Tagged: Social Media RSS

  • Gaurav Mishra 3:57 am on March 12, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , Jacqui Zhou, Social Media, Support Forum   

    Dell Shares Insights on Its Social Media Initiatives in China 

    Welcome back to Gauravonomics Blog! Subscribe to my feed now and you'll never miss a single post!

    Dell’s Jacqui Zhou (@jacquizhou) who ran Direct2Dell Chinese blog in the past and is responsible for much of Dell’s globalization strategy in social media —

    Earlier this week we launched Dell’s official microblog in China. The microblog will serve as a channel for corporate news, technology discussions and even coupon and deal information. Instead of duplicating what we have in the US, we localize the content and platform to appeal to interests in China and go where our customers in China are.

    Three years ago, we started Direct2Dell Chinese, the first corporate blog in Chinese in the computer industry. It has become an invaluable tool for Dell to listen, engage and converse with local customers. Our Dell tech support forum has accumulated a big user base where customers assist each other in technology needs. We have started listening and outreaching program in China where our customer care and tech support agents tune into online conversations proactively and help address customers technology needs. We have implemented ratings and reviews program on dell.com, where Chinese customers can share their feedback of products and help each other make more informed purchase decision. Very soon, we will have our community presence on key local social networking sites like Renren.

    China is another frontier for Dell to engage with customers in social media. We will keep exploring new areas as we see new trends from our customer. More to come.

    Disclosure: Dell is a 20:20 Media and 2020 Social client. See: Dell Go Green, a contest-driven ideation platform where Dell is seeking ideas from consumers for redesigning, reusing or recycling gadgets to make them go green.

     

  • Gaurav Mishra 2:33 am on March 12, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , Richard Millington, Social Media   

    When Choosing Your Community Name, Ask: Will Community Members Wear It On Their T-Shirts 

    Richard Millington (@richmillington) —

    Your community name is a powerful symbol. Don’t waste it. Picking the wrong name can do real harm. Picking the right name can do wonders.

    A member should feel a sense of affiliation and familiarity with the name of your community. It should identify why the group feel they are special. They should be proud of the name. They should be happy to wear the t-shirts.

     

  • Gaurav Mishra 7:07 pm on March 11, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Brian Vellmure, , Social Anthropologist, , Social Media   

    Why Organizations Need a Social Anthropologist 

    Brian Vellmure (@crmstrategies) –

    What if we were to not just know about our customers, but also about the groups of people that they were part of, who they interact with, how they interact, and why?

    We all have circles of friendships, professional relationships, patterns, etc. that we live by. We have patterns of decision making, and we all make decisions based on influence of those we know and trust.

    By understanding more about those who influence our customer’s decisions; we may discover valuable insights that may help us to meet our customer’s needs better, and if your organization is prepared enough, even co-create solutions with them.

    Conversely, we may also begin to understand who our customers influence, and why a successful sale might not only allow us to recognize revenue from that single purchase, but also a chain of purchases based on the influence and recommendation of our customer’s purchase decision.

    These insights are not only valuable for each individual prospect or customer, but also in aggregate. By profiling groups or segments of our customer base (or our target market in general), we can potentially gain key insights into who is likely deriving the most value from our products and service offerings.

     

  • Gaurav Mishra 12:45 am on March 11, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: cause marketing, , , e-STAS Symposium, , , , Social Media, , , , , ,   

    My Session at the e-STAS Symposium: Vote Report India, Ushahidi, iJanaagraha, Dell Go Green & More 

    Here’s a video of myself in conversation with Luis Galindo (@luis_galindo, who runs the WIMS 2.0 project at Telefonica) at the e-STAS Symposium on Technologies for Social Action:

    I talk about election monitoring platform Vote Report India and citizen action platform iJanaagraha and the importance of having a web-mobile-offline hybrid model to drive citizen action.

    I talk about how crisis reporting platform Ushahidi has transformed a SMS-map mashup four people hacked together in four days into a global organization and ecosystem of passionate users and volunteers like myself.

    I talk about ideation platform Dell Go Green and the importance of building a community around a social object (a lifestyle or cause) that is bigger than the brand itself.

