Tag: Mobile

  • The new media owners

    A few days back, I read a very interesting piece by Jeff Jarvis on ‘The Great Restructuring’, in which he talked about fundamental changes happening in the economy and society. He also talked of an economy (at least in part) built on the abundance of knowledge, which then led to the subject of replanting business models.

    It took me back to a discussion I once had with a friend on the role of newspapers, and the new forms of media. The role of newspapers, and ‘tangible media’ in general was a hot topic of discussion then. Steve Rubel had the “The End of Tangible Media is Clearly in Sight” post which put 2014 as the year of demise (in the US), and got quite a few responses, including some folk who disagreed with it, and some who agreed a bit but disagreed mostly. There wasn’t much of disagreement on the subject of newspapers, and it was generally agreed that Digital was indeed a great disrupter. Newspapers have  been accused of trying to replant their offline model on their web. Perhaps rightly so, since it clearly doesn’t seem to be working.

    In that conversation, we’d used ‘new media’ a little differently from the platform based (internet and mobile) approach. We discussed three forms of ‘new media’ –

    • some entities about whom the media writes about – people and  organisations . The net population already shares a lot of the content they produce on the web platform – via blogs, social networks, platforms like YouTube, Flickr etc, and lots of organisations are using the web as a broadcast medium – Marketing as media
    • social networks and other services which consolidate a lot of the content generated above in one location, and web only news sites (anything from Rediff to Instablogs and niche news sites)
    • some entities who’re already in the communication/network business – these could be companies like Nokia (handset manufacturers who are an access point to the web), telecom operators like Vodafone (who also act as an access point), or even companies like Cisco, who I think will go further than just provide media solutions

    While there’ve been a few setbacks – Nokia shutting down Mosh, its content sharing service as a result of dubious content posted, Vodafone playing bully to opt-in-SMS service MyToday and various lawsuits against Google (YouTube) on copyrighted content, I’m hoping these are nothing more than teething problems of a radical overhaul.

    Depending on various factors, like socio economic conditions, technology penetration, to name a few, ‘The  Great Restructuring’ would happen differently in different places. Like other restructurings before, some parts of the population would remain unaffected.

    Meanwhile, as mentioned in the post, it indeed is a time of opportunity, and definitely for newspapers too, at least in this part of the world. It only depends on how much they’re willing to shed their old ways of doing business (especially when it isn’t making the revenue it used to be) and how willing they are to listen to the collective consciousness. Even with the ‘new media’ and the proliferation of content producers, newspapers could still find ways of delivering value. (excellent debate happening here)

    Earlier, everyone read a newspaper and therefore it was the place for a product to be seen by its potential consumers. Since the first part changed, the second has too. If increasing media fragmentation is the future, then what newspapers could be doing wrong is seeing their product/s as the only media/destination. Instead, they should perhaps (at least) listen to the Chaos Scenario,  explore a few options, utilise their resources to be preferred content choices in as many fragments as possible, irrespective of the platform, and fight battles in each fragment separately. This would also mean that basis the dynamics of each fragment, different revenue models might evolve for each fragment.

    until next time, for now its Calvinball rules 🙂

    PS. Must Read – IBM’s study – Beyond Advertising

  • News out of the paper

    Its not exactly breaking news that newspapers are almost in desperation mode now (no, don’t throw ink at me, this is in the US market context) to make sense of the wild wild web, as the very public who used to pay for the print editions now want it on the web, and more importantly for free. An issue that newspapers are still grappling with. So, with fears of revenue models collapsing, RSS feeds, PDF editions, user generated content, podcasts etc are now being force fed into print journalism regular usage. (How American Newspapers Used the Internet in 2008).

    The point to note is that the internet with advertising as a revenue model is not going to be the salvation, web entities which rely on that are also going to be in trouble. There are some experiments happening in the news space online as well – News Mixer is a great example, it aggregates content and has integrated Facebook Connect for users to comment on stories. The integration eliminates anonymous handles and also means that it can highlight the views of your friends so that you can know what their take on a story is. (via RWW) A member of Yahoo’s BOSS team has found a great way to use Twitter’s search function and relevance (different tweets to the same story) for fresh news and come up Tweet News. Ice Rocket’s Big Buzz pulls different live sources (Twitter, Flickr, You Tube etc) on to a single page. (via Steve Rubel) In fact, I see the last one as a sort of threat for Google News – real time news, a scenario which can be extended into the larger context of Google Search soon, because I don’t think Google has cracked real time yet (from what I see around).

