The social media world has proven that, though still a young and small community within a multitude of industries, we have the power to exact great change. But what about change for the greater good? Social Media for Social Change was born of the idea that the social media community, these “agents of change” can get together for one night, to support one cause.

The first SM4SC event will take place on October 10 at Boston (Eventbrite) to raise funds to benefit Jane Doe Inc. , a Boston-based anti-domestic violence organization.

You can follow SM4SC on Twitter/ MySpace/ Facebook/ LiveJournal/ Flickr or on their blog.

I like the idea of SM4SC but I’m wondering if it will scale.

What do you think? How would you use social media for social change?

Posted on Gauravonomics Blog

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It’s basically a cool unconference where people talk about interesting things they are doing, or things they are really passionate about.

The Interesting unconference is the brainchild of Russel Davies and his colleagues at the Open Intelligence Agency. The previous Interesting events have been held at Sydney, Amsterdam and London. The New York event is being hosted by David Nottoli and it was because of Jinal Shah’s thoughtfulness that I came to know of it.

The list of previous speakers at Interesting unconferences includes some very smart people and Grant McCracken is one of the speakers at Interesting New York. Grant McCracken is one of my favorite thinkers about culture and marketing and I can’t tell you how excited I am about finally getting to meet him.

If you are in New York on September 13, I would strongly urge you to join us at the unconference. You can follow Interesting New York on Twitter or register for it on Facebook.

Posted on Gauravonomics Blog

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‘The Age of Conversation’ Collaborative Book

‘The Age of Conversation’ is a one-of-a-kind collaborative book conceived by Drew Mclellan and Gavin Heaton -

- 100 authors. We’re a few but need more.
- The overriding topic is “The Age of Conversation” — where you take it is up to you.
- The items are short - one 8.5″ x 11″ page — it can be words, diagrams, photos (again up to you) If it is words - about 400, give or take a couple.
- We write it quickly and get it out there. We publish electronically.
- We make it available online for a small fee and we donate 100% of the proceeds to Variety — the children’s charity.

Over 100 of the world’s leading marketers, writers, thinkers and creative innovators responded to their call, resulting in a unique one-of-a-kind project, which first became an e-book, then a self-published book on Lulu, and now a potential best-seller on Amazon.

I was fortunate to be a part of the project and I’ll always look back at ‘The Age of Conversation’ as my first book.

Three Reasons You Should Buy ‘The Age of Conversation’ on Amazon Today

Now, all of us are trying to push ‘The Age of Conversation’ to the top of the Amazon best-sellers lists through another path-breaking collaborative project — The Age of Conversation Bum Rush –

With the infinite amount of social sites and connections on the web… the idea is to generate as many touch points around the web as possible so that it will be hard not to spot the Age of Conversation activity.

Before I tell you how you can help, here are three reasons you should buy ‘The Age of Conversation’ on Amazon today –

1. You’ll be the proud owner of a one-of-its-kind collaborative book with insights from over 100 of the world’s leading marketers, writers, thinkers and creative innovators.

2. You’ll help a good cause because all proceeds from the book will go to Variety, the children’s charity.

3. The book, and the bum rush to promote it, is a live case study on social media collaboration. By participating in the project, you’ll become a part of the social media history.

Now that you have made up your mind to buy your copy of ‘The Age of Conversation’ on Amazon, here are three other ways in which you can help us –

1. Ask your friends to buy ‘The Age of Conversation’ on Amazon today itself.

2. Blog about ‘The Age of Conversation’ and ‘The Age of Conversation Bum Rush’.

3. Share the Amazon link for ‘The Age of Conversation’ on social media sites like Digg, StumbleUpon, Del.icio.us, Facebook and Twitter.

All the authors and well-wishers of ‘The Age of Conversation’ will be grateful for your help.

‘The Age of Conversation’ Author List

Here’s a complete alphabetical list of the contributors with links to their blogs -

- AJ James

- Amy Jussel from ‘Shaping Youth: Media and Marketing’s Influence on Kids’.

- Andy Nulman from ‘Pow! Right Between the Eyes!: Andy Nulman’s Blog About Surprise’.

- Ann Handley from ‘Marketing Profs: Daily Fix’.

- Anna Farmery from ‘The Engaging Brand Blog’.

- Arun Rajagopal from ‘Arjun Rajagopal’.

