Tag: web 2.0

  • Product Life Cycle and Consumer Life Cycles

    One of the social web’s by products er, products, are “shiny new objects”. (new services that launch and send us enthusiasts into a tizzy. All the web 2.0 greats were shiny new objects at some point in time)  There were a couple of wonderful posts I read in this context. The first is Rex Hammock’s excellent post on how we obsess over these for sometime, and then move on. Yes, I know you know that, but its the next part that’s interesting.

    Then one day about three years later, you notice people who aren’t obsessed with shiny new objects are talking about something four-or-five shiny new objects ago and you wonder: Why is everyone obsessed with this?

    This happens to me occasionally, the latest example being a few guys tweeting about the Baba Ramdev- Chrome ad that was circulated around quite a few months back.

    The second post was great, right from the title – The Loneliness of the Early Adopter, and when i shared it on Friendfeed, at least a couple of guys liked it. I confess I’m more at the borderline of early majority and early adopter, (refer this ) but I could empathise with a lot of that post.

    Now, a long way back, Jeremiah had an awesome post on Applying a social computing strategy to the entire product lifecycle. As the title suggests, its about listening to consumers, collaborating on product development, filtering out the right consumers, learning from them and supporting them and in essence, utilising the social web in all parts of the PLC. Here’s another great post in Social Media Explorer on the same theme.

    Twitter and more so Friendfeed (as this Mashable article explains) and Facebook (commenting on status and other elements of the newsfeed, the ‘Like’ feature) are great examples of how the product/service is evolving with the consumer and his preferences. Increasingly consumers are ‘creating’ a use or finding a way to fulfill a need gap from a basic service.

    The question is, who is the consumer? I’m trying to juxtapose the Product life cycle with a consumer life cycle. Are the tastes and preferences of the early adopters markedly different from that of the late majority? As the adoption of various social media services rapidly increases, who would a service target, and will it be at the cost of another segment? Different consumers, located at different points on the Roger’s bell curve will use the service at the same time. How can these possibly different sets of expectations be met? Will there be variations of the same service for different categories of users? I don’t see the issue being addressed a lot now, that possibly explains why a lot of people leave say, Twitter after a few tweets/days since they can’t figure out what’s happening? Would a ‘nOOb version’ have helped? Social media is about customisation too, and this might be something that needs to be answered soon, as these services become mass.

    until next time, handling a cycle on a curve 🙂

  • Crowd Control by the crowd

    Its rightly said that however thinly you slice the bread, there will always be two sides. Sometimes the very features that makes me love the social web – sharing and transparency, are not treated with the respect they deserve. Or, to be more specific, the crowd is not able to react maturely when someone is being transparent, or sharing something innocuous, or just doing his job. I remembering touching upon mob justice in the case of the Hasbro vs Scrabulous issue too.

    Since then there have been several instances of what Jason Calacanis might describe as the ‘madness of the mobs‘. From Hotmail users fighting against the new design, virtual protests and self immolations on Second Life against a steep purchase and maintenance fee increase, to relatively harmless breast beating on Twitter and Facebook, there has been a lot of action happening all around.

    A few recent incidents have made me look at the otherwise wonderful features of the social web in a negative light again. Rex Hammock recently wrote about a Dilbert strip in which its creator Scott Adams did a bit of ‘in house’ product placing – for DilbertFiles.com, an online sharing and file storage service that was the result of a deal between Adams and Sendyourfiles.com, which Adams had explained on his blog. In fact he also points out that

    As the number of traditional newspapers continues to shrink, this is the sort of thing that will help keep Dilbert free online.

    But several readers took exception calling it a ‘shameless plug’ and ‘unethical’. Thankfully there were many in the crowd who were objective enough to see it as ‘lame but not ethical’, and several others who found it interesting, and a great way of promoting the service. I, for one, thought it was some neat ‘brand integration’. The debate is now over, i guess, and Scott Adams made some candid, cool closing remarks on the issue. You can read them here.

    The other incident that caught my attention was the case of James Andrews (@keyinfluencer on Twitter). Here are the details. In short, this is what happened. James Andrews, from a company called Ketchum, in Atlanta flew to Memphis to visit FedEx, one of his agency’s biggest clients, to talk to their corporate communication team about social media. Being a regular Twitter user, he tweeted on landing

    “True confession but I’m in one of those towns where I scratch my head and say, ‘I would die if I had to live here.’”

    Instead of the lil argument that would’ve happened on Twitter over this, it became a classic ‘tempest in a tea cup’, when a person from the Fedex Corporate Communication Group took this up and sent a mail to Andrews. And thus it became a story of the agency guy (Andrews) talking ill of his client’s city. (the entire mail can be read in the link I shared earlier) All the poor man did was give a personal opinion about the place he landed in. That is a crime in social media, according to a few social media storm troopers. Suddenly, there are statements to be made, the agency has to apologise on behalf of Andrews. I say, FedEx, thats #FAIL. Kudos to Funkidivagirl for defending her husband so eloquently, and putting things in perspective.

