Tagged: BRIC RSS

  • Gaurav Mishra 6:12 pm on January 17, 2009 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: BRIC, , , Frost & Sullivan, , Strategy Analytics, Subscriber Base   

    The Confusion Over Growth Projections of the Worldwide Mobile Subscriber Base 

    Welcome back to Gauravonomics Blog! Subscribe to my feed now and you'll never miss a single post!

    The confusion over growth projections of the worldwide mobile subscriber base continues with eMarketer reporting projections ranging from 3.35 billion in 2013 (Frost & Sullivan) to 5.6 billion in 2013 (by Strategy Analytics). eMarketer’s own prediction is that there will be 4.3 billion mobile subscribers worldwide in 2012.

    As I had written before, the main reason for such variation in these projections is that most of the growth in the mobile phone subscriber base is expected to come from BRIC countries and analysts are not sure how quickly this growth potential will be realized.

    Cross-posted on International Values and Communications Technologies.

     

  • Gaurav Mishra 2:10 am on October 30, 2008 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , BRIC, , , Elizabeth Churchill, , , Marshall Kirkpatrick, , , , Shyong K. Lam, ,   

    World Map of Flickr Privacy Settings 

    (Cross posted on my fellowship blog)

    World Map of Flickr Privacy Settings

    TechCrunch and ReadWriteWeb have written about a slide shared by Yahoo!’s Principal Research Scientist Elizabeth Churchill on geographical locations where Flickr users are more likely to post their photos with privacy settings (red) or use the default public setting (green). The sample set was 1 million Flickr users who self-reported their locations, in 2005.

    Neither Michael Arrington nor Marshall Kirkpatrick share any details of the methodology behind the map, but a quick Google search led me to the presentation from which this slide seems to be taken: ‘Sharing Preferences and Privacy Cultures‘. The presentation itself is based on a paper by Elizabeth Churchill and Shyong K. Lam titled ‘The Social Web: Global Village or Private Cliques?’ The paper is behind a firewall but the presentation gives some more data about the research —

    - More than 90% of users younger than 25 post their photos as public. In the 25 to 40 age group, public photo sharing behavior drops, almost in s straight line, to 80% and goes as low as 70% for users in their late 50s and early 60s.

    - Public photo sharing behavior follows a S curve when mapped against the number of contacts: it first decreases between 0 to 10 contacts, then increases with the number of contacts to go beyond 90% for more than 30 odd contacts.

    - In the world map itself, there are at least five gradations from green to red. It seems that pure red means that about 70% of the users share their photos publicly whereas green means that about 90% of the users share their photos publicly. Since no information is available for the methodology behind the world map, I can only conclude that users in America, Brazil and Russia have a higher tendency to share their photos publicly than users in India, China or Europe.

    The conclusion that Indians are more concerned about online privacy than Brazilians and Americans further complicates my research on attitudes towards online privacy in BRIC countries. Another research by Synovate showed that Brazilians and Americans are more concerned about online privacy than Indians, whereas my own understanding is that both Brazilians and Indians are much less concerned about online privacy than Americans.

     

    • Delltechie 4:20 am on October 30, 2008 Permalink | Reply

      A lot of Indians posts their photo albums on picasa :) .I know 90% of users of many trekking groups post their albums on picasa. Also a lot Flickr users from india love to send out individual photo sharing invitations via email to their close friends.

    • naina 7:34 am on October 30, 2008 Permalink | Reply

      I would tend to agree that Indians a lot less concerned about online privacy than Americans. Especially with photography. When I started with my own website and showcased my digital artwork, photographs, painting etc., I did not even have a copyright statement / all rights reserved on my website / blog. In fact, in the earlier days, the line read “Copy but give credit”. In the last six months, I've had readers “inform” me that because I don't have a all rights reserved statement, my stuff was likely to be copied MORE – I don't think so though – in my experience, people will still copy. Might as well put it out there in public. Although I've now added a “All rights reserved” to my blog . Confusing at best.

      Specifically about privacy, my Facebook page is open to “Everyone” and not just friends or friends of friends. Everyone can see my photographs, my videos and most of the details on my profile. Even a silly 12secodn video on 12second.tv is visible to everyone. Many of my American [ online ] friends would NEVER make their profile visible and a client even got defensive when I got back to her with a detailed assessment of her and her company's requirements – she was all over the web and I picked out the details. She wrote back saying how “unsafe” it was that everything was available online these days.