    Finally, I talk about how businesses, civil society organizations and government agencies can learn valuable lessons from each other on how to engage their constituents using social technologies and online communities. If you want to learn more, here’s a mammoth 150+ slide deck on how social technologies are changing media, business and society:

     

  • Gaurav Mishra 8:03 pm on March 7, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: 1-9-90 Rule, B2B Communities, B2C COmmunities, , , , Community Management, Community Maturity Model, Community Roundtable, , , Evangelist Communities, Ideation Communities, Jim Storer, Jono Bacon, , , Partner Communities, Rachel Happe, Research Communities, Social Marketplaces, Social Media, State of Community Management report, Support Communities, Talent Communities, The Art of Community, Tribalization of Business Report   

    What Are the Biggest Use Cases For Corporate Online Communities? 

    My post on the biggest Social CRM (SCRM) use cases set me thinking about the biggest use cases for corporate online communities.

    A company can build and host ten different types of communities to serve different business objectives:

    1. Communities of Interest: to connect customers and influencers around a lifestyle, an interest or a cause that is related to the company’s or brand’s values.

    2. Communities of Practice: to connect customers and influencers around a profession, a skill or an industry that is related to the company’s offerings.

    3. Evangelist Communities: to connect customers who are passionate about the company, its products or its brands and energize them to drive advocacy and referrals.

    4. Employee Communities: to connect the company’s employees, in order to build an open culture, improve collaboration amongst distributed teams, or enable knowledge-sharing.

    5. Partner Communities: to connect the company’s employees and partners, in order to build an open culture, improve collaboration amongst distributed teams, or enable knowledge-sharing.

    6. Talent Communities: to showcase the company’s work culture and employees and attract prospective employees to the company.

    7. Ideation Communities: to solicit and select product and process improvement ideas from employees, partners, customers and influencers.

    8. Research Communities: to identify trends and user behavior related to the company’s industry or products to use in product and process innovation.

    9. Social Marketplaces: so that customers can help each other select and purchase a product or service that is most appropriate for them, with some facilitation from company employees.

    10. Support Communities: so that customers can help each other solve problems and use products or services in the best way, with some facilitation from company employees.

    Each of these ten types of communities differ from each other not only in terms of the business objectives and the business function that owns them, but also in terms of the types and numbers of members, the type and frequency of editorial and user-created content, the functionality required in the community platform, the integration of the community platform with existing social networks and, finally, governance, reputation and reward systems.

    Some of these communities are native to B2B or B2C contexts, while others can work across business contexts. Some are public or private by default, while others can work anywhere on the public-private continuum. Some of these communities are built around one primary driver — insights, response, activation, or crowd-sourcing — while others incorporate elements from all four.

    The State of Community Management report from the Community Roundtable touches upon some of these aspects in its strategy section, then goes on to discuss the hands-on aspects of community management, based on its Community Maturity Model:

    Community Roundtable Community Maturity Model

    A particularly insightful comment relates to the 1:9:90 rule –

    Unlike a commonly held belief, all communities do not develop a 90-9-1 pattern – i.e. 90% lurkers, 9% contributors, 1% authors and they should not necessarily be built with that expectation. That profile is a good benchmark for large consumer brand communities and product support communities, but is not such a good profile for market research, employee, innovation, or customer advocacy communities.

    While the report is thorough and packed with practical tips, here are three ways in which Rachel Happe and Jim Storer can make it even better:

    - Include case studies from the Community Roundtable members to bring alive the tips.
    - Provide a how-to-guide for the organization to move from the Hierarchy stage to the Emergent Community, Community and Network stages.
    - Provide tips by type of community, starting with the ten types of communities I have listed above.

    Here are some of my other favorite resources on online communities:

    - The Art of Community by Jono Bacon
    - The Tribalization of Business report by Beeline Labs
    - Building and Sustaining Brand Communities by Radian6

    Cross-posted at 2020 Social: Because Business is Social.

     

    • naveen jp 3:50 pm on March 7, 2010 Permalink | Reply

      I know that use cases related a corporate's customers are real since there also exists a profitable market for related services. I am not too sure about those related to employees as I haven't come across any profitable services built around this use case (though there have been attempts).

