I’ll not have access to a PC for almost a fortnight, starting August 1, and I was really worried - no blogging for a fortnight! - until I tried blogging from my new Nokia E71 smartphone.

I’m writing this post on my E71 on a Vodaphone GPRS connection.

It’s not the same as writing on a laptop, of course. The Wordpress administrative interface took a couple of minutes to load, the qwerty keyboard is a little cramped, I can’t cut and copy text and doing fancy formatting is somewhat cumbersome.

However, the page download speed is only a little slower than the speed on the Tata Huawei data card attached to my laptop. My typing speed is already quite nifty after a day of playing around with the E71 and I have made almost no typos in the entire post. The qwerty keyboard, in spite of its tiny size, is easy to get used to. The screen resolution is wide enough, without being a wow! factor, and the navigation is never confusing, even if it is sometimes cumbersome. If I really want to, I can even do some really fancy formatting, with a little effort.

Before I tried blogging on the E71, I had spent part of the day surfing the web on it. Most of my usual haunts - GMail, GoogleReader, Facebook and Twitter - work well on the E71, as does search.

The E71 is so internet focused that it seems that the music and the camera functions are an afterthought. But I anyways prefer to use my iPod and Nikon D40 for listening to music and shooting pictures, so that’s ok. The E71 works perfectly for what it’s supposed to do - be a productivity tool.

By the way, I almost forgot to mention that, with its sleek metallic design, the E71 is one stylish productivity tool!

Check out ‘The Marketer Who Went Off Consumption’, India’s first marketing book-as-a-blog. Subscribe to my full feed in a feed reader or by e-mail.

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I have written an article on Twitter — based on my post on seven reasons you should sign up for Twitter today if you already haven’t — in the March issue of Indian magazine Man’s World.

The issue — and the story — isn’t yet up online, but you can click on the scanned picture above to read the story.

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The Idea

For a while now, Rajesh and I have been discussing how business bloggers in India don’t do enough to promote each others’ content. Out of that discussion came the idea of forming a network of influential Indian business bloggers to promote link-worthy posts from Indian business bloggers in the form of a weekly digest published on our respective blogs.

The People

The present members in our network are (in alphabetical order):-

- Gaurav Mishra, that is, yours truly, is a marketer and a social media enthusiast (Blog, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter).

- Palin Ningthoujam is a public relations professional and the founder of India PR Blog (Blog, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter).

- Rajesh Lalwani is the founder of social media agency Blogworks (Blog, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter).

- Ranjan Varma is the writer of personal finance online weekly Personal Finance 2.01 (e-Book, Blog, Facebook and Twitter).

- VeerChand Bothra is at the organizer of Mumbai Mobile Mondays and head of business development at MyToday (Blog, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter).

The Process

Over the week, we share posts between each other, and select a set of 3-5 posts to highlight. The posts can include all business-related topics including marketing, advertising, public relations, human resource management, finance, and entrepreneurship. The idea is to not link to each others’ posts, unless one of us has written a real gem.

Every Monday, all of us link to the same set of posts, with our own unique perspectives on them. By linking to the same posts together, we maximize the benefit we pass on to the linked blogs, both in terms of traffic and Google juice. By providing our multiple unique perspective on the posts, we hope to kick off conversations around these posts in the Indian business blogging community.

The Best of Indian Business Blogs: Weekly Digest 1

- Rashmi Bansal from Youth Curry interviews the young founders of CMYK Health Boutique Private Limited, operating the ‘Four Fountains’ spas

My top-of-the-mind views: Four Fountains is unique because it’s a brick and mortar startup, in a world obsessed with online and mobile. I also like the attitude of the team, their belief that they will make things work once they leave their jobs, their persistence in letting go of their first discount retail chain idea and moving on to the more marketable affordable spa idea. There are learnings in the interview for everyone who wants to become an entrepreneur.

- Namrata Balwani, Business Director, Media2Win on what ails online advertising in India

My top-of-the-mind views: My pet peeve is that agencies approach digital media with the ‘interruption marketing’ paradigm prevalent in traditional media instead of the ‘permission marketing’ mindset that is appropriate for it. I believe that digital media works well for two extreme objectives — generating leads and building communities — and for little in-between.