    • Gaurav Mishra 11:47 am on October 30, 2008 Permalink | Reply

      @DellTechie: Yes, it will be interesting to look at the popularity of Flickr in various countries in 2005. The relatively lower public photo sharing behavior of Indians might be linked to the lower number of contacts Indians had on Flickr in 2005.

      @Naina: Your comment has reminded me that I don't have a copyright notice on my own blog. :-)

    • Gaurav Mishra 3:47 pm on October 30, 2008 Permalink | Reply

      @DellTechie: Yes, it will be interesting to look at the popularity of Flickr in various countries in 2005. The relatively lower public photo sharing behavior of Indians might be linked to the lower number of contacts Indians had on Flickr in 2005.

      @Naina: Your comment has reminded me that I don't have a copyright notice on my own blog. :-)

  • Gaurav Mishra 9:56 pm on October 23, 2008 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , BRIC, , Communication Channel, , , Instant Messenger, , Personal Blog, , Social Circle, , Text Message, , , Wave 3 Report   

    Universal McCann Study: Indians Have the Highest Number of Personal Contact Points Across Communication Channels 

    (Cross-posted on my fellowship blog – How International Values Shape Communications Technologies)

    BRIC Social Circles

    I had earlier used data from the Wave 3 of the Power of the People Social Media Tracker by Universal McCann to do a comparative analysis of social media usage in BRIC countries.

    Now Universal McCann has published some more findings from the same study in another report titled When did we start trusting strangers? How the internet turned us all into influencers. The report is a treasure trove of interesting findings on how digital media is changing how we look at relationships and influence and I’m sure that I’ll return to it often in subsequent posts.

    However, in this post, I want to focus on Universal Mccann’s findings on how we stay in touch with our personal contacts –

    The evolution of the web as a social platform and primary communication channel has had a dramatic impact on the scale and nature of our friendship networks. Figure 8 shows the global average number of friends and personal acquaintances we maintain via different forms of communication including face to face, digital and letters.

    The amazing truth is that the web has massively expanded the size of our social platforms and virtualised a large proportion of our daily contact. Today, although we still maintain an average of 35 friendships face to face, it is rapidly being equalled by email with an average of 32, social networks with 30 and Instant Messenger with 29.

    Interestingly these all rank above SMS or phone calls, which shows that PC based internet is for expanding networks, while mobile is for maintaining current ones.

    The nature of friendship is changing from voice to text and written word. This is a significant change in the ability to influence and share opinions as it’s much easier to do in text – communication is more frequent and can include additional information like links, videos and photos.

    It’s important that we keep four clarifications in mind as we think about these numbers –

    - These are the average number of people the respondents stay in touch with regularly in their personal life through each communication channel. These are not the number of people in their phone- or computer-based contact list, which is likely to be much higher.

    - There is likely to be a large overlap between the number of people the respondents stays in touch with using different communications channel. So, the sum of these numbers is the number of total contact points and not the number of contacts itself.

    - “Staying in touch” can mean different things in different cultures and these numbers do not capture the frequency of use of these communication channels.

    - These numbers are based on responses from active internet users in the 16-54 age group, who aren’t representative of the overall population, especially in the BRIC countries who have very low internet penetrations.

    While the worldwide figures are interesting in themselves, the country-wise comparisons are even more illuminating.

    At the overall level, the Indians are the most social with 292 contact points, followed by the Brazilians at 260 contact points and the Chinese at 234 contact points. The world average is 194 contact points while Americans are rather asocial at 110 contact points.

    Face-to-face, the Indians (42 contacts) and the Brazilians (38 contacts) are very social, the Chinese not so (28 contacts) and the Americans even less so (20 contacts).

    On social networks, the Brazilians (52 contacts) and the Indians (43 contacts) are also hyper-social, which probably connects with the Brazilian/ Indian obsession with the rather open social network Orkut. The Americans, who are more mindful of online privacy, prefer the more controlled environment of Facebook and stay in touch with only 17 contacts.