      • Gaurav Mishra 5:55 am on March 12, 2010 Permalink | Reply

        @naveen: The use cases for employee communities are driven by collaboration, innovation, and retention.

  • Gaurav Mishra 3:55 pm on March 6, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Altimeter Group, , , Ray Wang, , SCRMUseCases, , , Social Media, Toolkit, Use Cases   

    What Are the Biggest Social CRM (SCRM) Use Cases and Market Opportunities? 

    Altimeter Group has recently released a white paper in which analysts Jeremiah Owyang and Ray Wang have identified 18 use cases for Social CRM, based on conversations with almost 100 users, influencers and vendors.

    Roughly, most of these uses cases can be classified across five business areas (Marketing, Sales, Support, Innovation, Collaboration) and four dynamics (Insights, Response, Proactive, and Crowd-Sourcing). I like this simple action-oriented classification better that coming up with names for each use case combination.

    Social CRM Use Cases

    Owyang and Wang have further classified these 18 use cases based on market demand and technology maturity. Market demand reflects the urgency by organizations to deploy a use case while technology maturity reflects the market readiness and maturity of the available solutions.

    In this matrix, Evangelizables present the most immediate market opportunity, for both product and consulting company, while Early Movers presents the most important marketing opportunity for product companies.

    - Evangelizables (high market demand and high technology maturity): Dominated by insights, response and proactive uses cases for sales, marketing and support.
    - Near Tipping Points (low market demand and high technology maturity): Dominated by crowd-sourcing use cases in collaboration and innovation.
    - Early Movers (high market demand and low technology maturity): Dominated by response uses cases in sales and marketing.
    - Early Adoptions (low market demand and low technology maturity): Dominated by insights use cases in collaboration and innovation.

    Finally, Owyang and Wang define the 5M’s, foundational processes that cut across all these uses cases:

    - Monitoring: to track social media conversations.
    - Mapping: to link up social graphs, including profiles and relationships.
    - Management: to tie back systems to business processes and priorities.
    - Middleware: to define workflows across social and enterprise platforms.
    - Measurement: to analyze metrics related to business objectives.

    Here’s the Altimeter report on Social CRM:

    At 2020 Social, we spend a lot of time thinking about how the Social CRM toolkit is coming together and how it can help organizations design a talk-worthy experience ecosystem.

    On one hand, we are trying to put together a toolkit for marketers who want to use social CRM, but we aren’t quite there yet, as the tools don’t quite connect with each other as seamlessly as they claim to.

    On the other hand, we are speaking with the product teams of some Indian CRM solutions providers, to help them extend their CRM solutions by incorporating social and community elements in them.

    The trick is that social is public, many-to-many and emergent, while traditional CRM is private, one-to-one and rule-based. Social CRM lies at the intersection of social and CRM worlds and I’m not quite sure if we have figured out how to use the best from both the worlds into Social CRM.

    By the way, here’s a 70+ slide deck we use for workshops on Social CRM: Decoding the Social in Social CRM. Do share your feedback.

    Here are some other useful perspectives on the Altimeter Social CRM report:

    - John Lovett, Prem Kumar Aparanji and Brian Solis praise the report for its pragmatic and thorough approach.

    - Clo Willaerts and Jacob Morgan point out that few, if any vendors, provide a solution that works across the 5Ms highlighted in the report.

    - Stefano Maggi, like myself, tries to reclassify the use cases in a way that is more action oriented, by linking them to the five objectives in “Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technology“, by Charlene Li (@charleneli, at Altimeter Group) and Josh Bernoff (@jbernoff, at Forrester Research): Listening, Talking, Energizing, Embracing and Supporting.

    Cross-posted at 2020 Social: Because Business is Social.

     

  • Gaurav Mishra 9:26 pm on March 2, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , Social Media, , , , , , ,   

    Decoding Social: How Are Social Technologies Changing Business, Media and Society? 

    At 2020 Social, we understand that the nature of knowledge is changing from stock to flow and knowledge will become redundant in the blink of an eye, if not shared with others. On the other hand, if we share knowledge with other, often for free, they repay us with attention, and we create more opportunities for ourselves to learn and share more.