- Vijay Mahajan of BASIX on why the waiver of mass debt in Indian budget 2008 only benefits large farmers

My top-of-the-mind views: As I said in the Hindustan Times Young India Forum panel discussion, the big question after the Indian Budget 2008 is: where will the money to fund Mr. Chidambaram’s generous budgetary allocations, including the Rs. 60000 cr. debt relief for farmers, come from? The other big question raised in this post is: will the election-motivated debt relief package actually benefit the small farmers it is supposedly meant for?

- Manoj Dawane, Chief Executive Officer, Mauj Mobile on the future of the Indian mobile-VAS industry

My top-of-the-mind views: In future, Mobile VAS will drive not only mobile usage, but also web 2.0 usage. In fact, mobile will be one of the three dimensions of differentiation for Indian web 2.0 startups, including social networking sites.

- Venturewoods, Ashish Sinha from Pluggd, Pranav Dharma from Startup Duniya and Aditya Mishra on the Jason Calacanis “startups need workaholics” controversy.

My top-of-the-mind views: Aditya, Veer and I discussed this topic in our recent podcast with Aditya Mhatre from Indicast. We agreed that startups do need people who are totally passionate about the business and people who work for large organizations are indeed in for a culture shock if they move over to a startup. The big insight was that entrepreneurs should set an example for their teams by being passionate about the business and practicing frugality themselves.

Your Turn Now

We have done our part by starting the conversation. Now, it’s your turn to carry on the conversation by commenting on these posts, linking to these posts in your own blogs, giving us feedback on our idea and execution, or suggesting more posts for our next week’s digest.

Also see: Rajesh Lalwani, Ranjan Varma.

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My First Podcast on Indicast

I had a great time last Sunday recording my first podcast with Aditya Mhatre, Aditya Mishra, VeerChand Bothra (tweet) on why startups need workaholics and why mobile will drive web 2.0 usage in India (tweet).

All three of them have extremely rich backgrounds, resulting in an extremely vibrant discussion —

- Aditya Mhatre is India’s leading podcaster at Indicast (Blog, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter).

- 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 is deeply involved in the startup ecosystem in India through his work (he has the fancy title of Entrepreneur-in-Residence at TCS) and his role as the organizer of BarCamp and Kickstart (Blog, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter).

It was really good fun, like Leo Laporte’s TWiT for India, and Aditya (Mhatre) had a tough time keeping Aditya (Mishra), Veer and me within time (tweet). Aditya has done some brilliant editing on the podcast and it’s now out in a crisp avatar on Indicast —

Part 1: Why Startups Need Workaholics

We first discussed how the Jason Calacanis startups need workaholics controversy plays out in the Indian context. Since both Aditya (Mishra) (his post on the topic) and Veer are deeply involved in the startup ecosystem in India, I got some interesting insights on the topic. In the end, we agreed that startups do need people who are totally passionate about the business and people who work for large organizations are indeed in for a culture shock if they move over to a startup. The big insight has that entrepreneurs should set an example for their teams by being passionate about the business and practicing frugality themselves.

Background links: Jason Calacanis, Duncan Riley, Micheal Arrington, Robert Scoble, Michael Ryan, Techmeme, Aditya Mishra, Ashish Sinha, Pranav Dharma, Venturewoods.

Part 2: Why Mobile Will Drive Web 2.0 Usage in India

We then moved on to why mobile will drive web 2.0 usage in India and why mobile advertising will become really big in India. We agreed that mobile — along with local content, vernacular languages and local social dynamics — will drive web 2.0 usage in India. We also discussed why an Indian web 2.0 model will have the entire cycle — registration, friending, content creation and content consumption — on SMS. Finally, we discussed that new mobile advertising formats based on permission marketing will evolve to tap into this opportunity.

Background Links: Gaurav Mishra, Hindustan Times, Wall Street Journal, Agencyfaqs.

Watch Out For Our Next Podcast

In the next podcast, we will cover how the ‘economics of free’ is hitting the music industry and how the web is getting widgetized (tweet). So, share any interesting links on either topic on del.icio.us using the tag TKM2 and, if we use them, we’ll credit you with a hat-tip (tweet).

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Alootechie, which has established itself as the Indian online industry’s news monitor, has a new look and a new focus.