    Both the situations made me think of expectations. Scott Adams is perhaps thinking of greater good (keeping the online strip free) when he makes a deal like this. He even explains the reasons on his blog. He doesn’t have to. And the crowd, or at least a part of it, loses it. James Andrews tweets personal views about a nameless place  (Fed Ex’ reaction ensures everyone knows about Memphis now) and his agency and work are judged based on that!! We’re supposed to be careful of what we tweet.

    The last and most recent incident is the worst, because unlike the other two, this one’s effect was real and physical!! And at the receiving end was none other than Tech Crunch’s Michael Arrington. As he was leaving a conference, someone walked up to him and spat on his face. The pain in his words are unmistakable as he relates the incident. It doesn’t matter whether you agree, disagree, love or despise TechCrunch or Arrington, but their contribution to the web and startups transcends that, and cannot be denied. If this has to do with what he writes about as part of his job, this is a despicable reaction. I, for one, would really want to know what provoked such an act.

    We expect transparency, honesty and sharing in the social web.  But are we always ready to handle it maturely when its given to us? Yes, brands and people have a responsibility towards us, but shouldn’t that be reciprocated by us too? By having unreasonable expectations from brands and people, especially in a scenario where the rules of engagement are only beginning to be formed, are we forcing these entities to stop sharing and stop being transparent? As RWW correctly notes,

    Whether you believe in monitoring yourself online or not, don’t forget the point of the social Web: to get to know other like minded people, share resources, have fun, and leave the place a little nicer than you found it.

    Let’s have some of this spirit back, and show some maturity not only when we share or tweet or try to engage an audience as a brand/PR person, but also as a reader, when we consume this content. After all we are human, and I like to think that with web 2.0, we’re on our way to making this cold machine driven entity called internet , human. Lets not make the reverse happen.

    until next time, you have the right to remain silent, sometimes the duty too..

    PS. but you should comment 😉

  • Web 2.0 and transience

    As I am wont to do at infrequent intervals, I came up with one of  those  quirky connections – this one, for Tata Sky. I mentioned on Twitter that “aamir’s ghajini character could find Tata Sky Plus’ features quite useful-pause, rewind, record 😉 wonder if they’ll make a TVC with that”. In the days that followed, Asin has been extensively used in the Tata Sky campaign, so now I’m hoping thay actually make that TVC, complete with the Tata Sky helpline number tattooed on Aamir. 😉

    It led me to a tangential thought on social media. (the FB, Twitter variety, not business networking like LinkedIn) In what might amount to blasphemy, I wondered whether brands should make desperate efforts to be ‘engaging’ in social media. They need to be there definitely, but perhaps its only to know what’s being talked about them, and why. They perhaps need to be there more for reactions than actions. This also saves them the challenge of generating interesting ‘engagement ideas’ at all times.

    Why did I think all this? Because I realised that the engagement is being created by users themselves, for each other. For non web 2.0 brands, the engagement is most likely a result of something that’s been done offline. A TVC, a billboard, a radio jingle and so on. Must say, this perspective on how to use twitter for Marketing and PR made me think too.

    At one point, web 1.0 used eyeballs as measurement, that’s an idea thats not going anywhere great? Web 1.o gave us many great websites and lessons, but in a few years time, we jumped into web 2.0. The attention span and shelf lives for most things are becoming smaller. Is web 2.o just a transient phase that is needed to get us to another version? The optimist in me (which is usually bullied into submission) says that when a certain version is reached, the engagement and revenue models will manifest itself in an uncomplicated manner. (now you know why it needs to be bullied). Maybe the baby steps of getting connected are meant for simple things. Maybe it is only meant to let businesses know  that a connected world can shake up existing models. Maybe there’s some growing up to do, some discovery to be made, before revenue models and engagement by brands can happen as a regular occurrence.

    Or perhaps I’m going out of whack and being impatient. Center Networks has a good comparison of Web 1.0/ 2.0 revenue models and profitability. As this good post sums up in a different context

    New business models for media require entirely new exchanges of value — it’s not about finding new ways to balance the old equation.

    Perhaps the more meaningful discussions lie in figuring out how the basic pillars of web 2.o – connecting, sharing, collaborating-  can be used to build brands. The ‘How to use Twitter/Facebook for Marketing/PR’ are based on tools, and that would mean that we’ve been confusing tactics for strategy.

    until next time, discover 🙂

    PS: A few things that I thought were good to share

    Discovery Is The New Cocaine – Going Beyond Engagement

    View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: discovery ux)

    Social Media PR vs Social Media Marketing, and in context,a tool – CoTweet, that’d be a help to teams handling a brand on Twitter.