    Both the Indians (with 36 contacts) and the Chinese (with 32 contacts) like to stay in touch with SMS, while both the Brazilians and the Chinese (with 49 contacts each) extensively use instant messengers to stay in touch with friends.

    The Indians, in fact, are truly channel agnostic and heavily use the phone (45 contacts) and letters (24 contacts) to stay in touch with personal contacts.

    Finally, the Chinese have truly embraced personal blogs and use it to stay in touch with as many as 26 contacts, almost the same as the 28 face-to-face contacts.

    I have always thought of myself as an introvert, but I regularly (that is, at least once a month) stay in touch with a surprisingly large number of friends — 50+ face to face, 50+ by e-mail, at least 100+ by social networks, less than 5 by instant messenger, 20+ by phone, 20+ by test message, 20+ by personal blog and none by letters, totaling to at least 250-300 contact points.

    What about you? What is your preferred communication channel? What is the number of your contact points?

     

  • Gaurav Mishra 3:31 am on October 12, 2008 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , BRIC, , , , , Secure Computing, Sophos, , Trend Micro,   

    Why is Spam So High in Russia? 

    Spam in BRIC Countries

    Over the last week, reposts of a rather misleading Trend Micro press release on on spam in BRIC countries1 kept showing up in my Google Alert feed for “BRIC + Internet”. The press release and most of the news articles quoting it verbatim focus on the high incidence of spam in BRIC countries. However, even some cursory math showed me that the incidence of spam in BRIC countries is not unusual: BRIC countries account for 28.5% of the world’s internet users and 27.1% of the world’s spam (according to Trend Micro). In fact, two other reports from Sophos2 and Secure Computing3 peg the contribution of BRIC countries to worldwide spam at 19.7% and 18.5% respectively.

    If you compare the three sets of data, three trends emerge strongly –

    - USA still remains (one of) the largest contributors of worldwide spam, which is understandable given its high internet user base.
    - China’s contribution to worldwide spam is disproportionately low, perhaps because of its strict censorship regime.
    - Russia’s contribution to worldwide spam is disproportionately high, so much so that Russia is being called the “spam superpower of the world”4 5.

    The question to ask, however, is: why is spam so high in Russia?

    It seems that there aren’t any easy answers to that question. Russia is also prominent for other types of Internet criminality, such as malware and exploits, partly due to the notorious Russian Business Network4 and it seems that spam is part of a larger internet related malaise in Russia. Also, the high spam figures partly reflect the number of compromised botnet PCs in Russia that have been hijacked as relays, and do not simply reflect the amount of spam that actually originates in the country4 5. Still, almost 85% of all e-mails in Russia are spam and almost 80% of all spam in Russia is in the Russian language6. What’s more, these percentages are likely to become even higher in the near future, given the state of affairs in Russia.

    The next question to ask, then, is: what does this level of spam mean for the Russian social web?

    References

    - 1 India is the number one spamming nation in Asia, says Trend Micro, October 8, 2008.

    - 2 New spam-related webpage found almost every three seconds, Sophos reports, April 14, 2008.

    - 3 Secure Computing Internet Threat Report, Q2 2008

    - 4 Russia becomes spam superpower, John E Dunn, Techworld, February 12, 2008.

    - 5 Russia emerges as spam superpower, as Asia and Europe overtake North America, Sophos reports, February 11, 2008.

    - 6 Spam evolution: January-June 2008, by Darya Gudkova, Kaspersky Lab, September 24, 2008.

     

  • Gaurav Mishra 6:15 pm on October 7, 2008 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: 5Cs of Context, , BRIC, Capabilities, , Connections, , , culture. Computing Devices, , , , , , ,   

    Social Technologies and National Contexts 

    (Cross-posted on my fellowship blog – How International Values Shape Communications Technologies)

    When you are doing an interdisciplinary study of social technologies across four countries, it is important to focus on the connections between otherwise unrelated factors, and it is useful to develop a framework to look for these connections.

    Here’s the framework we have been using for our research on social media in BRIC countries –

    The Connection Between Social Technologies and National Contexts

    The outer circle is the national context, which comprises of the five interconnected Cs of computing devices, connectivity, culture, content and capabilities. The inner circle is the social media ecosystem itself. Our research, which looks at the connections between the two, has three layers –

    Layer 1: The role of the national context in social media adoption
    Layer 2: The dynamics of the social media ecosystem
    Layer 3: The role of social media in changing the social context

    Finally, the national contexts we are looking at are the four BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China) and United States (as a reference point).