I have known about the revamp for a few weeks now through conversations with Sidharth, Ravneesh, Saket and Asfaq, so when Ravneesh told me today that the new website was up, I knew what to expect.

Apart from the staple Indian and international digital industry news, the new magazine-style homepage displays a featured news story, an interview of the month, job and event boards and several guest articles. Inside, Alootechie has extended its coverage to include mobile and gaming.

While the present website is still work-in progress (watch out for the newsletter, podcasts and vidcasts), I must congratulate the Alootechie and Webchutney teams for the really cool revamp.

My favorite part of the revamped website are the guest posts, which are basically expert opinion pieces written by industry insiders. While each topic covered in the first set of these guest posts deserves a separate post on this blog, here are my top of the mind thoughts on some of them –

- Sandeep Singh, Business Director, Quasar on the future of the digital advertising agency in India —

The specialized agency model has come of age and has proved itself to be a successful one. The success can be seen by the interest large global advertising networks & VC’s have shown in the space. Now, with specialized agency model getting more specialized and niche (search marketing agencies, mobile marketing agencies, social media agencies, and digital creative hot shops making their presence felt) the scene is heating up further.

We will soon see a deluge of digital agencies and, apart from the top half a dozen integrated digital agencies, the only players to stand out from the crowd will be specialized search marketing agencies, mobile marketing agencies, viral marketing agencies and social media agencies.

- Manoj Dawane, Chief Executive Officer, Mauj Mobile on the future of the Indian mobile VAS industry –

VAS revenue predictions (are) estimated to reach Rs 4, 600 crore by the end of the current fiscal from Rs 2, 800 crore in 2006-07, according to Assocham. Going ahead, content, platform and exhibition are the key factors that will mould the existing structure of the industry.

My top-of-the-mind views: In future, Mobile VAS will drive not only mobile usage, but also web 2.0 usage. In fact, mobile will be one of the three dimensions of differentiation for Indian web 2.0 startups, including social networking sites.

Kalyan Manyam, Founder, Indyarocks on how can an Indian social networking site differentiate itself –

The possible areas, where a new SNS can differentiate are: 1. Innovative ways of communicating and sharing 2. Localization through Entertainment or Education.

My top-of-the-mind views: I think Language (English vs. vernacular), mode of access (Internet vs. mobile) and social dynamics (global vs. Indian) will be the three dimensions of differentiation for Indian social networking sites.

- Sunny Saurabh, Co-founder, Antya on people-powered search engines –

Simply put, a human-powered search engine is a search engine that takes into account human intelligence and leverages the power of the community to provide the most relevant information to the end user. India today attracts over a billion searches per month. As more and more people come online every year, the need for relevant information increases.

My top-of-the-mind views: I think people-powered search engines will be the limited in terms of both scope and scalability and their promise of more intelligent search results will only be realized once the semantic web takes over.

- Venkat Ramna, Chief, Valuepitch Interactive on how negative search results can erode the equity of consumer brands –

Search phrases on corporates can be categorized as brand words, negative words and research words. For negative phrases (icici sucks), one can expect negative results; for phrases pertaining to research (icici bank reviews) it’s ok to expect some negativity along with the positives; but for brand phrases (icici bank), finding negative results is a bad brand association.

My top-of-the-mind views: It’s obvious to me that online reputation management will involve much more than only search engine optimization.

Sachin Bhatia, Co-founder & Chief Marketing Officer, MakeMyTrip on online reputation management for brands –

With e-commerce growing in India, the Internet becomes a great place for people to both review and then buy a product. Therefore it’s critical for brands to ensure that they are positively mentioned online, that positive reviews are far greater than negative comments that customer ratings are high for their products and this can then lead to immediate and higher conversions.

My top-of-the-mind views: In future, brands will need to embrace social media because social media will be the only cost effective to reach consumers.

Namrata Balwani, Business Director, Media2Win on what ails online advertising in India –

With over 30 Million active internet users, and mobile internet also coming up, this is no longer a medium to ‘test’ but to integrate into the marketing plan. Some of the leading websites in India have more users than the total readership of leading English dailies! And the brand can directly interact with the consumer.

