Gauravonomics Blog

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Steven Noble from Forrester interviewed me some time back for Forrester’s Social Technographics in India report. Forrester released the report last week and sent me a copy.

The Social Technographics profile is based on in-person interviews with 353 SEC ABC online adult respondents in metropolitan India (including Mumbai, New Delhi, Kolkata, Bangalore, and Chennai) between March and April 2009.

Using the top Indian website in each category (as per October ‘09 data from Vizisense) as a reference, it’s easy to see that these numbers cannot be right, especially for Joiners –

- Overall Internet Population: 42.9m

- Creators: No estimates
- Critics (Mouthshut): 0.8m (2%)
- Collectors (Digg): 0.9m (2%)
- Joiners (Orkut): 15.5m (36%)
- Spectators (YouTube): 10.9 (25%)
- Inactives: No estimates

I had earlier tried to estimate the Social Technographics profile of metro India using public data. Since then, I have revised some of these estimates, based on Vizisense data and discussions with the JuxtConsult folks.  Read More

According to a recent report by Forrester’s Josh Bernoff, corporate blogs are the least trusted information source amongst US internet users, below direct mail and online classifieds!

Only 16% of those who use company blogs say they trust them. Even regular blog readers (24%) and regular bloggers (39%) trust in company blogs lags behind most other forms of content.

Those who trust company blogs are a little younger, a little richer, and slightly less educated than those who don’t and they are likely to trust all types of media, including direct mail.

Surprising, bloggers are more likely to trust ALL types of content than blog readers, who, in turn, are more likely to trust ALL types of content except radio and TV than average US internet users.

Given that most corporate blog posts are essentially press releases, it isn’t surprising that most people don’t trust them, even though they trust word of mouth marketing in general. Even though Josh Bernoff gives several suggestions on how to run a corporate blog that stands out (be personal, be authentic, focus on the customer, focus on the industry), it will be sometime before we see a new breed of corporate blogs.  Read More