Gauravonomics Blog

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Amit Klein (@amitklein) has invited me for a guest lecture on social media in India in his class on internet marketing at ISB Hyderabad.

I plan to cover the following case studies in the guest lecture –

- SEA-EAT blog and wiki
- Valentine’s Day Pink Chaddi Campaign
- Blank Noise Project
- Bell Bajao Campaign
- iJanaagraha (disclosure: I am a member of Janaagraha’s technology advisory group).
- #mumbai terrorist attack on Twitter
- NGOPost
- Vote Report India (disclosure: I am a co-founder of Vote Report India)

- Tata Tea Jaago Re
- Sunsilk Gang of Girls
- Aircel Save the Tigers (disclosure: Aircel is a 20:20 Media client)
- Royal Challengers Bangalore (disclosure: United Spirits is a 2020 Social client)
- Dell Go Green (disclosure: Dell is a 2020 Social client)
- OK Tata ByeBye
- Mitsubishi Cedia Great Driving Challenge
- Pepsi Youngistaan (disclosure: PepsiCo India is a 2020 Social client)
- NASSCOM

- L K Advani’s election campaign
- Shashi Tharoor on Twitter

- NDTV Social
- Talk To HT
- CNN-IBN Citizen Journalism  Read More

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 –

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.

Quick Summary: To build an identity and a broad Indian user base for themselves, Indian social networking sites need to reflect the unique nature of relationships in the Indian society.

According to a recent cover story in the Outlook Magazine, there are almost 10 mn users of social networking sites in India. Orkut has 7.1 mn users, Facebook 1.6 mn, BharatStudent 1.7mn, Fropper 1.0 mn, BigAdda 1.4 mn, Minglebox 0.6 mn, adding up to 13.4 mn (tweet). Add smaller social networks, factor in duplication across social networks, and the total user base for social networks in India may be ~10 mn (tweet).

As the number of Internet users in India is estimated at between 20 mn and 30 mn by most sources, at least one third of all Internet users in India now use a social network.  Read More