    Most of our posts so far can be classified into one of these three layers. Posts about culture (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, ) and access (1, 2, 3) belong to the first layer. Posts about social media usage (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9) belong to the second layer. Posts about the impact of social technologies (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) belong to the third layer.

    We have found that there are different challenges in all the three layers.

    In the first layer, the challenge is to identify and focus on the most important factors in the national context that impact social media adoption. There is a lot of prior data-rich research associated with each of the 5Cs and, unless you identify the most important connections, it’s easy to be lost in all that data.

    In the second layer, the challenge is to focus only on the dynamics of social media usage that are important in the context of BRIC countries. Again, there is a lot of interesting (and sometimes data-rich) research on both the theory and usage of social technologies, and it is useful to tightly focus on the BRIC context.

    In the third layer, the challenge is to look beyond anecdotal evidence and make connections that haven’t been made before. There is very little data-rich research on the impact of social technologies on the social context and it’s both a limitation and an opportunity.

    The framework applies to our overall research, but, with minor variations, it can also be applied to Ben’s research on “privacy 2.0″ and Pavneet’s research on “civil society 2.0″.

    What do you think of our research framework? Are we looking at all the important factors? Are we looking for all the important connections? Do share your feedback with us.

     

  • Gaurav Mishra 11:18 am on October 7, 2008 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: BRIC, Broadcast Networks, , , , , , , Plurk, , , , telecommunication Networks,   

    The Three Laws of Networked Technologies 

    (Cross-posted on my fellowship blog – How International Values Shape Communications Technologies)

    While reading through chapter 2 of Howard Rheingold’s ‘Smart Mobs’, I started thinking about how the three laws of networked technologies (Sarnoff’s Law, Metcalfe’s Law and Reed’s Law) relate to social media in BRIC countries –

    1. Sarnoff’s Law: The value of a broadcast network is proportional to the number of viewers (n).

    2. Metcalfe’s Law: The value of a telecommunications network is proportional to the square of the number of users of the system (n2).

    3. Reed’s Law: The value of a group forming network (or a social network) increases exponentially, proportional to 2 raised to the power the number of users in the network (2n).

    In Sarnaff’s network, the only communication possible is one-to-many. In Metcalfe’s network, the only communication possible is one-to-one. In Reed’s network, all types of communication are possible, including one-to-one, many-to-many and some-to-some, so it’s effectively any-to-any.

    The value of a network with 100 users would be 100 under Sarnoff’s Law, 4950 under Metcalfe’s Law and 1,267,650,600,228,230,000,000,000,000,000 under Reed’s Law! It’s useful to remember that all three of them are only talking about the possible number of connections between the users in a network and, therefore, the potential value of a network. The real value of a network is contingent upon both the actual number of connections between the users in the network and the quality of these connections.

    My first thought is that all the three laws are valid for different social media use cases. Let me explain this in the context of Twitter and Facebook.

    If you were to use Twitter exclusively for broadcasting your feed, the value of Twitter to you would be equal to the number of users who follow your tweets (Sarnaff’s Law). This, in fact, is true for any feed, including blog feeds.

    If Twitter was to be used exclusively to send and receive direct messages, the value of Twitter would have been equal to the square of the number of users on Twitter (Metcalfe’s Law). This, by the way, is a SMS-on-the-web use case of Twitter.

    If Twitter was to allow users to form sub-groups, the value of twitter would increase exponentially (Reed’s Law). We have already seen the popularity of sub-groups in other social networks like Friendfeed and Plurk and Twitter might be missing a significant opportunity here.

    Facebook, by the way, allows all three use cases — one-to-many broadcasting via pages (Sarnaff’s Law), one-to-one communication via direct messages (Metcalfe’s Law) and any-to-any communication via groups (Reed’s Law).