    In this spirit, we will be sharing all our research, point of view, conference and workshop decks with the community of social media practitioners and enthusiasts we have learned so much from.

    We speak at almost a dozen events every month, and sometimes use the same ideas across talks. For instance, I have given several related talks on “how to scale passion?” or “what can entrepreneurs learn from activists?” at BITS Pilani, IIT Roorkee, TEDIndia, Startup Saturday Delhi, Social Media Club Mumbai, IIT Delhi and Pecha Kucha Bangalore. Each talk is a work-in-progress artifact and I have seen these ideas evolve, each time I talk about them. While individual slide decks for each talk are interesting as artifacts, I’m beginning to think that it’s better to share a master slide deck (that’s in constant beta) so that people can easily refer to the latest iteration of our thinking.

    With that background, let me share the latest version of our 100+ slide workshop deck titled “Decoding Social: How Are Social Technologies Changing Business, Media and Society?”

    I used a version of this deck earlier today as the first of my three guest lectures at Mudra Institute of Commuications, Ahmedabad on how social technologies are changing business. I intend to use this deck next in the introductory session of my NASSCOM Foundation workshop on “how to scale passion”.

    Here are the three key mantras the deck builds upon –

    - The future has already arrived; it’s just not evenly distributed yet.

    - The tools are transient; the values embedded in them are persistent.

    - To understand how social technologies are changing media and business, begin by asking how they are changing people and society.

    Here are the five key questions the deck seeks to answer –

    - What are social technologies and why are they important?

    - How are social technologies changing people?

    - How are social technologies changing society?

    - How are social technologies changing media?

    - How are social technologies changing business?

    If you want one of the 2020 Social experts (Gaurav, Dave, Gautam, Kaushal) to speak at your event, write to us at contact@2020social.com.

    Cross-posted at 2020 Social: Because Business is Social.

     

  • Gaurav Mishra 4:32 pm on February 21, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , Build Competency Lead, Consultant, Consumer Practice Lead, Interns, Openings, Social Media, Technical Architecture, User Experience   

    New Openings at 2020 Social: Consumer Practice Lead and Build Competency Lead 

    As 2020 Social’s suite of offerings have evolved, the senior team is increasingly getting stretched across our competency areas and practice areas.

    2020social_solutions

    So, Dave leads our business-to-consumer practice and the plan competency, Kaushal leads our business-to-business practice and the build competency and Gautam leads our employee and partner practice and the engage competency, while I help out across all three competencies and practices.

    My target is to take Dave and myself off this grid so that 2020 Social can function even when we are away, let’s say, for speaking at conferences.

    To get there, we will need to fill three key positions over the next three months: the business-to-consumer practice lead, the build competency lead and the engage competency lead.

    2020social_openings

    Last week, we announced openings for the first two positions:

    - Consultant (1): Ideally Mumbai, but also Delhi or Bangalore

    Role: Develop the digital marketing strategy and define the business case for social applications and community platforms for consumer and media clients. Establish thought leadership in the domain of how Indian consumers engage with web, mobile and social technologies through blog posts, white papers and conference talks. Set up the Mumbai office for 2020 Social and establish and grow client relationships. Over a one year horizon, manage a team of 5-6 Associate Consultants and Analysts.

    Skills: Consumer marketing, digital marketing, business consulting, business development.

    Background: IIM or equivalent with 4-6 years of experience.

    Reporting to: Gaurav

    - Consultant (1): Ideally Delhi or Bangalore, but also Mumbai

    Role: Define the functional requirements for social applications and community platforms for clients. Work with internal account managers/ project managers and external design firms/ development firms to ensure that projects are delivered in cost and on time. Simultaneously, find opportunities to productize these social applications and community platforms as proprietary white label solutions that can be re-used across multiple clients. Over a one year horizon, manage a team of 5-6 Associate Consultants, Analysts and Designers.

    Skills: User experience design, product management, project management, familiarity with Drupal and Facebook/ LinkedIn/ Twitter/ OpenSocial APIs.

    Background: IIT/ NID or equivalent with 6-8 years of experience.