- Becky Carroll from ‘Customers Rock!: A blog about how businesses make their customer experiences rock!’.

- Bob Glaza from ‘One Reader at a Time: Why not bite off more than you can chew?’.

- Bob Hruzek from ‘Middle Zone Musings’.

- Brian Reich from ‘Thinking About Media’.

- Cam Beck from ‘ChaosScenario: Providing information, insight and commentary on marketing in a new age.’

- Carolyn Manning from ‘Thoughts & Philosophies: Business thoughts, business philosophies’.

- C. B. Whittemore from ‘Flooring the Consumer’.

- Cedric Giorgi from ‘Carnet Web de Cedric Giorgi: Don’t Be Famous, Be Useful!’.

- Chris Corrigan from ‘Parking Lot: Cultivating an open space worldview in everyday practice’.

- Chris Newlan from ‘Talking Point: Sharing ideas and encouraging debate on media and public relations trends’.

- CK from ‘CK’s Blog’.

- Colin McKay from ‘Canuckflack: It’s about public relations, marketing, retail quirks, government communications and oddities’.

- Connie Reece from ‘Every Dot Connetcs: Connection through conversation’.

- Cord Silverstein from ‘Marketing Hipster: Understanding the Relationship between the Marketers and the Market’.

- Craig Wilson from ‘Sticky Advertising: Make your advertising sticky’.

- David Armano from ‘Logic+Emotion: Creativity, insights, ideas’.

- David Berkowitz from ‘Inside the Marketers Studio - David Berkowitz’s Marketing Blog’.

- David Brazeal from ‘JournaMarketing: Doing great journalism to sell your ideas, your organization and even yourself’.

- David Koopmans from ‘Business of Marketing and Branding: Making sense of Marketing and Branding in the Information Age’.

- David Pollinchock form The Experience Economist: Brand Experience Lab’.

- David Reich from ‘My 2 Cents: Musings on marketing, media, public relations and life’.

- Dr. Graham Hill from ‘Customer Think’.

- Drew McLellan from ‘Drew’s Marketing Minute: Where Strategy and Passion Collide’.

- Dustin Jacobsen from ‘Shake Gently: A Technologist’s View on the World of Advertising’.

- Ed Cotton from ‘Influx Insights’.

- Emily Clasper from Library Revolution.

- Emily Reed from Conformists Unite: Celebrating the unique and personal in business’.

- Faris Yakob from ‘Talent Imitates, Genius Steals: Some naked thoughts on brands, media, communication and technology’.

- Gareth Kay from Brand New: Thoughts on brands and communication’.

- Gary Schoeniger from ‘Innovation & Entrepreneurship: Insights, Ideas & Inspiration’.

- Gaurav Mishra from ‘Gauravonomics Blog: Gaurav Mishra’s Weblog on Marketing, Technology and Social Media ‘.

- Gavin Heaton from ‘Servant of Chaos’.

- Geert Desager from ‘Brandopia: Musings on marketing, communication and technology’.

- Gia Facchini from ‘Biz and Buzz’.

- Greg Verdino from ‘Greg Verdino’.

- Jamey Shiels from ‘Walk On: Interactive branding, new marketing and social media in the new world’.

- Janet Green from ‘Marketing Ideas Blog: Small Business Marketing Ideas’.

- Jessica Hagy from ‘Indexed’.

- Jim Kukral from ‘Marketing Ideas Online’.

- Joe Raasch from ‘The Happy Burro: Intelligent Facts. Brilliant Ideas.’.

- John La Grou from ‘Millenia Music & Media Systems’.

- Jordan Behan from ‘Tell Ten Friends: Marketing the will Start a Conversation’.

- Julie Fleischer from ‘Innovation Ecosystem’.

- Karl Long from ‘Experience Curve: The Experience Is The Marketing’.

- Katie Chatfield from ‘Get Shouty’.

- Kim Klaver from ‘New School of Network Marketing’.

- Kimberly Dawn Wells from Kimberly Dawn Wells

- Kofl Annan from ‘Annansi Chronicles: African Style Worldwide’.

- Kris Hoet from ‘Cross the Breeze’.

- Krishna De from ‘Krishna De’s Biz Growth News’.

- Kristin Gorski from ‘Write Now is Good: Words, Sweat & Inspiration’.