    Meanwhile, hyper local entities are being created to fill the gaps being created by local newspapers shutting down. But while the monopolistic doyens are struggling, there is a paradox happening, new media empires might be getting created as web entities are making forays into print- The Printed Blog, is launching a twice-daily free print newspaper in cities across the US aggregating localized blog posts. (via Wired)

    In fact, though the state of the Indian print media is not the same as in the US, the same phenomenon (web to print) is happening here too – Mutiny, which started in 2006, and wants to be India’s Huffington Post, launched its print edition a few months back. Burrp, which started with restaurant reviews, and later expanded into lifestyle events, and TV listings, apparently have a few print plans of their own.

    So there must be potential  in the 2 cents of journalism (Seth Godin’s excellent post on the death of newspapers) even as there is the danger of ‘right now’ news. Seth Godin rightly says that “The web has excelled at breaking the world into the tiniest independent parts.” The challenge for newspapers will be to find the 2 cents that they can provide and people will pay for.

    In India, low figures of net penetration mean that the US levels of ubiquitousness will take a while. But the mobile could be a bigger threat in the short and long term. Various players like SMSGupshup, MyToday, Mobme etc already offer subscription based services, though the source seems to be mainstream media sources. Newspapers have long relied on distribution might to thwart specific competition. But with a digital platform, that is nullified. From my consumption needs, the only thing I cant seem to find online are the hyperlocal news (that also includes local retail deals and discounts – eg. Springfield had a 60% off sale in bangalore last week, try searching for  it online). So far, in India, all the tiny independent parts that Godin has spoken of, haven’t been brought online. In that sense, the net’s utlity is incomplete in an Indian context. The real threat will start when that happens. With their huge network of reporters/other sources, is there a digital revenue model for newspapers in the real-time and/or hyperlocal news space?

    The double whammy for newspapers is brought out due to the fact that advertising is the major revenue source for most newspapers in India. Most of the brand ads that I see in English dailies is targeting the young urban dweller. This segment is becoming increasingly net savvy, and I feel that brands will figure this out in the short term.

    Vernacular dailies might be a better off in this regard, since even if net penetration in their major markets accelerates, (read about the government’s rural internet plans here – CSCs) vernacular content is not yet at challenging levels. (the IAMAI-IMRB report on rural and state of vernacular content in India). There is an opportunity for newspapers here, especially the vernacular ones and even those which can translate English content into vernacular.

    until next time, selling news on platforms

    PS. Toy for you -HP’s Tabbloid – start your own newspaper 😉

  • Electronic Social Responsibility

    Late last year, I remember reading this article that talked about a study by Havas Media, which “looks at the impact of climate change on business from the point of view of consumer”. From the study,

    With respect to India, the survey claims that 86% of Indians would rather buy from companies that are trying to reduce their contribution to global warming. Further, 50% of Indian respondents would be more likely to buy environmentally-friendly goods in the next 12 months, if they were at the same price and standard as their usual brands. 43% would be willing to pay a little extra for those goods.

    Somebody has been listening, or more likely, had been listening for quite a while, for earlier this month, I read about Nokia India’s efforts though its ‘Take Back’ campaign, which aims to educate consumers about the recycling and re-use of old handsets and accessories. In addition to this contribution, Nokia will also plant a tree for every handset dropped at the recycling bins. I was extremely impressed by Nokia’s official notes on their efforts. As a market leader, Nokia has done a great job.

    Meanwhile, another key player has also been doing its bit for a better planet. I remember writing about Motorola last year – the Motopower project, that has 55 solar powered kiosks in Uganda offering free mobile charging to consumers. Motorola also has its share of recycling efforts, and I found its latest effort – the W233 Renew, very refreshing. This handset is the world’s first mobile phone made with plastics comprised of recycled water bottles., and is also the world’s first Carbonfree cell phone on the market.  The site also says that through an alliance with Carbonfund.org, Motorola offsets the energy used to manufacture, distribute and operate of the phone. (through investments in renewable energy sources and reforestation, courtesy Wild Blue Skies) The unfortunate bit, hopefully for now, is that this is not an India phenomenon now. Judging by the Havas Media report, Motorola is missing out on a huge opportunity in India.

    It is indeed good to see genuine efforts from major global players to make the world a better place, sustainable efforts  because they also make buiness sense, and are not spur-of-the-moment CSR initiatives.There can never be enough efforts, and in an increasingly connected world, which thrives on transparency, there’s nothing like a genuine effort to build on brand equity.

    until next time, (as a Springfield tee says) Respect Green Rules

  • Local Social Networks

    I’m guessing most of you reading this use GTalk. Recently, a new service called GTalk Profile was launched. While, so far, you could add people only via their email ids, GTalk Profile helps you find other people using your location as a common point. (via RWW) For example, Bangalore, (though claimed to be in Andhra Pradesh) has about 63 profiles.