    Reporting to: Gaurav

    We are also looking for interns to work with us on a part-time basis:

    - Interns (4), Delhi or Bangalore, Rs. 5000 monthly stipend

    Role: Research how digital and social technologies are changing business and marketing. Identify best practices and case studies for developing social media strategy and creating campaigns for clients. Part time role for 2 to 6 months with a commitment of 20 hours a week.

    Skills: Good communications skills, ability to work in teams, eagerness to learn, familiarity with blogs, forums, and social networking platforms like Facebook, Orkut, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube and Flickr.

    Background: BBA or MBA students.

    Reporting to: Gautam (Delhi) or Kaushal (Bangalore)

    Working at 2020 Social combines the best of both worlds: you enjoy the open and collaborative work environment of a web 2.0 startup, the steep learning curve of a strategy consulting firm and the benefits of being part of an established organization (we are related to 20:20 Media, one of India’s largest independent PR firms).

    Send your CVs to careers@2020social.com: it might be your lucky day.

    Cross-posted at 2020 Social: Because Business is Social.

     

  • Gaurav Mishra 3:30 pm on February 21, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , Collaboration Platforms, , , Drupal, , , Offerings, , Social Media, , Solutions   

    Define Your Sandbox Early, But Stay in Constant Beta 

    STAYING IN CONSTANT BETA WITHIN A SANDBOX

    As an entrepreneur, you need to articulate your offering early in your startup’s life cycle, and still stay open to change, especially if you are in the fast-evolving social technologies space.

    After nine months of running 2020 Social, I have learned that the key is to define a big enough sandbox early, then stay in constant beta, and play within that sandbox.

    THE EVOLUTION OF 2020 SOCIAL

    In June 2009, 2020 Social started off as an insights firm, focused on tracking conversations on the social web and identifying trends international clients could benefit from.

    Within a hundred days, we realized that the social opportunity in India itself was big enough and reinvented ourselves as a consulting firm, focused on advising Indian and international clients on how social technologies are impacting their business strategy.

    By October, we were ready to move beyond pure-play advisory services and offer full solutions to our clients. Since then, we have been working hard on building our BUILD and ENGAGE capabilities, apart from strengthening our already mature PLAN capabilities.

    Now, 2020 Social builds and nurtures online communities for Indian and international clients, to connect their customers, partners and employees, catalyze innovation and collaboration, and drive loyalty and advocacy.

    2020 SOCIAL COMPETENCY AREAS

    As of now, we have three “competency areas”:

    2020social_competency_areas

    - PLAN: which involves doing primary and secondary research on the social web, advising clients on how social technologies are impacting their business strategy, and conducting workshops for senior management.
    - BUILD: which involves building online community platforms and social applications, and integrating them with existing platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter using social APIs.
    - ENGAGE: which involves creating compelling content for the community platforms we build, tracking and participating in conversations on the community platforms and the broader social web, and increasing participation in these communities through social media contests.

    Dave leads our PLAN competencies, Kaushal leads our BUILD competencies and Gautam leads our ENGAGE competencies.

    2020 SOCIAL PARTNERS

    In some of our engagements, we focus only on the PLAN piece, while the BUILD and ENGAGE pieces are handled by another full-service digital agency. In such cases, we usually work from the client side to define detailed functional requirements and campaign calenders, select the agency and closely work with them through the BUILD and ENGAGE pieces. We have worked with Experience Commerce and Interakt on such engagements and look forward to working with other full-service digital agencies.

    2020social_competency_areas_partners

    In other engagements, we work across the PLAN, BUILD and ENGAGE pieces and partner with design and development firms to offer the full solution. We have worked with Design For Use and Tekriti Software on such engagements and look forward to working with them again.

    Lithium (for external communities) and SocialText (for internal communities) are our preferred white label platforms. Drupal is our preferred platform for building custom community platforms.

    2020 SOCIAL PRACTICE AREAS

    As of now, we have three practice areas:

    2020social_practice_areas

    - BUSINESS TO CONSUMER: which involves building communities of interest, around lifestyles and causes.
    - BUSINESS TO BUSINESS: which involves building communities of practice, around professions and industries.
    - EMPLOYEES and PARTNERS: which involves building collaboration platforms.