- Lewis Green from ‘BizSolutionsPlus: Featuring Solutions to Grow Your Business’.

- Lori Magno from ‘Moda di Magno - Blog for Stylish Living’.

- Mack Collier from ‘The Viral Garden’.

- Mario Vellandi from ‘Melodies in Marketing’.

- Mark Blair from ‘SMOBlog:A safari into the jungles of Social Media Optimization and Marketing’.

- Mark Earls from ‘Herd - The hidden truth about who we are’.

- Mark Goren from ‘Transmission: Content+Creative’.

- Matt Dickman from ‘Techno//Marketer: Exploring the convergence of marketing and technology’.

- Michael Morton from ‘Marketing Monster’.

- Mike Sansone from ‘ConverStations: Business Blogs as Conversation Stations’.

- Luc Debaisieux from ‘Mindblob’.

- Mitch Joel from ‘Twist Image’.

- Nathan Snell from ‘GiddleBits’.

- Nick Rice from ‘Strategic Design: marketing & branding thoughts by Nick Rice’.

- Nick Wright from ‘Vir(tu)al Marketing and Media: How is social media affecting the world of advertising?’.

- Patrick Schaber from ‘The Lonely Marketer: A discussion for the small business marketing manager’.

- Paul McEnany from ‘Hee Haw Marketing’.

- Pete Deutschman from ‘The Buddy Group’.

- Peter Corbett from ‘Blattner Brunner’.

- Phil Gerbyshak from ‘Make it Great! with Phil Gerbyshak’.

- Richard Huntington from ‘Ad Literate: Radical thinking for the brand advice business’.

- Rishi Desai from ‘Gumptious Design’.

- Roberta Rosenberg from ‘Copywriting Maven’.

- Roger Anderson from ‘Modern Magellans’.

- Roger von Oech from ‘Creative Think’.

- Ron Shevlin from ‘Marketing ROI’.

- Ryan Barrett from ‘Cheap Thrills’.

- Ryan Rasmussen from ‘Collaborative Ideation’.

- Sandy Renshaw from ‘Purple Wren: Tools & techniques for business communication’.

- Scott Monty from ‘The Social Media Marketing Blog’.

- Sean Howard from ‘CrapHammer’.

- Simon Payn from ‘Effective Customer Newsletters’.

- Spike Jones from ‘Brains on Fire’.

- Stanley Johnson from ‘Brand DNA’.

- Steve Bannister from ‘SBannister’.

- Steve Roesler from ‘All Thimgs Workplace’.

- Steve Woodruff from ‘StickyFigure’.

- Susan Willet Bird ‘Smart Talk on COnversation’.

- Tim Jackson from ‘Masi Guy’.

- Toby Bloomberg from ‘Diva Marketing Blog’.

- Todd Andrlik from Todd and the Power to Connect’.

- Tom Clifford from ‘Director Tom’s Blog’.

- Tony D. Clark from ‘Success from the Nest’.

- Troy Worman from ‘Troy Worman’s OrbitNow!:Don’t wait for permission to succeed!’

- Uwe Hook from ‘Uwe’s Blog: Real Life 1.0 meets Web 2.0′.

- Valeria Maltoni from ‘Conversation Agent: Connecting Ideas and People’.

So, what are you waiting for?

Be a part of social media history: buy the one-of-a-kind ‘The Age of Conversation’ collaborative book on Amazon today and the proceeds will go to Variety, the children’s charity.

We started the day ranked #10282 on Amazon and ended it ranked #262 on books and #36 on business and investing books. That’s a jump of over 100000 ranks in one day!

On behalf of all the 103 ‘The Age of Conversation authors, I thank everyone who bought a copy of the book, or helped promote the book. We are deeply grateful to you.

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I had great fun yesterday live-tweeting the Effective Consumer Engagement conference organized in Mumbai by the World Federation of Advertisers (tweet). I must have received 20+ reactions to my WFA conference tweets yesterday (tweet) and we would have had some great conversations if my mobile phone had tabbed browsing: one for typing tweets on Twitter, the other for tracking @gauravonomics replies on Terraminds (tweet). My friends Ashish also live-tweeted the conference, making it probably a first for a mainstream non-tech event in India (tweet).

As WFA has its Executive Committee, AGM, and Board meetings in Mumbai today, more than half the speakers and delegates at the conference were from outside India. This provided me an opportunity to experience first hand if CEOs/ CMOs in India approach consumer engagement differently from their international counterparts. It turned out that they do.