    My second thought is that there are many layers of communication possible between the one-to-one scenario described in Metcalfe’s Law and any-to-any scenario described in Reed’s Law. For instance, the ability to subscribe to other users’ feeds, use @ replies and hash (#) tags, and access the public timeline allows us to mimic a part, but not all, of the group behavior Reed’s Law talks about. It will be useful to quantify the value of each of these layers. I’m sure some very smart people have already tried to answer these questions, and I’ll be back with more once I have done more research.

    My third thought is that, if the value of a “social” network is indeed exponentially higher than the value of a telecommunication or a broadcast network, there is significant leapfrogging potential available to BRIC countries. A social network (like MobiChange) that mimics the any-to-any nature of Reed’s network on SMS can create tremendous value in the BRIC countries. However, the more I read about leapfrogging the digital divide, the more convinced I am that leapfrogging is much easier in theory than in practice.

    Do stay tuned for follow-up posts that explore all these three thoughts in detail.

     

  • Gaurav Mishra 11:52 pm on October 4, 2008 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , Breakout Years, BRIC, Broadband, , , , , Gapminder, , , , , Logarithmic Scales, Personal Computer, , , Trendalyzer, ,   

    Breakout Years in Adoption of Communications Technologies in BRIC Countries 

    (Cross-posted on my fellowship blog – How International Values Shape Communications Technologies)

    Here’s a brilliant TED presentation by Hans Rosling on how to look differently at development indicators across countries and continents, using Gapminder’s trend visualization tool Trendalyzer –

    I spent an hour playing around with Gapmindmer and discovered some interesting trends related to the diffusion of communications technologies in BRIC countries.

    In all these charts comparing Brazil, Russia, India, China and United States, the X axis represents the income per person (in fixed PPP$) on a logarithmic scale while the Y axis changes. By pressing the ‘play’ button, you can see how the variable changes for these five countries over years.

    Let’s start with the Y axis representing the number of cell phones users on a logarithmic scale. It’s fascinating how each country seems to stay close to the X axis until something happens and it rises vertically. It happens to the USA in 1980, China in 1986, Brazil in 1989, Russia in 1990 and India in 1994. As of now, these five countries have the biggest cell phone user bases across the world1 (China at #1 with 601 million, India at #2 with 305 million, USA at #3 with 260 million, Russia at #4 with 172 million and Brazil at #5 with 135 million).

    If you change the Y axis to represent the number of cell phones per 100 people on a logarithmic scale, you see a similar trend but the years are different — USA (1985), Brazil (1993), China (1994), Russia (1995) and India (1998). Do notice that the lag for China is 8 years but the lag for all other countries is around 4-5 years, indicating that China was almost weighed down by its high population.

    In both the charts for the number of personal computers and the number of personal computers per 100, there are no such break-out years and the growth is diagonal rather than vertical.

    We see these break-out years again in the chart for the number of internet users per 100 on a logarithmic scale — Russia (1994), Brazil (1995), China (1997) and India (1998) — but the vertical climb is slower than cell phone penetration.

    Finally the chart with the number of broadband subscribers has a different breakout sequence — Brazil (1997), China (1998), India (2000), Russia (2001) — a trend also seen in the chart with the number of broadband subscribers per 100 — Brazil (1997), China (2000), India (2001), Russia (2002).

    I’m not even sure if looking for breakout years on a logarithmic chart is a valid way of looking at technology adoption, but it does suggest some interesting stories. It will be fun to look beyond the data and string together these stories, but that’s another evening, another post.

    References

    - 1 Wikipedia: List of countries by number of mobile phones in use.

     

  • Gaurav Mishra 11:57 pm on September 25, 2008 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , BRIC, , , , , , , , Tech Policy, ,   

    How International Values Shape Communications Technologies Podcast – Episode 1 

    (Cross-posted at my fellowship blog — How International Values Shape Communications Technologies)

    In the introductory episode of our weekly fellowship podcast, Ben, Pavneet and I explain why our research on social media in BRIC countries is uniquely interdisciplinary, share the personal biases with which we are approaching our research, summarize what we have learned so far, and share our plans for the rest of the year.

    The starting point of our research is to understand how differences in culture, access and language in BRIC countries impact the three core values of social media usage — collaboration, community and user generated content — across tools and devices. Pavneet’s focus is on the community and he explores two really important use cases for social media — consumer advocacy and civic engagement. Ben’s focus is on the individual and he explores issues of identity and privacy in the context of social media usage. My role is to pull it all together into a meaningful framework.