My top-of-the-mind views: My pet peeve is that agencies approach digital media with the ‘interruption marketing’ paradigm prevalent in traditional media instead of the ‘permission marketing’ mindset that is appropriate for it. I believe that digital media works well for two extreme objectives — generating leads and building communities — and for little in-between.

So, I don’t agree with all the opinions in these guests posts, but I think, if done well, they have the potential to start off discussions around the Indian digital media industry. Going foward, the challenge for Alootechie will be to ensure that its guest posts are of consistently good quality.

In summary, it’s a step in the correct direction for Alootechie, and, if you are interested in understanding the Indian digital media industry, I would strongly recommend that you check out the new Alootechie.

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In my previous post, I wrote about why Indian social networking sites need to differentiate themselves –

Most of the Indian social networking sites are basically India-focused Facebook/ MySpace/ Orkut/ LinkedIn clones. Such clones would only be popular amongst a small set of twenty-something Indians in metros who won’t want a clone anyways.

I also presented a typology of Indian social networking sites on a 2X2 matrix with Indian-vs-global social dynamics on the X-axis and Indian-vs-global user appeal on the Y-axis –

– and suggested that –

To really build an identity and a broad Indian user base for themselves, Indian social networking sites need to reflect the unique nature of relationships in the Indian society.

Three Dimensions of Differentiation: Language, Access and Social Dynamics

Based on the discussion in the comments section and on Twitter, Facebook and e-mail, I have realized that there are, in fact, three dimensions of differentiation for Indian social networking sites — language (English vs. vernacular), mode of access (Internet vs. mobile) and social dynamics (global vs. Indian).

Why is Social Dynamics a Dimension of Differentiation?

I have already illustrated in my previous post how an offering that reflects the unique Indian social dynamics is likely to be well-adopted by Indian users –

Matrimonial sites like BharatMatrimony, JeevanSaathi and Shaadi are the Indian equivalent of international dating sites. A lot of my Indian friends who wouldn’t risk being seen on a dating site, use matrimonial sites basically to meet interesting people they can date (and, just maybe, marry).

In this post, I’ll share some numbers with you to illustrate how language and access are the other two dimensions of differentiation for Indian social networking sites.

Why is Language a Dimension of Differentiation?

According to various sources, the number of Internet users in India is estimated to be between 20mn and 30 mn. According to NRS 2006, the readership of English language newspaper is only 26 mn, less than 10% of the overall readership of newspapers in India. Given that English is the predominant language on Internet in India, is it any surprise that English language newspaper readership in India and Internet usage in India are in the same ballpark? Also, if you flip the numbers, vernacular language newspaper readership in India is ten times higher than English language readership in India. It’s probably reasonable to project that, if vernacular language Internet was to become popular in India, Internet usage in India will potentially increase tenfold.

Why is Access a Dimension of Differentiation?

According to TRAI, there are 250 mn mobile phones in India compared to only 3 mn broadband connections. It is also estimated that there are 38 mn mobile web users in India (note: I’m still searching for a reliable source). Even if we leave alone mobile web, 250 mn Indians have access to SMS compared to the 20 mn to 30 mn Indians who have access to Internet and the 3 mn Indians who have access to broadband. Not only that, mobile phone access is more widely distributed across both urban and urban Indian than Internet access. It’s quite a no-brainer, therefore, that web usage in India will be driven by the mobile web (with SMS integration) and not the PC web.

Early Signs: Micro-Blogging and Mobile-Blogging in India

While Twitter is still very niche in India, Indian micro-blogging networks like MyToday MOBS and Webaroo SMSGupShup have wide user bases –

‘We expect users in excess of 20 million before the end this year,” says Webaroo vice president Chirag Jain. (HT)

I’m sure that a large percentage of these 20 mn users will be passive users, who only receive messages instead of sending them. However, it’s no laughing matter that one micro-blogging service in India claims to have almost the same number of users as the entire Internet user base in India.

Expect more action in the micro-blogging and mobile-blogging space with Reliance and Nokia entering the space.

The Killer Indian Social Networking Site

So, what will the killer Indian social networking site be like?

I’m sure that the killer Indian social networking site will be differentiated along all the three dimensions of language, access and social dynamics –

- It will offer users a unique value based on Indian social dynamics beyond friending and following people.

