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Indian Social Media Agencies in Early 2008

Last year, I had created the first list of social media agencies in India, which included –

- Digital Advertising Agencies like Webchutney, Quasar Media/ Quasar Talk and Phonethics offering social media marketing services with a focus on virals, social network apps, social media campaigns etc.

- Public Relations Practitioners like Rajesh Lalwani’s Blogworks offering social media services with a focus on online reputation monitoring and social media outreach etc.

- Prominent Bloggers like Kiruba Shankar, Dina Mehta’s Mosoci, and Rajiv Dingra’s WATConsult offering, basically, corporate blogging consulting services and workshops.

Indian Social Media Agencies in Mid 2009

A year later, I can see at least six type of companies offering social media services in India –

1. Independent Social Media Agencies offer social media monitoring, social media outreach, and community manager services. Blogworks and WATConsult are the most visible example, but other examples include Windchimes, Social Wavelength, Bloggers’ Mind, Sulmoz, Zapylacz, Mercury Communication, Ripple Links and Electrosocial.

I recently spoke at a panel on “Online Activism Around the World” with Nancy Scola, Ralf Bendrath and Jon Pincus at the Computers Freedom and Privacy 2009 Conference.

Although I was supposed to speak about Vote Report India and digital activism in India, I ended up speaking about how social technologies are value-agnostic.

At each of the four levels of Content, Collaboration, Community and Collective Intelligence, social technologies can lead to both good and bad outcomes.

User generated content can be used to break news or spread propaganda. Collective action can be used to organize protests against a totalitarian regime or perpetrate violence against its detractors. Online communities can create cosmopolitan open societies or cult-like closed ones. Collective intelligence can be used to benefit consumers and citizens or profile them for surveillance or commercial exploitation.

Some highlights from the talks and the panel –

- Why real political change will not be brought about by online activism, but by using online engagement to build real world institutions.

- Why digital technologies don’t necessarily distribute power by default, but can also be used to centralize power.

- Why the Obama administration might be the most sophisticated propaganda machine in the human history.

Leading Indian blog community BlogAdda recently did an interview with me.

We talked about the use of social media technologies in the 2009 Indian elections, about our crowd-sourced election monitoring platform Vote Report India, about my approach to social media, and about my new social media analytics company 20:20 Web Tech.

In response to a question on how I promote my blog, I mentioned that the directionality needs to be the other way round. If positioned well, your blog should be able to promote you and your ideas.

I also said that the most gratifying aspect of blogging is being able to develop an idea in public over time. I first wrote about social media outsourcing more than one year back and now my series of posts on the subject has led to 20:20 Web Tech.

My advice to a new blogger? Use your blog to learn, share what you have learned and build a reputation. My blog, for instance, has led to a fellowship, a teaching gig, numerous speaking opportunities, a few book chapters, and now a company.

You can read my full BlogAdda interview here.

I was quoted today in Indian daily Mail Today in a story on the increasing popularity of Twitter in India.

The story talks about how an engaged Twitter community has emerged in India since I organized India’s first tweetup two years back. A case in point in the tweetup with writer, UN diplomat, and member of parliament Shashi Tharoor organized by Twilight Fairy.

The article also chronicles the use of Twitter by Indian celebrities like Shashi Tharoor, Rahul Gandhi, Gul Panang and Mallika Sherawat.

Here’s the ful text of the story –

If you don’t tweet you haven’t arrived

By Neha Tara Mehta in New Delhi

Not only the geeks but glitterati too are hooked to the micro- blogging networking site

IT TOOK just 140 characters to change the way our celebrities talk to us. You no longer need Page 3 to know who Mallika Sherawat is flirting with, when Shashi Tharoor gets a haircut, and the kind of music that helps Rahul Gandhi unwind.

All you need is to follow their ‘ tweets’ — 140- character- long updates on what they think of life, the universe and everything.

I’ll be speaking on two panels on international digital activism at the CFP Computers Freedom and Privacy Conference 2009 at Washington DC on June 4, 2009.

In the first panel on “Online Activism Around the World”, I’ll be joined by Nancy Scola (Associate Editor, techPresident), Michael Bolognino (Join the Impact), Ralf Bendrath (Internet Governance Researcher and Privacy Activist), and Basem Fathy (Instructor, Wadi Environmental Science Center).

Later, in a breakout session on “Social Network Activism in the US and Beyond”, I’ll be joined by Amy Hamblin (Organizing for America), Phil Aroneanu (350.org), Ralf Bendrath (Internet Governance Researcher and Privacy Activist), Emily Jacobi (Co-Founder/Director, Digital Democracy), Katitza Rodríguez Pereda (Electronic Privacy Information Center EPIC), Robert Guerra (Project Director, Internet Freedom, Freedom House) and Katrina Neubauer (Program Officer, Internet Freedom, Freedom House).