    Dave leads our business-to-consumer practice, Kaushal leads our business-to-business practice and Gautam leads our employees and partners practice.

    2020 SOCIAL OFFERINGS

    So, 2020 Social’s suite of offerings is essentially a matrix of our competency areas and practice areas –

    2020social_solutions

    NEXT FOR 2020 SOCIAL

    Over a one year horizon, I expect 2020 Social to build offerings beyond pure-play services.

    We are working on building some lightweight white label platforms of our own. The first of these platforms will be an ideation-cum-contest platform called 2020 Social Ideas.

    We are also working on building some niche communities of our own. The first of these communities will be a private research community for young, urban, Indian trendsetters called Yuvaah.

    Stay tuned to hear more about these initiatives soon.

    THE 2020 SOCIAL SANDBOX

    I am sure that our offerings will continue to evolve, but I am sure that we will play within the broad sandbox we started with:

    - We believe that social technologies are changing business and society and we want to play an active role in fulfilling the promise of this movement.

    - We will differentiate ourselves based on our insights and do work that extends the boundaries of how organizations use social technologies to connect with their constituents.

    - We will build deep competencies in some areas and partner with experts in other areas who share our vision to bring together effective solutions for our clients.

    Ask us how we can help you or partner with you.

     

    • Gautam Ghosh 4:35 am on February 22, 2010 Permalink | Reply

      Great articulation of what we do – and the expertise we need to hire to move to the next level!

  • Gaurav Mishra 7:13 pm on January 26, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Batti Bandh, Bell Bajao, Blank Noise, Chase Community Giving Contest, , , , , , , , Isha Foundation, NGOPost, Social Activism, Social Media, , The Bicycle Project, The Pink Chaddi Campaign, The Sapling Project, The Wall Project,   

    TOI Article on How Social Activists in India Are Using Social Networking Platforms 

    I was quoted recently in a TOI article on how activists are using social networking platforms.

    I like how Indian social activists are using social networking platforms for fundraising, or creating awareness for their causes.

    Isha Foundation’s $100K win in the Chase Community Giving Contest is a good example of non-profits using social platforms to get support for a cause for fundraising. A very persuasive lady from Isha Foundation even called me to ask me to write a post supporting their bid.

    The Wall Project, Batti Bandh, The Bicycle Project and The Sapling Project have all got attention recently for using Twitter and Facebook for promoting their programs. The Pink Chaddi Campaign, Grassroutes, NGOPost, Bell Bajao and Blank Noise are some of my favorite examples of Indian digital activism campaigns.

    However, using Facebook and Twitter to spread a brand-related or cause-related message doesn’t excite me anymore. I would be excited if activists used social platforms to enable collaboration, like Vote Report India did, or build a long-term community, like iJanaagraha is trying to do. I have earlier written about the need for activists to go beyond content and conversations, to tap into the collaboration, community and collective intelligence layers. Ellen Miller’s Sunlight Foundation is showing us how in the area of government transparency and accountability.

    Here’s the full text of the TOI story –

    Social networking sites are new age activist’s handiest tools
    Mahafreed Irani, TNN

    Facebookers had a new distraction last week: a request from 100 US based charities to vote for them so that they could mop up a cool one million dollars to pursue their ‘big idea’ to change the world. Thousands of users from India logged on to vote for their favourites like Give India and Isha Foundation in the Chase Community Giving race. For them, it was the easiest way to contribute to the cause.

    Social networking sites have clearly moved beyond frivolous chatter and self-aggrandisement to a worthier cause: they’ve become the new age activist’s handiest tools. From bringing people together to beautify walls in the city (The Wall Project) and encouraging them to save electricity (Batti Bandh) to getting them to donate their old cycles to rural children (The Bicycle Project) and engaging them in sapling plantation drives (The Sapling Project), these sites have built up successful online movements and then dexterously steered them into real life.

    The benefits of building a movement using the Internet are self-evident : no capital costs and speedier-thanspeedy responses. Every time Batti Bandh organiser Keith Menon has to make an announcement , he simply posts an update and the over 6,000 members and fans of the Batti Bandh community on Facebook get the news delivered to their inbox. Netizens from countries as far away as Czechoslovakia, New Zealand, Netherlands and Pakistan have joined the group and posted their views on the campaign.

