkanisation already exists thanks to users, who control a lot of the where, what and to whom content is shared. I connect with different people on different networks and share different relationships with them basis different contexts and interests, and except for minor overlaps b/w Facebook – Twitter and Twitter – Foursquare, they are all almost separate worlds. And its not just the where and the what, its also the when – I have Orkut friends discovering Facebook, Facebook and LinkedIn friends/connections discovering Twitter, Twitter followers discovering Foursquare, GReader friends discovering Quora, when my usage and behaviour on these networks would be completely different from theirs thanks to relatively early adoption.

    The other question is how would brands be affected by a Balkanised internet. Would all their users exist in the same place and time? How does it affect communication? Product, or service, how many brands can be like Apple, who are the nearest to being a ‘state’ in themselves? How many can actually build and sustain that? How much of it depends on the nature of the product and how much of it on the people connections (or social gestures)? Would integration and consistency of communication matter then?

    But then I realise that despite the user Balkanisation, we have our means of communication and transportation open. When push comes to shove, perhaps it will be too unprofitable for any entity to remain Balkanised, irrespective of their own vested interests? We live in hope. 🙂

    until next time, 800th post at the other blog 🙂

  • Multi purpose content

    This post over at GigaOm, titled “Apple doesn’t target markets, it targets people” sparked a tiny debate between Mahendra and me, on the effects of ‘antennagate’ on Apple fanboys, though the article itself had little to do with this line of thought. I wondered, like I’d written here earlier (last two paras), whether the continuous dissing in the media and the product flaw itself would create skepticism among the fanboys and affect future purchases, Mahendra didn’t think so.

    The subject of influence has cropped up here earlier, but the focus was on new media platforms and people. The above conversation made me think about the challenges that brands face on content that’s created on multiple media platforms.

    Even as traditional media platforms are being unfavourably compared to new media thanks to their constraints, the abundance of content – the media tsunami, on the latter does make one wonder how much of consumption by the intended crowd really happens. Meanwhile, despite the constraints,  technically, the reach of the traditional media platforms is still significant. A brand’s consumers exist on/consume these media.

    That really poses interesting questions on the notions of brand imagery, consistency etc, which have been holy cows of a previous era. Take this video, for example. Its a massive hit on Facebook and YouTube

    httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTl3U6aSd2w

    “Where’s the Gillette logo?!”, if this were a traditional TV spot, and what’s the message here? A close shave? 😉 But at 5 million + views, surely this must count for something. But what? This fuzzy nature of social media content and the media on which its propagated is exactly what raises difficult  but important questions on brands’ participation in social media.

    The answers are obviously not simple ones, and would have to be adapted to each brand’s needs. But as these lessons from Old Spice would suggest,  an important requirement is to understand objectives and define roles for each platform. The challenge then would be to create a content strategy that not only uses the inherent strengths of the different media, but also understands the motivations, consumption habits and preferences of the different kinds of people who use them. Instead of blind adaption across various platforms, exploring content options and finer segmentation is perhaps the order of the day.

    Perhaps Apple’s success is because of what the original post says “It focuses on users. And Apple lets them decide how and where they’ll use its products.” I wonder how many brands use that kind of understanding in their communication and brand strategy.

    until next time, iWash 😉

  • The Fifth Estate?

    I remember an almost-discussion on twitter a while back, with shefaly and gkjohn, on whether was a tech company or a media company. The context was the Android getting space on the otherwise bare Google homepage. That would have a reach greater than perhaps most, if not all media giants. And thus I thought about taking a look at what could possibly be the new form of a media conglomerate.

    While Google’s dominance in search is complete, social search is another matter altogether, and if we go by Hitwise’s report on web user activity in Australia, social search is poised to overtake search soon. Though this is an Australia specific report and though it does leave room for arguments (YouTube is classified as social search though it is usually categorised as video search) it is definitely a trend. And while this page would give you enough statistics to show that ‘social’ is not really limited to Facebook or even Twitter, and includes everything from blogs to LinkedIn, if I had to choose one company which would be the player to beat in social search, it would be Facebook.

    But first, Google. Google is now easily the print industry’s bogeyman, and despite robots.txt wars and pay-walls, Google  continues to explore the territory. From adding FastFlip on the Google News homepage to the ‘starred’ feature which allows you to track stories of your choice on a separate page, thereby lending the algorithm a personal touch, Google is upping the ante on a regular basis. Meanwhile, understanding that its lagging in the ‘social’ space, despite services like Orkut, Google is working on an integrated social strategy using everything from a user’s current network of contacts in Google services to a social search that includes contacts from other networks and from OpenSocial and Friend Connect to supporting OpenID and OAuth, and even having a tweet ranking algorithm now. This could ensure that Google becomes an important part of our social profile soon, though personally I’d think a lot before working on my Google Profile!!

    Meanwhile, with over 350 million users, half of whom visit the site daily, Facebook is well placed to throw a spanner in Google’s works. Facebook’s biggest strength is the trust factor it automatically brings to search results because it draws these from a social graph – users and their inter-connections, and its a gigantic data mine. From the link shared earlier, over 2.5 billion photos and 3.5 billion pieces of content (links, posts etc) are shared every month on Facebook. There are 700000 active local businesses are listed. Meanwhile, it is trying to provide tangible business value too, from a conversion tracker to encouraging users to set up their accounts for news reading, it is now trying to dislodge Google from its areas of strength. Google is spread all over the web, and Facebook is a walled garden. But then, it spreads itself with Facebook Connect, which is implemented in 80000 sites engaging 60 million users every month.

    January 28th was World Data Privacy day. Google renewed its privacy vows, and everyone must’ve had a good laugh. This kinda explains why. And while Facebook makes claims that its recent updates to Privacy Settings had 35% users thinking about privacy and configuring their settings, revelations like these don’t help.

    RWW had a good post on Data Privacy Day on Facebook’s volteface with regards to privacy, which also made me think about the evolution of the web and the two sides of the coin – the convenience of recommendations based on my likes gleaned from my interactions on a network, and the privacy of that data.  The last part of Samir Balwani’s excellent post on Social Media ROI begins to address exactly this area.

    A few other players in the game emerge when we look at a larger landscape of web access. The iPhone vs Android vs (you could also say) Symbian/Maemo battle rages, even as 65 million users access Facebook on mobile. Google now has its own operating system and the gPad (concept) pictures are already floating on the net (within a few days of the iPad launch). Nokia, Apple and even old Microsoft, they are all media in themselves too. The common factor is data about us.

    The reason why all this is interesting is because unlike the earlier forms of media we have known, neither Google nor Facebook are content creators. They are aggregators of content – from  known publishers from old and new media, and more importantly, from us, the users. Our consumption patterns and interactions will be the data from which marketing insights will be gained. As these networks increasingly become media, the search for revenue models and the trends of using these as marketing/advertising platforms will also increase. This needs to be kept in mind as we spread ourselves across the networks.

    until next time, virtual realty 🙂

    Bonus Read: Why Facebook is wrong: Privacy is still important