Gauravonomics Blog

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The students of Singapore Management University have put together a nifty wiki on social media in Asia.

The wiki has sections for each country (see India) with pages for introduction, case studies, resources and interviews with local experts (Kiruba, Rajesh and myself).

In my interviews, I talk about how the social media marketing scene in India is maturing –

:: Tell us about the use of social media by businesses in India.

About 5% of Indians have access to the Internet and 35-40% have access to mobile services. These numbers may seem small but actually it means 30 million users. For several businesses such as Pepsi and Reebok these 30 million internet users are sufficient because they are urban, educated, and upwardly mobile. For other business this number is not enough. Eventually we need to analyze who the target audience are for businesses. Hence, not everyone needs or wants to use social media at the moment. Further down the line, this might change.

:: Could you give us a brief comparison between the Indian and the U.S. market?  Read More

I was interviewed recently for a Livemint story on Twitter etiquette.

Apart from the basic Twitter etiquette all of us need to follow as individuals, companies and celebrities need to be cognizant of several other considerations. It’s a good practice to inform and guide employees about these considerations through a corporate social media policy. I’ll write a separate post on corporate social media policies and also share 20:20 Social’s own simple social media policy.

For now, here is the full text of the Livemint story on Twitter etiquette –

LiveMint’s guide to Twitter dos and don’ts

Twitter, like any social media tool, can get you into hot water if you don’t know what’s acceptable. We bring you a basic guide to best practices for using Twitter

Saabira Chaudhuri

Shashi Tharoor’s recent Tweet about traveling “cattle class” has spiraled way out of control, inciting a veritable storm of responses both online and offline. Manmohan Singh dubbed the minister’s remark a “joke,” but later asked him to show more discretion; and Rajasthan’s Chief Minister, Ashok Gehlot, and Union Rural Development Minister CP Joshi, have demanded Tharoor’s resignation.  Read More

Rediff has started a new series on Indian bloggers and I’m the one profiled first. I gave the interview almost four months back, so it’s a little like time traveling.

Here’s the full text of the story –

He swapped a cushy job for blogging and Web research
September 02, 2009
In the first of a new series featuring Indian bloggers, P Rajendran speaks to Gaurav Mishra, the maverick behind gauravonomics.com

A marketer who tired of all that is marketed, a social activist who operates through the confined medium of the Web, a yuppie who found solace in academia… Gaurav Mishra takes getting used to.

Mishra, a blogger who runs gauravonomics.com, which, among other things, talks about digital activism and how social media intersects with social change, is currently focusing on votereport.in, an election monitor that covered the recent elections in India.

He’s also part of mobichange.org, a team trying to use SMS and voice on more rudimentary cellphones (costing about $30) to connect people. He contributes to Global Voices and Digiactive, sites speaking up for the developing world using digital media. And when Mishra feels a burning need for brevity, he merely Twitters (www.twitter.com/gauravonomics).  Read More

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 interviewed recently by Homeland Security Today for a article on the use of social media and mobile technologies in crisis situations.

I talked about how technology is agnostic and can be used by both good guys and bad guys. We specifically talked about how both victims and terrorists were using mobile phones during the Mumbai terrorist attack.

I also pointed out that, often, the difference between the good guys (activists) and the bad guys (troublemakers) isn’t obvious. So, governments should assume that terrorists and dissidents will use these technologies, but refrain from trying to control, block or monitor these technologies too broadly.

Here is the full text of the article –

Social Media Opens Communications for Terrorists, Victims
by Mickey McCarter
Wednesday, 20 May 2009

Experts relate how terrorists, victims have been using Twitter and text messaging in crisis situations
The general public has very recently embraced the use of new social media applications like Twitter. Oprah Winfrey, for example, turned her fanbase onto the Web site last month. Traditional newspapers have lit up with stories about how blogs and tweets are changing the world.  Read More

Manuel Maqueda of Periodismo Ciudadano tracks development in the citizen journalism space from around the world on his wonderful Spanish language blog. He has just posted an interview with me, which we recorded during the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco –

We talked about Vote Report India and how platforms like Ushahidi are useful to make meaning from citizen reporting in a crisis situation.