The international speakers talked about using the tools provided by new/ social media to build consumer engagement in a networked economy. The Indian speakers talked about consumer engagement in the perspective of in terms of hands-on touch-the-consumer insights (tweet) and corporate social responsibility (tweet).

My hypothesis is that most Indian marketers, especially CEOs/ CMOs, don’t quite understand consumer engagement in a networked economy. The concept of “touching” the consumer in the digital/ networked/ social media world (as opposed to the physical world) isn’t yet intuitive for Indian CEOs/ CMOs (tweet). Indian CEOs/ CMOs intuitively understand the idea of engaging with communities, but they still can’t visualize virtual/ networked communities (tweet). This provides a great opportunity for someone like me to act as a bridge between the “real” world (which corporate India is squarely focused on) and the “virtual” tomorrow (which the real world will soon transition to).

Here is a summary of the key points that were discussed in yesterday’s conference –

“Role of Intuition in Consumer Engagement”
R Gopalkrishnan, Executive Director, Tata Sons

- The value being added by marketers in the organizations is increasingly being questioned (tweet) because marketers with Western Anglo-Saxon educations have started relying on data at the cost of a hands-on intuitive understanding of the consumer (tweet).

- The key to building an intuitive understanding of consumers is by immersion followed by reflection (tweet). He gave really funny examples of how a non-intuitive analytical understanding of consumers can lead to misguided marketing initiatives (tweet). He played a fascinating spoof video play-acted by the top management of Tanishq that showed how marketers have an almost narcissistic tendency to focus on marketing to the consumer at the cost of really understanding the consumer (tweet). Also, when I meet you next, do remind me to tell you the story of the knotted underwears and the failed detergent launch in Goa (tweet).

“The Changing Face of Consumer Expectations” (PPT)
Keith Pardy, Senior VP Nokia Strategic Marketing

- Humans think in terms to straight lines but nature thinks in terms of networks (tweet). The networked world means the end of demographics (tweet). The networked world is about transparency and trust, but trust is at its lowest level ever (tweet). This provides a great opportunity to differentiate on the basis of trust.

- Corporations broadcast and consumers connect. Nokia want to change that and co-create with its consumers (tweet). This is because brands that do not work on improving the world and our lives will be ‘edited out’ of our lives (tweet).

- Mobile phones are the seventh mass medium, after print, recordings, radio, cinema, TV and the computer. More people today will, in fact, do without a TV than a phone (tweet).

- Social marketing intelligence will be the black hole of the twenty first century. There will be too much data and the key will be to make sense of it (tweet).

“Creating a Culture of Brand Engagement” (PPT)
Grace Molenaar. Global Brand Engagement, Vodafone

- Vodafone puts the brand at the centre of the consumer experience. The brand is the central organising principle that drives performance, culture, experience and action across all stakeholders, including consumers, channel partners and employees.

- “A brand is what a brand does.” - Arun Sarin, CEO Vodafone

“Awards and Business Building Advertising - hand in hand”
Prasoon Joshi, Chairman and Regional Creative Director, South & South Asia, McCann Erickson

“Engaging the Consumer 360°” (PPT)
Jon Wilkins, Co-Founder, Naked Communications

- Brands need to treat people as partners not as targets (tweet).

- Instead of spreading your communication thin based on “moments planning”, you need to find a center of gravity for your campaign (tweet).

- W.r.t. the analog vs. digital debate, digital is not a channel, to which a budget needs to be allocated, it’s a way to behave and consume and share (tweet).

- The agency of the future will be built around specialists collaborating on the fly (tweet).

“Engagement Driven By Consumer Insight… and Beyond”
Gunjan Srivastava, Sr Director - Marketing, Philips Consumer Lifestyle

“Consumer-Centric Holistic Measurement” (PPT)
Stephan Loerke, Managing Director, World Federation of Advertisers

- Mass media has become increasingly fragmented and viewers’ engagement levels have decreased. Only 5% of the viewers watch TV ads and 30% of the viewers watch TV while reading the newspaper (tweet).

- The idea is not to replace traditional media with digital media. The idea is to measure communication across a number of media vehicles, both analog and digital, to see what works and what doesn’t (tweet). The Apollo project in the USA (tweet), the Touchpoints project in the UK (tweet) and the Mediametrie project in France are examples of such a consumer centric holistic measurement approach.