  • Lose-Lose Situation

    That, I believe is what Hasbro and Scrabulous have gotten each other into. In case you guys have been tardy and not playing Scrabulous on Facebook, Scrabulous, a popular app on Facebook, modeled on Scrabble – the board game, has had to remove its application from the US and Canada, (for IP – the intellectual property kind, infringement) and Hasbro, who hold th rights for North Americsa,  has done enough successful PR to be seen as the evil corporate monster. I hope Mattel is listening, as its case is awaiting resolution, and will affect the rest of the world. This is a worthwhile read on the finer legal points in this case, in terms of the American Copyright law.

    I’ve been an avid user of Scrabulous and even joined the petition to ‘help save scrabulous’, which has about 50,000 members. I did that, then, on an emotional appeal level, without getting it into the right and wrong. The Agarwala brothers, who own the application had maintained that their intention was not to make money. Maybe it wasn’t initially. But, later too? Funny, considering that Scrabulous, at its peak had about half a million users and was generating $25000 per week from advertising. Funny also, that they didn’t just take the first payment agreement option that Hasbro had proposed. (rumoured to be around $10 million)

    All this triggered a few thoughts. The makers of Scrabulous would definitely have known that they were on slippery territory as far as IPR goes, why did they have to do it. Yes, they did the world a favour by recreating a favourite game, and if, having realised their error, they accepted the Hasbro offer, all would have ended well. But perhaps, our democracy has also left us with a legacy of disregard for the law, of forcing grays between right and wrong, and turning a blind eye.

    For me, it also brought to light a not-so-great facet of the crowd driven, transparency seeking, web 2.0.  The founder of the group I’d mentioned earlier, a 15 year old, has collected a list of 1000 people who have promised never to buy a Scrabble board if Hasbro forced Scrabulous to close down. A guy who tried to start a discussion within the group on how Hasbro was right, got booed out of the place, with an allegation that he worked for Hasbro in some capacity. There was a scare that Hasbro’s official app on Facebook had been hacked. Hasbro might have acted in the most stupid manner possible on this issue, but they were in the right. So, the question is, in the ‘crowd controlled world’ we keep forecasting, if there’s enough of a crowd that believes in a certain thing, irrespective of whether its wrong, unethical, does it still get done?  Mob Justice, isn’t that the term? It reminds me of India’s democracy, where technically the people rule, but we all know how that’s working. So, if the crowd controls the world, who controls the crowd?

    As for me, I’m out of the group help ‘save scrabulous’, and have already started a game with a friend on this new application, Wordscraper, from the makers of Scrabulous. It looks considerably different from Scrabble, but is as enjoyable as the original.

    until next time,”with great power comes great responsibility”

    PS: Pacman has been there before 🙂

  • Traditional Media 2.0 ?

    Traditional media, and specifically the print media, don’t seem to be too worried about the web being competition. Possibly justified, since, unlike their counterparts in the US, their circulation numbers don’t seem to be dipping. Which is perhaps why, they don’t think much of web 2.0 or the potential it offers to them. For now, they’re satisfied with saying that they are on the web too.

    In fact, the TV sites like CNN IBN and even NDTV to a certain extent looked much more closer to what a media site should be, online. Even they have some way to go before they can take on, say a CNN. I recently saw India Today’s site, which shows some promise.

    But I’m wondering if the story of traditional media websites and pure web players is a little like the old hare and tortoise story, roles played respectively. Consider this, the JuxtConsult 2008 report says that checking news is the 4th most common activity that Indians indulge in, on the Internet. The same report shows Yahoo as the most preferred site for this purpose, with MoneyControl and CricInfo taking the top spots in Financial News and Cricket news respectively. At a circulation of 31.46 lakhs, why doesn’t TOI find a place there? If we take into account that the Internet in india is still at a nascent stage, don’t the already popular dailies have a good chance of replicating their success on the internet, especially if they start early and already have a good credibility factor in that space?

    And this is not restricted to English media. With every online player realising the importance of vernacular, even the regional language players cannot afford to stand and watch. Which perhaps Malayala Manorama has realised, because the last few days saw a flurry of activity in pushing their website as well as their matrimonial site. One could say that the latter is a late entrant, but in both cases, MM is heavily leveraging their strengths in traditional media. This is of course, in addition to the news channel and radio stations. Perfectly poised, I’d say.

    Meanwhile, on another and what I would consider a more dangerous front, there are entities like Instablogs, which in addition to a wonderful design, does a superb mix of news and user generated content, including the recently added user-generated-video-news, all of that based out of Simla. Sigh. Not to forget webdunia, which though does not boast of a cool interface like the former, is doing very well on the regional media front.

    With the rapid penetration of the mobile, the increasing access of the internet through mobile, and the vernacular factor, I’m wondering if the race in India will buck the regular trends shown globally, and suddenly swing in favor of the new media players, while the hare is caught napping.