Tag Archives: India

Breakout Years in Adoption of Communications Technologies in BRIC Countries

Saturday, October 4th, 2008

(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).

Read More

Filed in Flat or Not, Technology | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Marketer Who Understood Social Media

Saturday, September 27th, 2008

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

Before I became the marketer who went off consumption, I was the marketer who understood social media.

Over the last two years, I have been fortunate to be included in conversations around social media thought and practice in India in multiple roles — as a traditional marketer who understood social media, as a blogger who wrote about social media, as an early adopter of new social media platforms, and as a connector of social media thinkers and practitioners. I think that I was able to play the last three roles primarily because of my first role. Much of my legitimacy as a thinker/ blogger and most of the connections I was able to make were rooted in my role as the custodian of a big brand that was engaging with the social media space in a meaningful way.

Over the last few months, my focus has moved away from social media marketing to other use cases of social media in developing countries, especially the use of social media for social change. As I explained in the introductory episode of my fellowship podcast, my 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 — and also borrows heavily from cultural studies.

Read More

Filed in Flat or Not, Social Media | Also tagged , , , , , , | Permalink | Comments (0)

List of Social Media Blogs in India

Thursday, September 25th, 2008

A few months back, I had compiled two lists to help define the social media scene in India — a list of marketing, public relations and social media blogs in India and a list of social media agencies in India.

Now, Sampad Swain has taken the idea further by compiling a ranking of social media blogs in India, using a combination of metrics — Google PageRank, Alexa Rank, Number of Feed Subscribers, Technorati Authority and his own qualitative assessment (Sampad’s Rank).

I appreciate the hard work Sampad has put into the list (and it’s flattering to be ranked first), but I personally believe that blog rankings are premature for the India social media scene. Blog rankings are useful as filters when there are hundreds (or thousands) of blogs. As of now, there are only twenty odd social media blogs in India, so, focusing on rankings will make some people defensive and detract from what we need to do — build a community by highlighting each other’s work.

Read More

Filed in Directory, Social Media | Also tagged , , , , | Permalink | Comments (3)

BRIC Countries Early Adopters of Cloud Computing? No!

Monday, September 15th, 2008

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.

Filed in BRIC | Also tagged , , , , , , | Permalink | Comments (1)

A Comparative Analysis of Social Media Usage in BRIC Countries

Tuesday, September 2nd, 2008

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.

Filed in Social Media, Washington DC Diary | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink | Comments (0)

The State of Radio Podcast from Sonologue

Monday, August 25th, 2008

I’m delighted that my friend Chhavi Sachdev — who runs audio content and consulting company Sonologue — has started a new podcast on the state of the radio industry in India –

This week, I’m looking at a few new station launches in India, including India’s first real NGO-run community radio station, Q2 results from the RAB in the US and iWorldspace, as well as a UK study on podcasting and what the numbers mean for radio listenership.

After more than a decade in the US, Chhavi returned to India last year to seed the idea of meaningful talk radio in India. Before she started Sonologue, she was a partner in News Radio India where she produced content for Radio Netherlands and WBUR. Chhavi is very involved in the community radio scene in India and has some fascinating ideas about the state of radio in India.

I have been prodding Chhavi into doing a podcast for a few months now, and I’m delighted that she has taken the plunge at a moment when she is struggling with putting together the rest of the Sonologue website. Chhavi’s podcast is another lesson for me that we need fewer resources than we think we do to do something we really want to do.

Filed in Friends, How To Be Remarkable | Also tagged , , , , , , , | Permalink | Comments (1)

Blogworks Report: An Overview of Internet, Blog & Social Media Environment in India

Saturday, August 23rd, 2008

My friend Rajesh Lalwani — who runs social media and brand consulting outfit Blogworks — has released a report on the social media scene in India.

‘An Overview of Internet, Blog & Social Media Environment in India’ is based on primary research with social media thought leaders (including yours truly), apart from secondary research. It covers internet, mobile web and social media usage trends in India, apart from analysis of the social networking sites and blogging platforms popular in India.

I have great respect for the team that has worked on the report and, at $1200 plus tax, it’s a useful introduction to the social media space in India. You can order the report by e-mail at studyreport@blogworks.in.

Filed in Social Media | Also tagged , , , , , | Permalink | Comments (1)

Netroots Rising: How a Citizen Army of Bloggers and Online Activists Is Changing American Politics

Thursday, August 21st, 2008

Netroots Rising: How a Citizen Army of Bloggers and Online Activists Is Changing American Politics

Later in the evening, I’ll be going for a book reading session of ‘Netroots Rising: How a Citizen Army of Bloggers and Online Activists Is Changing American Politics’ by Lowell Feld and Nate Wilcox at Busboys and Poets.

Surprisingly, neither the Netroots Rising website, nor the book’s Amazon page offers a blurb! So, here’s the blurb from the Busboys and Poets events listings –

The 2006 elections will be remembered as the year when the center of power in American politics shifted from traditional “top-down” central broadcasters to new “bottom-up” decentralized activists in the blogosphere and netroots. The authors give firsthand accounts of the burgeoning power of the netroots to determine the outcome of political contests, most notably as when the national balance of power was tipped by Jim Webb’s “rag-tag army” of bloggers and netroots activists who provoked and exposed the gaffe that proved fatal to George Allen’s senatorial bid.

It seems to me that the prominent use of social media tools in election campaigns has introduced social media to a set of Americans who wouldn’t have been interested in it otherwise. As a result, there’s suddenly a lot of interest in the use of social media to engage (young) citizens in civic issues. Books like Rebooting America: Ideas for Redesigning American Democracy for the Internet Age and ‘Netroots Rising’ are an indicator of this interest.

Read More

Filed in BRIC, Social Change 2.0, Social Media | Also tagged , , , , , , , , | Permalink | Comments (1)

Gaming and Entertainment Drive Mobile Internet Usage in BRIC Countries

Monday, August 18th, 2008

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.

Read More

Filed in BRIC, Mobile Web | Also tagged , , , , , , , | Permalink | Comments (2)

Urban Indian Subcultures: My Placeholder Hypothesis on the Indian Cultural Mainstream

Thursday, August 7th, 2008

I first asked: are there any subcultures in urban India that go beyond religion, caste, class and language? (tweet)

Then I realized that before I try to understand Indian subcultures, I’ll have to first ask: what is (the mainstream) Indian culture? (tweet)

So, I asked my friends on Twitter –

So, what is (the mainstream) Indian culture? Bollywood? Cricket? Weddings? Hindi soaps? Divisions wrt religion/caste/language? What else? (tweet)

Dina Mehta, Rajesh Lalwani and Harshil Karia responded that in a country as complex as India, there can’t be a dominant mainstream culture –

RajeshLalwani: I wish it was that simple. I don’t think it is that easy to qualify Indian cultural mainstream. (tweet) can we define anything as mainstream for an entire nation (tweet).

Harshil: I don’t believe there is a master Indian culture (tweet)… (even though)… key cultural indicators are religion, family, democracy (and the nuances attached to it) and cricket. (tweet)

Dina: I shy away from such stereotypes. My worldview may differ from yours. What’s mainstream to me may be different to you. (tweet) eg. twitter is mainstream for me & not a subculture. makes me think is culture static? can anyone say this “IS”. (tweet) More importantly, my worldview of urban indian culture is driven by my existence here. slums juxtaposed with hi-rise (tweet).

Read More

Filed in Culture | Also tagged , , | Permalink | Comments (1)