    So, our research really lies at the intersection of three worlds that (surprisingly) don’t really understand each other — the web 2.0 world, the technology policy world, and the ICT4D world. But, beyond that, it’s really rooted in the tradition of cultural studies and borrows heavily from research related to business, government and development.

    Our personal research scopes also tie in neatly with our personal biases. Ben’s experiences as a warblogger partly explain his interest in identity and privacy. Pavneet’s focus on business and government explains his interest in how both of them are being transformed by social media. Finally, my own user-centric approach to the research is biased by my previous avatar as ‘the marketer who understood social media’.

    The subsequent episodes of the podcasts will be based around interviews. We already have 2.5GB of audio material waiting to be edited and we have some really interesting interviews lined up for the coming weeks. So, do subscribe to the podcast in iTunes or elsewhere and do stay tuned.

     

  • Gaurav Mishra 9:38 am on September 15, 2008 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , BRIC, , Cloud Computing, , Google Insights, , , Tarry Singh   

    BRIC Countries Early Adopters of Cloud Computing? No! 

    This riff on how BRIC countries will adopt cloud computing is triggered off by Ben’s post on cloud computing at our official fellowship blog.

    JP Morgan analyst Tarry Singh has been speculating (based on search data from Google) that BRIC countries, esp. India, will be early adopters of cloud computing. However, the high interest in cloud computing in India is surely driven by IT vendors and not end users. You can see a similar skew, especially for India, on searches on “social media”, which is again driven by IT vendors instead of end users.

    I can imagine IT companies in India being early adopters of cloud computing because of high familiarity and low cost. However, I can’t imagine mainstream businesses or individual users in India (or Brazil/ Russia/ China) adopting cloud computing anytime soon because internet access in these countries is far from ubiquitous. Even the much higher penetration of mobile phones in BRIC countries won’t drive cloud computing because most of these mobile phones still don’t have data access.

    So, search volumes apart, cloud computing is still far from the ground realities in BRIC countries.

    Update on October 20, 2008: IDC says that growth in BRIC countries is one of the three factors driving the adoption of cloud computing.

     

    • gregorylent 10:59 am on September 15, 2008 Permalink | Reply

      regular electricity? no. reliable internet at speed? no. ipr ethic? no.

      what was the question again?

  • Gaurav Mishra 5:43 pm on September 2, 2008 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , BRIC, , , , , , , , , Social Media Usage, Study, ,   

    A Comparative Analysis of Social Media Usage in BRIC Countries 

    At my official fellowship blog — How Global Values Shape Communications Technologies — I use data from Wave 3 of the Power of the People Social Media Tracker by Universal McCann (PDF/ Slideshare) to do a comparative analysis of social media usage in BRIC countries.

    Here are the top level highlights –

    - The total number of active internet users in BRIC countries (101.2m) is higher than the number of active internet users in US (100m).

    - Significantly more users from BRIC countries than US engage with social media tools, both in terms of content consumption and content creation.

    - Even as percentage of active internet users, social media usage in BRIC countries is much higher than US across content consumption and content creation.

    - At the country level, China leads in blogging and podcasting while Brazil is the leader in social networking and online video.

    Do join the conversation at the How Global Values Shape Communications Technologies blog.

     

  • Gaurav Mishra 4:27 pm on September 1, 2008 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: BRIC, , , , ,   

    Using Geert Hofstede Cultural Dimensions to Study Social Media Usage in BRIC Countries 

    At my official fellowship blog — How Global Values Shape Communications Technologies — I use the Geert Hofstede model to study the cultural differences between the BRIC countries and US and wonder how a collectivist, paternalist, status-oriented and relativist social web will look like —

    - What if the social web subjugated individual profiles and activity streams (high individualism) to group affiliations (high collectivism)?

    - What if the social web parsed and displayed relationships between two users based on their status relative to each other (high power distance) instead of treating everyone as a “friend” (low power distance)?

    - What if the primary relationship on the social web was “becoming a fan” (long term orientation) instead of “becoming a friend” (short terms orientation)?

    - What if the complex relationships between users automatically changed over time and across context (low uncertainty avoidance) instead of staying the same until it is proactively changed (high uncertainty avoidance)?