“Measuring Marketing ROI” (PPT)
Steve Simpson, Head, Group M Business Science

- While marketing spend as a percentage of sales has increased over the last three decades, most of the increase in marketing spends has gone into short term trade promotions, as trade promotions are measurable (tweet). Now, similar accountability is being demanded from marketing spend focused on long term brand building.

- Marketers require marketing effectiveness frameworks that deliver speed of insight, a 360 view of business, ongoing RoI capability and actionability. A well-designed Marketing Console allows marketers to track performance against all objectives and KPIs in real time, understand business drivers, their importance and profitability in the short and long term and simulate, and optimize, the business outcome of alternative spending scenarios.

“With Engagement Comes Responsibility” (PPT)
Julie Howden, Nutrition and Public Affairs Senior Advisor, Kellogg Asia

- Brands need to earn the right to engage with consumers. Packaged food brands are doing this by re-engineering their products to improve their nutritional value, educating consumers about fitness and nutrition, and desisting from targeting ads at young children.

“Synergising Rational and Emotional Consumer Brand Benefit with Social Benefit” (PPT)
Doug Baillie, CEO, Hindustan Unilever Ltd.

- Earlier, brand building used to be about product, promise and value. Now, apart from being relevant, affordable and accessible, brands also need to stand for values, provide meaning and benefit the society.

- Brands and companies need to synergise rational and emotional benefits with social benefits. Hindustan Unilever Limited does this through their rural micro-credit program called Shakti and their rural personal hygiene education program called Lifebuoy Swasthya Chetana (tweet).

Also see: Agencyfaqs 1, Agencyfaqs 2, Agencyfaqs 3, The Financial Express, The Hindu Business Line, Exchange4Media 1, Exchange4Media 2.

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In Mumbai? On Twitter? Let’s meet up.

Here are the details of the next Mumbai Twitter Meetup —

Date: Sunday, March 2, 2008
Time: 11:30am - 3:30pm
Location: White, Off Link Road, Near VIBGYOR School, Goregaon, Mumbai, India

Aditya, who owns the Italian restaurant White, has graciously offered to give us 50% discount on food for the meetup.

So, what are you waiting for? If you aren’t already on Twitter, go sign up Twitter, then start following me @Gauravonomics, Aditya at @acmhatre and Mumbai Twitter Meet at @MumbaiTwit.

You can register for the event by registering on the Facebook Mumbai Twitter Meetup Event, sending a message to @MumbaiTwit, or leaving a comment below.

Remember: Each one, tweet one (that is, get an interesting friend to sign-up for Twitter and come to the meetup).

Also See: Details of first Mumbai Twitter Meetup.

It was a full house at the Mumbai Twitter Meetup today with as many as sixteen people turning up at Aditya Mhatre’s beautiful Italian restaurant White.

Brajeshwar brought along a really fancy Nikon D40X camera, amongst assorted cool gadgets, and you can see the rest of the photos from the tweetup at his Mumbai Twitter Meetup set on Flickr.

From my interactions, in tweetups or otherwise, I have seen that most active Twitter users in India are quite tech-savvy with an impressive web presence. Therefore, tweetups often turn into great networking opportunities, and today’s tweetup too had its share of “let’s network!” conversations –

What do you think of my latest (really cool) Wordpress plug-in?

I’ll do a review of your (really cool) startup on my blog tomorrow!

Why don’t we do this (really cool) vidcast series together?

Have you heard of this (really cool) startup funded by this (really cool) angel investor?

Someone should create a (really cool) CrunchBoard for India!

We should meet up later this week and discuss the latest (really cool) trends in enterprise 2.0!

Other much discussed topics included Ideasmith’s “gangster moll” boots, Aditya Mishra’s fancy “entrepreneur-in-residence” job title, Preshit’s pre-exam preparations, Saket’s new improved “20% more human” look, Aditya Mhatre’s Olympic sized swimming pool, Werner’s booming voice, Netra’s networking expertise, Brajeshwar’s Adobe-branded towel-hanger and my extremely modest and private disposition.

You can also watch videos of Aditya Mishra talking about Second Life and IdeaSmith and Werner discussing why women bloggers get easy attention.

