Gauravonomics Blog

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I was quoted today in Indian daily The Hindu in a story on how social media can be useful for small and medium IT businesses.

Social media is especially useful for IT SMEs as their customers, partners and employees are likely to be early adopters of social media tools. My recommendation is that IT SMEs should use social media first to listen to conversations in their industry, then to participate in those conversations and finaly to build thought leadership in their industry. Given the natures of most IT SMEs, even ten new business relationships established via social media can be critical.

Here is the full text of the story –

Small and medium IT firms reap benefits of online networking sites

Sruthi Krishnan

“There is a culture today that respects an online connection”

CHENNAI: While looking up the profile of a prospective client on LinkedIn, a business networking site, the salesperson of a small and medium IT firm found that he had a Twitter account. The salesperson followed the client on Twitter, an online messaging service, and messaged him about the company. On a working day, in 15 minutes, the salesperson got a response: “Get back in touch with me.”

The facts first.

In February 2008, Lancashire detective constable Richard Horton started writing the anonymous NightJack blog, which shared an insider’s perspective on policing and politics in a small English town. By January 2009, he had a daily readership of about 1500, but grew tired of the blog and stopped writing. Then NightJack won the prestigious Orwell Prize in March 2009 and his readership went up to half a million visitors a week.

When Times reporter Patrick Foster found his true identity by triangulating the digital trail he had left behind, Richard Horton deleted his blog and asked for an injunction to prevent the Times from revealing it. Justice Eady rejected the plea. The Times revealed Richard Horton’s identity in an expose and Richard Hortonhimself wrote a piece in The Times explaining why he had started and deleted the blog.

For more details see Daily Mail, Financial Times, BBC1 and BBC2.

It’s important that we begin by trying to understand the complex moral ambiguity in the curious case of NightJack Richard Horton.

I recently appeared on BBC’s World Have Your Say talk show on Iran’s ‘Twitter Revolution’.

I talked about why we should distrust all information on Twitter, especially in Iran where only Mousavi supporters are represented on the service. I also talked about why the term Twitter Revolution is already a cliche, after Moldova and Iran.

Here’s the full text of the BBC blog post about the talk show –

Who do you trust to tell you what’s happening in Iran ?

The true and undisputed winners of the Iranian elections have emerged - Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and You Tube have been bathing in the limelight. Here’s the BBC’s breakdown on social media in Iran. The Iranian government’s blocking of traditional media outlets has meant that microblogging has been our main source of information.

Microblogging of course cannot always be verified. So, have the events in Iran just been exaggerated or has our access to social media been a valuable insight to what’s really happening on the ground?

”I think the idea of a Twitter revolution is very suspect,” says Gaurav Mishra from 20:20 Webtech. “The amount of people who use these tools in Iran is very small and could not support protests that size.”

I was recently quoted in AJC in a story on Iran’s ‘Twitter Revolution’ –

Some, however, think the importance of Twitter is being overblown. Among them is social media blogger Gaurav Mishra. He wrote last week that the actual number of Twitter users in Iran was small, and that Twitter reports, rather than being an organizing tool for the protesters, mainly helped focus international media attention on the protests.

I have previously written about why the term Twitter Revolution is already a cliche, after Moldova and Iran.

Here is the full text of the story –

‘Net effect: Social media aid uprising

Staff and news services

Sunday, June 21, 2009

Media control

Iran’s government controls its traditional media: newspapers, radio and television. Atop the government are the Islamic clerics of the Guardian Council and the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khameini, who supports incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The government also controls access to the country by foreign media.

As the presidential campaign unfolded, supporters of reform candidates Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi turned to Internet-driven social media such as Twitter, Facebook and Flickr to get out their messages and to organize. Ahmadinejad was considered a prohibitive favorite for re-election, but as polls showed Mousavi gaining support, the government temporarily shut down access to the social networking sites.

I had the great pleasure of spending a week with Dave Evans, the best-selling author of “Social Media Marketing: An Hour a Day”, as we traveled across the country to conduct three full-day social media marketing workshops in Delhi, Bangalore and Mumbai.

The workshops were organized by my partner Sunil Agarwal’s public relations firm 20:20 Media. We had a full house at all the three workshops and it was the perfect setting to launch our new social media company 20:20 WebTech.

Sunil started off the workshops with an overview of what to expect and I briefly talked about my 4Cs social media framework. Then, Dave took over and gave a great conceptual and practical perspective on how to use social media technologies, in strategic and tactical ways, to achieve business objectives.

The workshops were attended by communications, public relations, advertising and marketing professionals, including some Chief Marketing Officers.