We also talked about the important role of curators and connectors to make sense of the stream of citizen reporting during a crisis situation. When people ask me how to make sense of a fast emerging crisis situation, I tell them that the first thing they need to ask is: who should I follow?

Sometimes, it’s easy to find bloggers who understand local dynamics and have strong connections to the outside world. These bloggers can then curate mainstream and citizen media reports related to the crisis, and add cultural and other context, to help outsiders make sense of the situation. During the Mumbai terrorist attack, Dina and I, amongst others, played that role.

Sometimes, it’s not easy to find such connectors and outsiders don’t know whom to trust. This happened during the Russia-Georgia and Isreal-Gaza conflicts when it was almost impossible to differentiate between citizen journalism and propaganda.  Read More

At the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco last month, Lombardi Software’s Barton George did a small video interview with me.

In the first part, I talk about being a Yahoo! Fellow and teaching a course on social media at Georgetown University.

Towards the end of the interview, in response to a question on what excites me most about social media, I talk about social media analytics. I believe that social media analytics is almost like a black hole today. Most business, civil society and government organizations don’t know what to track and measure on social media and how to tie it back to their strategic and tactical metrics. Even if they know what to measure, they find it almost impossible to measure it accurately and extract meaning from it. There is a big open space for someone to establish best practices on social media analytics and then execute it well using a combination of machine and human input.

Thank you, Barton, for doing the interview.

On April 2, I gave a talk on digital activism in India and China at Yahoo!’s Sunnyvale office, as part of Yahoo!’s Have a Seat! talk series.

After the talk, Yahoo!’s Ebele Okobi-Harris did an interview with me on my research as the Yahoo! Fellow at Georgetown University –

In the interview, I mostly talk about the similarities and differences between digital activism in India and China.

Then, towards the end of the interview, I talk about how easy it is to write beautiful case studies on why a digital activism campaign was successful, but how difficult it is to replicate that success. At best, we can define the boundary conditions necessary for success with digital activism campaigns, but we still can’t say for sure that these conditions are sufficient. There’s a real possibility that we might never be able to come up with a definitive three-step guide on how to run a successful digital activism campaign, and that’s a humbling thought.

I was at the South by Southwest Festival last week and my question in Steven Johnson’s session on the Ecosystem of News led to an interview with Gareth Mitchell of BBC’s Digital Planet.

Here’s the full MP3 podcast. Steven Johnson’s interview on the ecosystem of news is from 4:45 to 10:15. My interview on how social media is changing news internationally is from 10:15 to 13:45.

Basically, I say that the intersection between legacy media and participatory media is unique for each country.

The usual narrative of participatory media democratizing news and breaking the business model of traditional news organizations is only valid in the United States and Western Europe.

Many countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America haven’t ever had an independent traditional news media ecosystem, and participatory media, especially blogging, has quickly become an important source of credible news. China is a good example of how participatory media has forced the government controlled traditional media to become more transparent and responsive.

On the other hand, many other countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America have a very vibrant news media ecosystem and they are still thriving, in spite of the growing importance of participatory media. India is a great example, and both newspapers and television channels are doing very well.  Read More

I was recently asked to comment on citizen journalism trends in India. The longish email interview was crystallized into a one sentence comment in an India Today story on social media as a change event.

Here is the full text of the story –

Emerging social media will drive change in 2009
Neha Tara Mehta
January 2, 2009

In November last year, Jasmine Shah, a 26-year-old IITian quit his corporate career with a single-point agenda: ‘to go out and cast your vote’. By November this year, he had roped in over a lakh voters under the Jaago Re! One Billion Votes campaign. By November next year, he hopes to have realised his target of getting 4 million young people to vote in the 2009 general elections.

As the campaign coordinator of Jaago Re – launched under the aegis of the Janaagraha Centre for Citizenship and Democracy and Tata Tea – Shah leads a team of 14, of which four are his IIT batchmates, who left their lucrative corporate careers to work for a “pittance”. The team has taken a leaf out of Barack Obama’s campaign, and is leveraging Facebook, Orkut, YouTube and other social media, to get young people to vote.  Read More

Quick Summary: I was quoted yesterday in Indian newspaper DNA in a story on whether blogging in India is mature enough to act as a change agent.