So, in the spirit of my earlier post on seven reasons why you should join Twitter today, and at considerable risk of raising several eyebrows (raised eyebrows often translate into linkbacks, so that’s precisely the plan), let me give you one reason why you should come to the next @MumbaiTwit tweetup –

@MumbaiTwit tweetup = BarCamp - presentations + great food + great wine + great conversations

Since my own claim to fame nowadays seem to be hosting meetups (Mumbai Twitter Meetup and Mumbai Bloggers Meetup) and making introductions (tweet1, tweet2, tweet3, tweet4), let me reproduce my (really cool) introductions of the (really cool) people who attended today’s tweetup –

- VeerChand Bothra is at the center of India’s mobile boom, as MobilePundit, as organizer of Mumbai Mobile Mondays and as VP at NetCore Solutions. Blog, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

- Aditya Mishra has the fancy title of Entrepreneur-in-Residence at TCS, which means that he sponsors BarCamps as part of his day job and hobnobs with entrepreneurs and venture capitalists otherwise. Blog, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

- Brajeshwar Oinam is the first Indian to become an Adobe Community Expert and one of the few Indian bloggers I know who write about technology with real authority. Blog, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

- Saket Vaidya is one of India’s original A-list bloggers and, in his Webchutney avatar, one of the few people in India who have worked first-hand with viral marketing, Facebook apps and social media monitoring. Blog, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

- Aditya Mhatre is India’s leading podcaster at Indicast and also the owner of the beautiful Italian restaurant White, the venue of today’s tweetup. Blog, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

- Ideasmith, aka R****, strangles people who mention both her identities in the same sentence. Otherwise, she tracks the desi blogosphere at DesiPundit. Blog, Facebook and Twitter.

- Aalaap Ghag, a developer at Web 18, is also India’s most prolific Twitter user (3400+ tweets!) and the creator of the (really cool) link aggregator LinkBunch. Blog, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

- Kirti Kapoor is Knowledge Management manager at Frost & Sullivan and an enterprise 2.0 enthusiast. Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

- Arunima Lad is a researcher at Accenture and an enterprise 2.0 enthusiast. Facebook and LinkedIn.

- Asfaq Tapia is a self-confessed geek who tracks the Indian Internet industry at Alootechie. Blog, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

- Preshit Deorukhkar is the Community and Content Manager at Burrp! and IndiaGSM. Blog 1, Blog 2, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

- Aditi Gupta is an entrepreneur who develops social media marketing strategy for startups. Blog, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

- Netra Parikh is the business manager at Digital Marketing Institute run by Mahesh Murthy’s PinStorm. Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

- Werner Egipsy Souza handles mobile and business development at digital marketing agency BC Web Wise. Blog, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

- Samir Makwana is a PlayStation fanatic who writes for Digit magazine. Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

- Yours truly sells cars for a living. Blog, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

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Invite designed by Melody

When: Saturday, February 16, 2008 at 8:00pm
Where: A/65, Sea Lord, Opp Taj President, Cuffe Parade, Bombay, India

Peruvian-Colombian blogger Juliana Rincon Parra is the Latin America and Video-Blogging editor on Global Voices. She is also great fun to spend an evening with (based on first hand recent experience).

Here’s an opportunity for you to meet up with her and discuss the state of Latina American blogosphere, the nuances of video-blogging, or just hang out.

You can find out more about Juliana at her Global Voices profile or her Facebook profile.

What’s more, here’s a bonus for the regulars at my parties. Unlike the usual party at my place, where I spend most of the time cooking dishes or mixing drinks, I’ll not enter the kitchen at all. So, not only can you spend time with Juliana, you can also (finally) spend time with me.

The event is free and pizza and wine/ beer is on the house. Bring along a nice bottle of wine, if you must, but otherwise, just bring along your blogger friends and your sense of fun.

If you are not in Mumbai, let me know you are coming to the event by adding a comment below, registering for the event on Facebook, pinging me on Twitter, sending me an e-mail, or calling me up at +919223366624.

If you are not in Mumbai, please pass along the invite — e-mail, blog, tweet or share on Facebook — to your Mumbai blogger friends.

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Yesterday, when I tweeted about wanting to do a Mumbai Twitter Meetup —

Blog meets are so passe. I want to do a Mumbai Twitter meet. Anyone interested? (Twitter)

– I received half a dozen responses within seconds.