Several attendees live-tweeted the workshop and said good things about us –

- In Delhi: @aakriti, @_anshul, @naukri, @smrite, @srivastavanitin, @palinn, @arushsogani, @shrutigupta7, @vidhithakur

- In Bangalore: @jessie_paul, @hardrockk, @zeitgeisthuntin, @dhempe @meher_taj, @rahkulk, @ashw1n, @santoshmaharshi, @vidder911

- In Mumbai: @primaveron, @swatidwivedi, @mysti, @gitaagarwal, @krushant

I was recently interviewed by Elisabeth Eaves at Forbes on a story on why there is no ‘Twitter Revolution’ in Iran –

In Iran, too, Twitter is probably much less useful as an initial planning tool than are private channels like e-mail, text messaging and voice telephone calls. The social media site certainly doesn’t account for getting everyone into the streets–going into the election there were only about 10,000 Iranian Twitter users, by Mishra’s estimate, whereas since then hundreds of thousands of people have protested each day.

What Twitter and Facebook can do is spread information to large groups. In any crisis, that’s important, both to the participants and to the outside world. But what is the true value of Iranian tweets? On one hand, they are more valuable than crisis tweets would be in a country with a free press, because they are one of the few sources of information the government has not found a way to control. During the terrorist attack on Mumbai hotels in 2008, plenty of Indians tweeted about the events. But, Mishra observes, “in India people were actually watching news on television, not Twitter. In Iran … social media are the only things you have.”

I was recently quoted in an MSNBC story on Iran’s Twitter Revolution –

In fact, there’s a danger in giving too much emphasis to the role played by online media in Iran’s political crisis, said Gaurav Mishra, co-founder of 20:20 Web Tech, a social media research and analytics company.

“Calling what’s happening in Iran a ‘Twitter Revolution’ is not only distracting but also dangerous,” he wrote on his blog, “because it reduces a legitimate broad-based grassroots movement to what’s quickly becoming a cliche.”

I recently did an interview with Worldfocus on Iran’s ‘Twitter Revolution’. The Skype video didn’t really work, so they have posted the transcript of the interview instead.

It is a little too stream of consciousness, but capture my views on what tools like Twitter and Facebook can or cannot do in an international crisis situation like the Iran protest or the Mumbai terrorist attacks.

Here is the full text of the interview –

Iran’s “Twitter Revolution” — myth or reality?

The Iranian government has restricted all journalists working for foreign news organizations from reporting on the streets of Tehran, where thousands have been gathering to protest the country’s disputed presidential election. What’s been harder to control is social media tools like Twitter, where thousands of users post and share information worldwide.

Gaurav Mishra is the co-founder of social media research and analytics company 20:20 Web Tech and a 2009 Fellow at the Society for New Communications Research. He previously taught social media at Georgetown University and co-founded Vote Report India. He joined Worldfocus to discuss the role of Twitter in the aftermath of Iran’s election.

Worldfocus: What role has Twitter played in the aftermath of Iran’s election? Has there been a “Twitter Revolution”?

I was interviewed recently by Associated Press on a story on Iran’s ‘Twitter Revolution’ –

Gaurav Mishra, the 2008-09 Yahoo Fellow at Georgetown University, said he hasn’t seen any evidence in past events such as the Moldova elections that Twitter was the dominant way people are organizing.

“It’s sometimes difficult to differentiate the hype from the media,” he said. “Just because people are tweeting about something doesn’t mean that there’s actually coordination involved.”

The story was also reproduced in The Guardian, The Independent, The Age, Sydney Morning Herald, CBS News, Forbes, Huffington Post and Boston Globe.

I have previously written about why the term Twitter Revolution is already a cliche, after Moldova and Iran.

I was interviewed today for a really well-researched story in BusinessWeek on why it’s misleading to call the post-election protests in Iran a Twitter Revolution.

“I think the idea of a Twitter revolution is very suspect,” says Gaurav Mishra, co-founder of 20:20 WebTech, a company that analyzes the effects of social media. “The amount of people who use these tools in Iran is very small and could not support protests that size.”

Mishra, who has organized social media activism campaigns for elections in India, says the main reason to use the tools is the attention it generates in the international media. Indeed, one of Twitter’s primary contributions in the Iranian elections has been to raise awareness of the issue among tech-savvy users outside the country.

“Political organizers use these tools because they create a multiplier effect—not only do you get a story about the campaign but then you also get a story about the fact they are using social-networking tools,” Mishra says. “So you get two stories for the price of one. The international media loves [the] social-networking world. But in India or in Iran, their use is still somewhat limited.”