    Like Batti Bandh, the other three movements too were initiated in Mumbai and then went national thanks to the online momentum. Take the Wall Project—what started as a touch-up for a Bandra home has now become a movement with over 2,000 volunteers to beautify cities across India. After photographs of paint jobs of walls along Senapati Bapat Marg were uploaded, members from Bengaluru, Pune and Kolkata started discussing their own city walls on the forum. Parag Gandhi, one of the facilitating members , spends a few minutes giving direction to the conversation—the rest of the content, including photos, news and updates are user-generated.

    A user in Pune who wants to paint walls asked, “We are a group of 50 people and very enthusiastic about painting. There is no doubt that we have many walls dying for a dash of colour but the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) won’t permit.’’ In response, a member was quick to post, “Forget the PMC, when they see the value you are creating they will automatically come to you. Find private walls, educational institutes, schools or hospital walls instead.’’

    Catalysts for change are using Web 2.0 platforms to engage people and spread the word using already existing social networks. Some prefer using technology to initiate the campaign too. Just last month, two Mumbai techies Satish Vijaykumar and Ranjeet Walunj created a website, a Twitter profile to make sure their city could breathe easy. The internet was used as a propaganda tool for their initiative The Sapling Project. A few tweets and Facebook statuses later, over a hundred people had signed up for the sapling plantation drive. They met at Shivaji Park, collected saplings and now post updates about their saplings’ progress on Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and YouTube.

    Impromptu acts of kindness have sprouted on Twitter too. Last week, tweeple from India started the T4H (Twitteristan for Haiti) by posting links to the Google Crisis Response page and the American Red Cross page to encourage their followers to donate. Popular tweeple like user ‘@b 50/Bombay Addict’ on Twitter posted updates like, “India gives $1m aid to Haiti. What? Rs 4.6 crore? That’s all we got? The daily turnover on BSE+NSE is Rs 80,000 crore.’’ and “The BMC will spend Rs 15 crore to clean Mumbai’s beaches. And that’s all we got?’’ to provoke his following of over 2,500 to donate.

    On Diwali day last year, Twitter member Anaggh Desai decided to use the power of online networking to raise some money for charity. The 46-year-old Mumbai-based entrepreneur asked people to send him a Deepwish (Diwali greeting on Twitter) and pledged 25 paise for every wish that he received to Goonj, an NGO. Excited by the idea, 41 other tweeple decided to donate amounts ranging from 50 p to Rs 5 for every greeting tweeted at them. After 36 hours, Rs 55,000 was collected from tweeple all over India and even the US and Saudi Arabia towards educating the girl child.

    The city also participated in two twestivals (offline meets organised and promoted online to collect funds for charity). The Mumbai chapter of the twestival last September collected Rs 40,000 for the NGO Help A Child.

    Menon from Batti Bandh wants to leverage the power of the community on Twitter to facilitate car and taxi pooling . He is in the process of building an application that will let tweeple tweet their starting point and destination , show the route on Google Maps and allow other tweeters to join in.

    However, there are dissidents. Social media researcher Gaurav Mishra thinks that online communities need to take their activities to the next level. “After a person has switched off electricity for an hour or planted one sapling, what next?’’ he asks. “Organisers have to decide on how they want to create sustained involvement .’’

    Cross-posted at 2020 Social: Because Business is Social.

     

    • manuprasad 6:12 am on January 27, 2010 Permalink | Reply

    • Akash Sharma 5:58 pm on January 27, 2010 Permalink | Reply

      Hi Gaurav, Thanks for sharing these success stories on how social media can deliver social message to the right kind of social audiences to get some social help, I follow Beth Kanter's blog on how social media can help non profits…she has some great advice on offer.

  • Gaurav Mishra 1:21 am on January 23, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , Social Media,   

    Global Post Article on Caste-Based Communities on Facebook and Orkut 

    I was quoted recently in a Global Post article on caste-based communities on social networking platforms in India.

    I have earlier written about how caste-based communities on Facebook and Orkut reflects the realities of India’s splintered society.

    The ancient Indian custom of caste has made its way into the modern world of social media.