Within the hour, I had set up a @MumbaiTwit Twitter account, a dozen people had started following it, Aalaap Ghag (@aalaap) and Kapil Bhatia (@kapilb) had posted about the event and Aalaap had set up a Mumbai Twitter Meetup event on Facebook. Phew!

So, if you are in Mumbai and on Twitter, let’s meet up for the first Mumbai Twitter Meetup.

When? 5 pm, Saturday, December 29, 2007.

Where? Flat No A/65, Sea Lord, Cuffe Parade, Mumbai.

If you are planning to attend, here are a few things you should do in the run up to the event –

- Register for the event by following @MumbaiTwit on Twitter, joining the Mumbai Twitter Meetup event on Facebook, or leaving a comment below. Better still, do all three!

- Promote the event by tweeting about the event, or posting about it, or displaying the event poster or the event logo on your blog. Do remember to include a link to @MumbaiTwit on Twitter and the Mumbai Twitter Meetup event on Facebook in your post.

- Evangelize Twitter and get five interesting people — and I mean really interesting people — who aren’t yet on Twitter to sign-up for Twitter, then invite them for the event. If you want, use this post to explain to them what Twitter is and why they should sign up for it.

- Tweet your ideas for cool things to do for the event. I’ll collect them and put them up for voting. The best idea will get a surprize. Do remember to include a @MumbaiTwit in your tweets for me to track them.

For the event itself, here are a few thoughts to start you off –

- The venue of the event is my house. If more than 30 people sign up for the event, we’ll put our heads together and tweet up a new public venue. This, however, looks unlikely, as of now.

- The event is totally free. I’ll arrange for snacks, beer and wine and we can order pizza for dinner. You don’t need to pay anything, or bring anything, but I’ll not say no to a nice bottle of wine.

- I only have jazz, classic rock and ghazals on my iPod. If you want to listen to something else, bring your own iPod. If enough people being their iPods, we can take turns at playing music and even do an impromptu contest and give a surprize for the ‘Best iJ’.

- Wear all blue. Twitter is blue and my living room curtains/ cushions/ rugs are also blue. All of us in blue against my blue curtains will make for an interesting group photo op. We can even have a surprize for the person whose blue clothes are closest shade to the Twitter blue.

- If one of you can arrange for a projector, we can tweet during the event from our mobile phones and project the tweet-stream on a wall. Once again, we can have a surprize for the best tweet during the event.

So, what are you waiting for? Go register now.

If you aren’t yet on Twitter, you probably don’t know what Twitter is (otherwise, you would have been on Twitter). It’s difficult to explain Twitter to someone who hasn’t used it first hand, but I’ll explain it by drawing analogies with seven other services you might have used. Then, I’ll give you seven reasons to try it out today.

- #1 Twitter is Like a Blog: The most obvious comparison, of course, is with blogging (in fact, Twitter is basically a micro-blogging platform). Think of Twitter as a blog in which your posts can only be upto 140 letters long. Like blogs (Technorati), Twitter has its own hierarchies, and top 100 lists, (Twitterholic and Tweetboard). What’s more, like blogs (Google Blog Search), Twitter also has its own search engine (TweetScan).

- #2 Twitter is Like a Social Network: If you haven’t ever blogged, you have probably used a social networking site. If you like Orkut — and who in India doesn’t — think of Twitter as your scrapbook, only better, because it not only shows what your friends are saying to you and you to them, it also shows what they are saying to each others and to total strangers. If you like Facebook, think of Twitter as your news feed, only better, because it not only shows what your friends are doing, it also allows you to tag them using @username and have conversations with them.

- #3 Twitter is Like a Chat Room:If you haven’t used either blogs or social networks, you would probably have used a chat room. If you like chatting, Twitter is perfect for you, because Twitter becomes like a chat room when you have a few hundred friends who are also friends with each other.

- #4 Twitter is Like a Feed Reader: If you are obsessive about staying on top of news and read hundreds of feeds on your feed reader, you’ll love Twitter because news and blog posts get shared on Twitter faster than anywhere else.

- #5 Twitter is Like a Forum: If you have a few hundred friends, Twitter becomes a forum for topics related to technology, marketing and social media. If you have a problem, or, if you need some advise, you send our a tweet, and a few dozen people would reply to you immediately.