- It will offer users multiple access points, including PC web, mobile web, SMS (and maybe voice), so much so that most users won’t even think of it as a “website”.

What will the killer Indian social networking site be like, in your opinion?

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I’m delighted to invite you to join SocialPundit, a collaborative wiki-based community for social media practitioners in India.

What is the need for SocialPundit?

As I started tracking social media trends and resources in India, I felt the need to create an easily accessible master-resource on social media in India.

When I made a small start in this direction by compiling two directories — list of social media agencies in India and list of marketing, public relations and social media blogs in India — I received several requests to share them in the form of a wiki. I listened, and the result is SocialPundit.

What is the purpose of SocialPundit?

To start with, the SocialPundit wiki will track trends and resources on social media in India.

Over time, I can see SocialPundit playing an active role in evangelizing social media in India by organizing events and workshops on a non-profit basis.

Who should join SocialPundit?

You would really benefit from joining SocialPundit if you are an advertising, marketing, public relations or social media professional from India.

However, anybody, Indian or otherwise, who is interested in tracking trends and resources on the evolving social media landscape in India will benefit from being a part of SocialPundit.

SocialPundit is based on an open, collaborative, wiki-based platform.

A wiki is software that allows users to easily create, edit, and link pages together. Wikis are often used to create collaborative websites and to power community websites. (Wikipedia)

To become a member of SocialPundit, you need to visit the Join SocialPundit page and register using the “secret password” “socialpunditwiki”.

To start with, you’ll have “member” access, which means you’ll be able to create and edit pages.

On a selective basis, I’ve already shared “moderator” and “admin” access with some members.

So, what are you waiting for? Join the SocialPundit wiki and help us shape the social media landscape in India.

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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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Wordpress creator Automattic has launched a new theme called Prologue which can be used to create private Twitter-like micro-blogging platforms.

Basically, the Prologue theme uses the Wordpress content management system to mimic the Twitter interface. Here are three reasons why I like Prologue –

(+) The “whatcha up to?” post form integrated into the front page is nifty for posting short tweet-sized messages. It would be useful, however, to have a “title” field apart from “post” and “tags”.

(+) The theme is built to be used by multiple authors (see demo blog) and author-wise RSS feeds are useful for linking each author’s posts to their Twitter accounts, via TwitterFeed.

(+) The summary view on the front page, expandable by clicking on authors or tags, is a neat touch. The front page now shows a stream of recent updates instead of one update per user.

I have already started a basic Prologue personal microblog. The plan is to exclusively post updates at my Prologue microblog and update my Twitter account via TwitterFeed. Once I integrate the “@gauravonomics” Twitter search feed in the sidebar, I’ll won’t even need to visit Twitter anymore. I really like how is possible to track all your Twitter activity on the Prologue sidebar using RSS feeds from Twitter. I have integrated RSS feeds for @gauravonomics replies on Twitter, people I’m following on Twitter and search feeds for “social media” and “Mumbai/ Bombay” and I’m thinking of even more interesting ways to design the sidebar. This personal microblog application of Prologue will work for people who primarily tweet from the web and use Twitter more for posting and replying to @username messages than for reading other people’s tweets.

The other useful application of Prologue is as a private password-protected microblogging network inside an enterprise.

As a completely virtual company with no two people in the same place every day, we often have trouble keeping up with each other, so we’re going to be using a password-protected Prologue that only Automattic employees can access as one of our methods of communication, much like some other companies use Basecamp. — Matt Mullenweg

You’re a group of 8 people working on something that’s going to change the world, and you’re always looking for new collaborative things that are going to make your team more productive and keep them together. You have Basecamp, where you post long company memos and ideas. You have e-mail which you use to get stuff done and keep in tap with each other for the important, must-document things. You have IM to keep in constant ping. And last but not the least, you have Facebook. Will you have a use for something like Prologue? It depends, but I can’t see why you wouldn’t not want to give it a try. — Sid Yadav

The biggest value of Prologue, however, lies in hacking it to build a customized, self-hosted group microblog for 10 to 20 users focused on a narrow topic, let’s say social media in India. While Mark Hopkins makes a valid point in his review –

I can’t help but wonder if this is a re-invention of the wheel. Twitter already has a number of ways to access public tweets, either by the API or the RSS feeds. It wouldn’t take much to make an overlay management system that would aggregate the tweets of a group and publish them to the web. — Mark Hopkins at Mashable!