I would start by giving some context on social media and digital activism in India. Then, I would talk about digital civil society initiatives in the 2009 Indian elections and the role our Ushahidi-based election monitoring platform Vote Report India played in that ecosystem. Finally, I would use my 4Cs Social Media Framework to evaluate the successes and failures of Vote Report India. I recently gave a longer version of the talk at Netsquared DC.

The IndiBlogger.in State of the Indian Blogosphere 2009 report, co-authored by me, was featured in Indian daily Indian Express recently on a story on blogging in India.

This is also the first news story on 20:20 Web Tech, which isn’t bad, given that we just started.

I can’t find a link to the story online, but here is the full text of the story —

Indian Bloggers’ park stormed with 15 percent more posts during election period

PRANAV KULKARNI

PUNE, MAY 20

The sensitivity of the latter is such that after almost every important phenomenon that takes place across the sphere, the blogosphere is stormed with posts and comments that trigger open discussions, views, debates and forums. According to a national analysis conducted by Gaurav Mishra, co founder 20:20 Web Tech and Vote Report India and Renie Ravin of Banglore-based IndiBlogger.in, the postings on the Indian blog world witnessed an increase of over 15 percent in the month of May- thanks to the ongoing Indian Premiere League fever and the most sensitive- election results.

I have spent the morning comparing the results of two surveys of social media usage amongst Indian and international brands and some of the findings are fascinating.

The Deloitte/ SNCR/ Beeline Labs Tribalization of Business Study 2009 is based on responses from 430 international companies who have experimented with online communities.

The Exchange4Media/ Blogworks Indian Social Media Survey 2009 is based on responses from 267 Indian marketers, who may or may not have run social media programs.

Here are the highlights from the Tribalization of Business Study 2009 –

- The top five business objectives for online communities are: amplify word of mouth, increase customer loyalty, increase brand awareness, get market insight, generate new ideas, and improve customer support.

- The top five business measures to for online communities are: greater awareness, word of mouth, improved brand perception, buzz in mainstream media and blogosphere, and increased sales.

- The top five web analytics measures to for online communities are: number of active users, number of visitors, frequency of posts/ comments, number of registered users and number of repeat visitors.

The 20:20 Approach to Social Media Analytics is based on nuanced understanding of the multi-layered nature of social media.

We recognize that social media programs can operate at any of the four levels of Content, Collaboration, Community and Collective Intelligence, and each layer has a corresponding set of metrics, which need to be measured using a mix of onsite/ offsite web analytics, network/ influence analysis and semantic/ content analysis.

We also believe that social media analytics is at the core of all the five steps of a social media program: planning, listening, understanding, engaging and monitoring.

Step 1: Plan

- Start with shared understanding on strategic objectives.
- Identify metrics for each level in 4Cs Framework: Content, Collaboration, Community and Collective Intelligence.
- Select web analytics, network analysis and content analysis tools to measure identified metrics.

Step 2: Listen

- Set up keywords list and use tool(s) to crawl data.
- Use network analysis to identify relevant segments.
- Use machine content analysis to auto-tag data and identify related content clusters.
- Use human content analysis to deal with duplication, spam, slang, sarcasm and sentiment.

Step 3: Understand

George at the Meedan Blog explains why it is important for social web projects in the Middle East to be bi-lingual: Arabic is the language of the vast majority of the more than forty million Arab web users in the Middle East.

That’s why Meedan is teaming up with Sharik 961 - a group of Lebanese nonprofits, development practitioners, media people, and techies - to help monitor the Lebanese elections on June 7.

The project, which will use the Ushahidi crisis-monitoring platform, will enable Lebanese voters to collaborate with a wide network of interested communities on the web to track reports from the ballot box.

There’s absolutely no doubt translation is key to this - which partly explains why Vote Report India struggled to draw a wider set of reports on the recent Indian elections.

I have been almost too transparent in discussing the successes and failures of Vote Report India in public and I can assure you, George, that language wasn’t a problem for Vote Report India.

I recently wrote an Op-Ed in Indian business daily Live Mint on why BJP’s digital election campaign wasn’t a #fail.

I have praised BJP’s election campaign before and even argued against dismissing BJP’s campaign as flawed, just because it failed. I have also written about why praising BJP’s election campaign isn’t the same as endorsing it’s ideology.

Here’s the full text of the article –

BJP Wide Web: A Success

BJP supporters dominated online conversations about the elections in the Indian blogosphere and on social networking sites such as Facebook, Orkut and Twitter

Gaurav Mishra

It is tempting to see the Congress’ victory this election as a validation of the tried and tested methods of political campaigning. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) ran an aggressive digital media campaign and focused on reaching out to the urban first-time voter, but failed. The Congress ran a traditional campaign, focused on movie songs, local rallies and the charisma of the Nehru-Gandhi family, and succeeded.

However, I would caution against reading too much into this coincidence and mistaking it for causality. It’s not the BJP’s campaign but its Hindutva ideology that has failed the party. The BJP has lost in spite of its brilliant campaign, not because of it.