I was quoted copiously in Indian daily DNA in a story on whether blogging in India is mature enough to act as a change agent.

A good approach to answer this question is to compare social media usage in India with social media usage in China –

Social media usage in Metro India and Metro China is driven by very different consumer behavior. In Metro China, Creators, Critics and Joiners all play an important role, whereas in India, Joiners are the predominant drivers of social media usage.

Social media usage in India and China also have significant differences in terms of the topics that drive conversation. Richard Edelman has written an interesting introduction to the Chinese blogosphere –

Social media in China has two constant themes: the rich/poor divide and nationalism… The best Chinese bloggers are… incredibly impressive, committed to change, convinced that they were part of a new China where individual expression and frank speaking will win.  Read More

Quick Summary: Check out my interview in Indian daily Hindustan Times for ‘The Marketer Who Went Off Consumption’, my year-long book-as-a-blog experiment in why we choose to consume or not.

‘The Marketer Who Went Off Consumption’ is my year-long blog-as-a-book experiment in why we choose to consume, or not.

If you haven’t yet subscribed to ‘The Marketer Who Went Off Consumption’, you should subscribe to it now, for free, in a feed reader, or by e-mail.

Yesterday, my first interview for ‘The Marketer Who Went Off Consumption’ was published in Indian daily Hindustan Times.

The interview was published on the front page of the Delhi edition –

– and the city section in the Mumbai edition –

One interesting thing I learned yesterday is that different editions of a newspaper may publish different versions of a story.

The Mumbai Edition published the full story — see text below — complete with my rules and URL.

The Delhi Edition published a much shorter version of the story — also available online — but it was on the front page and I’m not complaining at all.  Read More

Quick Summary: Read my interview with Rohit Bhargava, author of the new marketing book ‘Personality Not Included’.

I had earlier promised you that I’ll post an interview with Rohit Bhargava, author of the new marketing book ‘Personality Not Included’.

The interview is part of Rohit’s innovative blogger interview program to promote the book –

If you send me five questions that you want to know about the book or personality, I’ll write you a response on Friday that you can publish on your blog. I will link to all the posted interviews on Friday.

On Monday, I’ll be running a competition on my blog to let readers vote on the Best Interview. The winner will get a signed copy of my book and a gift certificate for $100 from Amazon.

Rohit has spent the last two days doing 57 virtual blogger interviews; that’s 285 questions!

I’m in Rohit’s shortlist of twelve best interviews; now I need your help in the voting.  Read More

Quick Summary: Check out ‘Personality Not Included’ a new book by one of my favorite marketing bloggers Rohit Bhargava.

I just finished reading the introduction (download PDF here) of Rohit Bhargava’s new book ‘Personality Not Included’ and it totally rocks!

The basic premise of Rohit’s book is that personality is the key element defining what a brand stands for and the story it tells to its customers.

Personality is the unique, authentic, and talkable soul of your brand that people can get passionate about.

…

Personality is not just about what you stand for, but how you choose to communicate it. It is also the way to reconnect your customers, partners, employees, and influencers to the soul of your brand in the new social media era.

…

Personality is the macro trend. The three hottest topics in business today are how to do more with social media, using word-of-mouth marketing, and interacting more authentically with customers. Personality is the theme that incorporates all of these topics.  Read More

Dear DNA,

One of your reporters, Anjali Thomas, repeatedly called me last week for a story on the dark side of blogging in the context of the attacks against Cathy Sierra and Tim O’Reilly’s blogger code of conduct.

I repeatedly told her that the story she was researching was marginal at best and she should instead do a story on how blogging lets people find their voice and become part of a community.

I repeatedly told her that most of the bloggers I know, including myself, have had mostly positive experiences with blogging and I have rarely seen offensive and/ or abusive comments on the blogs I read.

When she insisted that I tell her about some controversial episodes in the desi blogospehere, I asked her to speak to Saket, Gaurav, Sakshi and Rashmi instead and offered to do an interview if she decided to do an objective story on blogging.

After all that, imagine my shock when I saw myself misquoted in this manner in DNA yesterday –  Read More