– Prologue makes it easy to create such a group microblog.

The big question, of course, is whether Prologue is a Twitter-killer –

Some folks have suggested that using WordPress, Prologue, and RSS you could create a pretty effective distributed version of Twitter. This isn’t something we’re personally interested in, but we’ve made the theme available as open source under the GPL so if you want to hack around it yourself you’re welcome to. Matt Mullenweg

While it’s pretty clear that the WordPress team isn’t going to take the lead in driving towards this direction - as Automattic chief executive Toni Schneider tells us “we really like Twitter. We’re not trying to compete with those guys” - it is certainly possible that Prologue or micro status updates in general could become a central part of blogging and other collaborative writing tools. Could Wordpress be used as an open platform, like Twitter? Schneider says theoretically, yes. All you do is is create a registration page, and you can let outsiders sign up on your blog, and it could become a universal Twitter-like service. — MG Siegler

While I see Prologue’s possibilities, I agree with Duncan Riley that Prologue is not (yet) a Twitter-killer –

Prologue may provide some open access, but its distributed nature will mean that ultimately it will be a niche product; possibly a good niche product, but it’s not going to knock the Twitter bird off its perch any time soon. — Duncan Riley at TechCrunch

– because of three fundamental limitations –

(-) It is not built to support postings and notifications for IM, SMS and WAP.

(-) It doesn’t tap into the community aspect of micro-blogging.

(-) It doesn’t have a rich eco-system of API-based tools.

But Prologue is only the first step towards a distributed microblogging platform and all these limitations may be fixed soon.

Mathew Ingram asks a very important question –

It doesn’t benefit from the same kind of network effects as Twitter does, of course, because it’s restricted to a group of people who all use the same blog. But what if there was a way to tie those types of posts together with others from other Twitter-style blogs? — Mathew Ingram

The next step is a Technorati-like aggregator for micro-blogs — Microrati, anyone?

Based on feedback received on Prologue, Automattic has already released an updated version of Prologue.

Here are some other interesting perspectives on Prologue — Tris Hussey, Andy Beal, Joseph Scott, Allen Stern, Chris Brogan, Jesse Stay, Dennis Howlett and Brij Singh.

Here are the first set of Prologue powered microblogs — Gauravonomics, Bentrem, Greywulf, David Petherick, Mike Waters, Joseph Scott, Bwana, YouthTwitter.

Do drop in a link in the comments below, if you have started an interesting Wordpress Prologue powered microblog.

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At yesterday’s Mobile Monday Mumbai session, as I watched Jump Games CEO Salil Bhargava present a case for mobile advergaming, I kept asking myself why it didn’t (yet) make sense for Indian marketers.

Later, as Salil was joined by Anant Rangaswami from Campaign India magazine and Nidhi Taparia from Tata Indicom for a panel discussion moderated by VeerChand Bothra from Netcore Solutions, I actually asked them –

So, why exactly should mobile advergaming become an essential part of my media plan?

As I expected, the discussion quickly turned to how marketers expect too much from digital media.

However, since I think of myself as a digital media evangelist — I want mobile/ online advertising to work — I told myself to not think about all the reasons mobile advergaming won’t work for me and instead think about the set of conditions under which it would work for me.

The basic problem with the present developer-centric (or operator-centric, but certainly not brand-centric) business model for mobile advergaming is that all the risks are borne by the brand. The developer gets a development fees and the operator gets a hosting fee — but nobody gives the brand a commitment on downloads and plays.

I would love to do an advergame (or ten) if the developer and the operator are willing to share the risk of “what if nobody downloads/ plays the game?” with me. The developer develops a new game for me, the operator hosts it and promotes it aggressively and I only pay on the basis of downloads and plays. If nobody downloads/ plays the game, I don’t lose out — and why should I? — but if 500000 users download the game, I’m happy to pay up and the developer and the operator make a killing. This is basically a cost-per-action (CPA) model for advergames — it has worked elsewhere and there’s no reason it won’t work for advergames.

So, are there any takers for my brand-centric business model for mobile advergaming?

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