    I wonder if this kind of a network has scope, since people are very finicky about who they add, but yes, I do agree that Twitter is an exception, and this could be broadly comparable. Also, this service allows you to create profile pages, which allow descriptions, photos etc. The fun part is that Google has its own Profiles, and even a verification process, though this is used for a completely different purpose now. But I wonder if GTalk Profile will inspire Google to officially proceed along similar lines with their Profiles. A better integration of Google Talk in Orkut, with a facility for local profile search, would provide the same result. Perhaps better results, since Orkut profiles are very detailed, and users could invite others to GTalk, and provide their Orkut profile as a ‘verification’.

    While the net has seen several local social networks popping up, the mobile seems to be an equally (if not better) platform for this purpose. This is perhaps the reason we’re seeing a lot of apps that aggregate IM services on the mobile – Xumii is one such I read about recently. There are also GPS based social networks like iPoki that are being developed.

    In India, I’ve come across mobile specific social network apps, like Qeep. I’m still a little unclear about whether Trackut is into location based social networking. Meanwhile, mobile services, as well as manufacturers, are adding/preloading social networking apps. At&T ‘s My Communities, and LG’s association with Rocketalk, in India, are examples.

    Of course, the regular social networks we’re used to like Facebook, My Space happen to be the ones with the strongest internet presence. Understandable, since there’s a familiarity factor, after all, its only the platform that changes. But they’d do well to add apps that help localise the experience a bit. I wonder, though, whether this trend will replicate itself in India, or whether the disparity between mobile and internet penetration will reflect in this too. I’m thinking about a Big Adda app being preloaded into Reliance mobiles.

    Sometime back, I read about a service called belysio, a social mapping service that uses location based technologies, which notifies you when your contact is near. Now Nokia has come out with Friend View, an experimental location and micro-blogging service. After the recent Orkut-Talk integration, I wonder if Google has plans of moving into local social networking. With the mobile versions of (originally) net based social networks, mobile based social networks, manufacturers’ preloaded apps, this should be an interesting space. What I’d really love to see though is our very dear micro blogging service, Twitter make some rapid advances in local social networking.

    until next time, and then, location based dating? 🙂

  • Any Ideas?

    Reading this post today, on how Tata Sky and Dish TV have both partnered with matrimony portals -Bharat Matrimony and Shaadi.com respectively, in the space of a single day, I realised how fickle competitive advantages really are. It also reminded me of a much debated post on Scobleizer yesterday on tech blogging, and where it’s at. While the initial premise of that post was how focus was now more on the biz part of it than the mutual discovery of stuff, it then moved on to fleeting attention spans and the quest for the latest shiny object on the www. And how every tech blog out there is trying to beat each other in reaching the latest news first.

    Which essentially makes news the commodity and ways to reach the audience first the competitive advantage. Pretty much the same game as what our TV channels are upto these days. When I look around, i see commodities happening all around, to all sorts of product categories, and brands ending up aping each other so that they don’t miss the bus. So whether its reality shows or strange four letter acronyms for shampoos or features in mobile phones, remove the brand name and you won’t notice the difference. And to me, thats a problem, because in a commodity led culture, quantity led factors like volume, reach etc take precedence, mediocrity tends to become the norm, and no one thinks that they should figure out a better way to reach the consumer than the bus.

    And that led me to think of ways and means of how brands can fight it. While I’ve been thinking of clear positioning as an obvious starter, I also realised there were some brands that not only created the big idea and ended up making a verb out of it – xerox, google, to name a couple, they were so radical either in thought or execution that they never actually positioned themselves. And before I go further, I apologise for taking you on this stream of consciousness trip. Now, not all brands can be lucky enough to get a not-easily-copiable idea or a drastic new way of executing it.

    And that brought me to the potential of a brand which has taken a great first step in leveraging its brand name very well in the absolutely commoditised market of telecom- Idea. I’m sure you must’ve seen the TVC by now. While the campaign is indeed good, what I’m more impressed with is that now that they can actually focus on the innovative uses of utilising a mobile for the betterment of the individual and the society he lives in, and do a lifetime’s supply of campaigns, built around different ‘Idea’s. It offers a way to create a positioning that’s beyond communication. I think that this approach has the potential to build a superbrand. From a new media perspective, and considering that the mobile is almost ubiquitous now, think of the conversations that this could create, obviously around ideas.

    That said, any ideas on how brands can beat commoditisation?

    until next time, an idea and change