- #6 Twitter is Like a Search Engine: Because Twitter works so well as a forum for topics like technology, marketing and social media, some people even use it as a people powered search engine. And, trust me, for some terms, Twitter almost works as efficiently as Google.

- #7 Twitter is like a SMS Service: Finally, even if you aren’t the online sort of person, you are probably as much into SMSing as everyone else. Twitter works brilliantly well on mobile phones and you can send and receive updates from your mobile phone, either through WAP or through SMS.

Now that I have explained what Twitter is, here are the seven reasons you should join Twitter today, if you already haven’t –

Reason #1: Twitter is many things in one — it is a blog, a social network, a chat room, a feed reader, a forum, a people-powered search engine and an SMS service all at once. What more can you ask for?

Reason #2: As influential early adopters are spending more time on Twitter, conversations are increasingly shifting to Twitter, especially conversations about web 2.0, technology and marketing.

Reason #3: Twitter is a great place to promote ideas amongst these early adopters. Although I have never actively promoted my blog on Twitter, more than 10% of my traffic comes from Twitter.

Reason #4: Twitter is a great place to make new connections, and not only with people who are on Twitter. Yesterday, a Twitter friend in the US introduced me by e-mail to a blogger-marketer in India who isn’t even on Twitter.

Reason #5: Twitter allows you to decide if you want your updates to be public or private. So, you can use it as a public document or as a private diary.

Reason #6: Twitter works brilliantly as a scrapbook for developing a thought thread. I do it so often that I have started a separate category on my blog for Twitter Threads.

Reason #7: The most important reason for joining Twitter is also the one reason for not joining Twitter — it is very very addictive. But when has that stopped us from doing anything?

So, what are you waiting for? If you aren’t already on Twitter, go sign up Twitter, then start following me @Gauravonomics and register for the Mumbai Twitter Meet by following @MumbaiTwit. Then come to the event, make a bunch of new friends, and get dozens of followers.

End of post/ pitch. I’ll see you on Twitter.

Had fun at @MumbaiTwit last night. Nine people turned up, several more SMSed, called, tweeted, registered but didn’t finally make it. (link)

In order of appearance at @MumbaiTwit: yours truly, @ranjanvarma, @vulturo, @kapilb, @aalaap, @adityamishra, @namithaj, @zynx & @rochit. (link)

We drank wine & talked about social graph portability, Facebook application spam, the right format for barcamps, web2.0/ mobile startups… (link)

was in & out of the kitchen & made a dozen plus dishes. Everything I cooked was finished, so I’m assuming it wasn’t a disaster. (link)

Then @Vulturo & I sat up till 3 am & chalked up the business plan for our “why hasn’t anybody else thought of it yet?” startup. (link)

So, I had a great time at @MumbaiTwit, met some old friends, made some new friends, ate, drank, talked. I hope others had a good time too. (link)

Namitha has written a story about the @MumbaiTwit in LiveMint –

Pocket-sized social networking

Twitter is the latest social media platform to catch the fancy of users worldwide, and allows a person to post real- time updates called “tweets”

Mumbai: India had its first Twitter meet last Saturday, when a bunch of working professionals met up at an apartment in uptown Mumbai to talk about their love for the Web application that lets you tell the world about your life and thoughts in 140 characters.
Twitter is the latest social media platform to catch the fancy of users worldwide, and allows a person to post real- time updates called “tweets”, via mobile and instant messaging on its website, which can then be shared with other users. In turn, a user tracks tweets posted by others.

Gaurav Mishra, who hosted the meet, likes to follow everyone who posts on Twitter. For half an hour every day, on weekdays, Mishra reads all the latest updates on the site.

Twitter, which began as a research project within San Francisco-based start-up Obvious Llc. in late 2006, picked up users rapidly in the months that followed. That Twitter is in its early days in India is evident—only nine people turned up for the meet.

Mishra estimates there are less than 2,000 users in India. Most users have been early adopters of social media platforms in the past. Almost everyone at the meet had paid for their own websites long before blogging became free and mainstream.

Discussions revolved around the Twitter ratio, which is a ratio of the number of profiles you track to the number of people who track you. The more popular you are in Twitter circles, the bigger the following. The group also spoke about the charm of Twitter—it is a tool people either love or hate. Each update in itself is trivial, but regularly tracking topics or profiles gives the bigger picture.

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