    Do you think that such a social web will ever come into existence? Do join the conversation at the How Global Values Shape Communications Technologies blog.

     

  • Gaurav Mishra 11:51 pm on August 25, 2008 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Apurba Sen, BRIC, , , Handbook of Online China, , Taly Weiss,   

    Check Out the Excellent Handbook of Online China Report from TrendsSpotting 

    The excellent Handbook of Online China report prepared by Taly Weiss and Apurba Sen at TrendsSpotting (via China Web 2.0 Review) is the single most useful resource on web usage in China I have found so far in all my research on BRIC web usage –

    Handbook of Online China
    View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: web trend trends)

    Here are some of the highlights from the report –

    – China is the country with the highest internet user base (253 mn) in spite of its relatively low internet penetration (19.1%). Incidentally, China is also the country with the highest mobile subscriber base (595 mn).

    – Chinese internet users spend significantly more time on all types of social media sites — especially BBS sites — than the global average.

    – Local Chinese language players dominate the Chinese online space across categories.

    – Internet censorship is very common in China but 85% of Chinese citizens approve internet censorship .

    Other useful resources on the Chinese online space include the China Web Research group on SlideShare and the ReadWriteWeb report on the top web apps in China.

     

  • Gaurav Mishra 11:40 pm on August 18, 2008 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , BRIC, , , , Mobile Internet, Mobile Media Marketplace, , ,   

    Gaming and Entertainment Drive Mobile Internet Usage in BRIC Countries 

    According to the recent Mobile Media Marketplace report from the Nielson Company (via Ashish Sinha), gaming and entertainment are the most popular categories amongst mobile internet users in BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China) whereas email, weather, news, and search are the top categories for both American and European mobile Internet users.

    Mobile Media Marketplace report from the Nielson Company

    Jeff Herrmann, vice president of mobile media at Nielsen, suggests that –

    In the U.S. and Europe, broad access to media and entertainment has been available for decades through a large fixed distribution infrastructure, and more recently in specialized devices like iPods, to meet consumer’s entertainment needs. Users in the growing Brazil, Russia, India, and China markets haven’t had the benefit of broad-based content distribution thereby limiting their exposure, and are filling the service gap by embracing mobile’s transition into a personal entertainment platform.

    Mobile internet penetration in BRIC countries continues to lag US/ EU (10% to 16%). Still, Russia at 11.2% and China at 6.8% are far ahead of Brazil at 2.6% and India at 1.8%.

    It’s interesting to note that India is the only country where neither search or news figure in the top 5 usages of mobile web. It’s equally interesting to note that China is the only country where e-mail doesn’t figure in the top five mobile web usage list.

    Any ideas to explain this quirkiness in mobile web usage in India and China?

     

    • chhavi 1:07 pm on August 19, 2008 Permalink | Reply

      My phone-web profile is bang on American :) After email and search, I still check weather on my phone (I think weather is much more top-of-mind in the West) for multiple locations. It’s too bad vodafone in India doesn’t support Google sms for local/city information. I miss that.

  • Gaurav Mishra 2:09 pm on July 3, 2008 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , BRIC, , , Dr. Irene Wu, Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, , , , Irene Wu, , , , Washington DC, ,   

    I’m the Next Yahoo! Fellow in International Values, Communications, Technology, and Global Internet at Georgetown University 

    Quick Summary: I’m totally delighted to announce that I have been selected as the Yahoo! Fellow in International Values, Communications, Technology, and Global Internet for 2008-09 at Georgetown University.

    - X – X – X -

    I’m totally delighted to announce that I have been selected as the Yahoo! Fellow in International Values, Communications, Technology, and Global Internet for 2008-09 at The Institute for the Study of Diplomacy (ISD) associated with The Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service (SFS) at Georgetown University.

    The fellowship is funded by the $1 million Yahoo! Fund on International Values, Communications Technology & the Global Internet, which was established at Georgetown University by a gift from Yahoo! Inc. There is only one such position open for each academic year and I’m the second Yahoo! Fellow.

    The Yahoo! Fellow is chosen from applicants drawn from the government, corporate, non-profit and academic sectors with interest in BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China). Two graduate students from the Master of Science in Foreign Service (MSFS) program at the SFS are also selected to as Junior Yahoo! Fellows to engage in research associated with the Yahoo! Fellow. Part of the research done by the Yahoo! Fellow is also incorporated into the MSFS program as guest lectures, special seminars, case studies and/ or course modules.

    My research will focus on how social media in BRIC countries will develop differently from the first world countries and the implications this will have on how individuals and institutions in these countries engage with social media. Some of my posts in the ‘Flat or Not’ series are a precursor to the research I’ll be doing during my fellowship.

    I must tell you, by the way, that Dr. Irene Wu, who was the Yahoo! Fellow for 2007-08, has set impossibly high standards for me.

    First, she has a really impressive background, both in terms of academic credentials (B.A. from Harvard University and Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University) and work experience (Director of Research in Federal Communications Commission). As the Yahoo! Fellow, Dr. Wu not only did some excellent research on how technological change transforms political power, but also taught a course in the MSFS program at the SFS. If that doesn’t sound impressive enough, this will — Yahoo! co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Jerry Yang attended Dr. Wu’s research presentation. And, yes, her book on telecommunications policy reform in China is being published by Stanford University Press.

    Phew! If I manage to do half of all that during the ten months of my fellowship, I’ll think of my time as well-spent.

    I had applied for the fellowship way back in March (thanks to Juliana) and Georgetown University confirmed my selection almost two months back. While most of my online and offline friends already know about it, I was waiting for my J1 visa to be issued before I made a formal announcement on my blog.

    No, I haven’t left my job. The Tata Group, like always, has been good to me, and given me a sabbatical. But I will have to leave my lovely house (sigh!) and give away or put away the overwhelming number of things I own.

    (Update: In fact, I’m giving away everything I own to one lucky reader.)

    My tickets are not done yet, but I’ll be in Washington DC in the second week of August, after a week’s detour to Chicago to meet a friend. So, if you are in Chicago or Washington DC, do send me an e-mail and we’ll meet up. If you are in Washington DC, and know of a furnished one bedroom apartment for up to $1500 a month, walking distance from The Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, do ping me, and you’ll have my undying gratitude.

    Finally, if you are in India, and dropping into Mumbai in July, do give me a call at 9223366624 to meet up. The going away parties start this Saturday and everybody’s invited.

     

    • Anjali Ramachandran 2:50 pm on July 3, 2008 Permalink | Reply

      Congratulations, Gaurav!! This is superb news. All the very best. Will be tracking your progress through the fellowship on your blog!

    • Afzal Khan 2:54 pm on July 3, 2008 Permalink | Reply

      Congrats Dude! what a great news you shared, every Indian is proud of your acheivements.

      Good luck and do some great research work.

      All the Best from all of us.

      Regards
      Afzee

    • Nikhil Narayanan 3:32 pm on July 3, 2008 Permalink | Reply

      Gaurav,
      Good luck!

    • Rohit Jain 3:41 pm on July 3, 2008 Permalink | Reply

      whoa!Super

    • Kunal 4:32 pm on July 3, 2008 Permalink | Reply

      Fantastic! Congrats and all the v best!

    • Gaurav Mishra 5:38 pm on July 3, 2008 Permalink | Reply

      @Anjali/ Afzal/ Nikhil/ Rohit/ Kunal: Thanks. :-)

    • Anand 11:35 am on July 4, 2008 Permalink | Reply

      Brilliant. Congrats

    • Kiran Jonnalagadda 7:32 pm on July 5, 2008 Permalink | Reply

      Shucks. I was in Mumbai two weeks ago. Would have been fun to meet up.

    • Aalaap Ghag 2:22 pm on July 7, 2008 Permalink | Reply

      Whoa. Now *that* is an achievement!

    • Jinal Shah 8:40 pm on July 15, 2008 Permalink | Reply

      ahh! Congratulations and a warm welcome to my side of the coast. You’ll have to trek up to New York at some point to meet us!

      Looking fwwd!

    • navin 2:02 pm on July 30, 2008 Permalink | Reply

      Congrats gaurav!! Your blogs awesome too. So where is the party :) . Have a great time.

    • Gaurav Mishra Jr 9:35 am on August 4, 2008 Permalink | Reply

      Awesome dude, Great news. Keep us updated.

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