    Social networking site Orkut — the most popular social media platform in India — is not only a place where young, urban Indians can connect with friends like Americans do on Facebook. It’s also a platform where they can meet others in their caste… (and) engage in benign discussions and debates on various caste-related issues like marriage, religion and politics.

    So what’s happening here on Orkut, Facebook and other social media sites in India? Some argue the country’s young people no longer feel comfortable talking about caste in public. Instead, they retreat to an anonymous online world to debate and discuss issues. Not everyone agrees.

    Social media expert Gaurav Mishra said Orkut and similar sites do not increase caste discussions. Rather, they accurately reflect that Indians still very much identify with their caste and want to form groups around them.

    “Surprisingly with urbanization, with education, with more people traveling and getting exposed to other cultures, these divisions have not really gone away. Caste even now — even in urban, educated India — is still an extremely big issue,” said Mishra, CEO of online marketing firm 2020 Social. “So therefore it is not surprising given how deeply entrenched caste is in Indian society that it manifests itself online also.”

    As more Indians go online, and the internet reaches beyond the most urban and educated layer of society, caste activity will become only more prevalent, Mishra said.

    The story was also reproduced in MinnPost.

    Cross-posted at 2020 Social: Because Business is Social.

     

  • Gaurav Mishra 12:51 am on January 23, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , , , , , Social Media,   

    Agencyfaqs Story on How Real Time Search Is a Game Changer for Marketers and Content Creators 

    I was recently quoted in an Agencyfaqs story on how real time search is a game changer for marketers and content creators.

    afaqs real time search

    I believe that real-time search is indeed a game-changer of search. The real power of Twitter lies not in being able to send and receive 140 letter messages, but in being able to search for tweets about people, brands, locations and events in real-time. Twitter realizes this: that’s why it has put search at the center of its redesigned homepage. Facebook realizes this: that’s why they are moving strongly towards a public status message oriented design. Google and Microsoft/ Bing realize this too: that’s why they are working hard to integrate real time status messages in their search results.

    The ability to search real time status updates is already changing search behavior for early adopters like myself. I use Twitter search to discover what people are saying about a breaking news story, who else is present at the event I am attending and what are the early reviews for a movie that was released earlier in the day. The next big step is an ability to search for what my friends, people like me, or people near me are saying. As this behavior is adopted by the mainstream, I expect profound repercussions for both brands and publishers.

    One important change is that search results will become both more dynamic and more personalized. Which means that search engine marketing will begin to look more like social media marketing. Suddenly, the depth, duration and keyword density of your content will begin to matter less and the freshness, relevance and proximity of our conversations will begin to matter more.

    Along with the above changes in content search and consumption, I see a parallel change in content creation. When Blogger, Wordpress, YouTube and Flickr made it easy to create and share articles, videos and photos, several consumers started thinking of themselves as writers, photographers and filmmakers. Still, the focus was on creating content, and it needed significant time and effort to create content, so the barrier was still to high for most.

    Then, Twitter popularized the idea of real-time status messages and the content creation barrier came crashing down. Not only that, the nature of content itself changed, to conversations between people. So, people are more likely to organize themselves around conversations now, not content, and that’s a fundamental shift.

    The self-perpetuating viral loop is at the core of word of mouth marketing and Twitter and Facebook have made it more potent than ever. Word of mouth has always been the holy grail of marketing and, now that it is more easy to seed and track than ever before, all marketing is beginning to look a little bit like word of mouth marketing.

    Here is the full text of the story:

    Points of View: Will real-time search affect the business of search?
    Kapil Ohri | afaqs! | New Delhi, January 18, 2010

    Google and Bing have introduced the concept of real-time search, which will also show results from recent Twitter, Facebook and blog updates. Is this the way to go now?

    Pushkar Sane
    Chief digital officer, North and South Asia, Starcom MediaVest Group

    For starters, it will increase the ‘volume’ of indexed pages and the natural search rankings for brands may change rapidly based on momentum built by social conversations. Brands will need to re-orient their approach for search as it will bring up organic results with social conversations, making it difficult for brands to get their ‘controlled content’ in front of people. They will have to try harder in organising content, integrating ’social elements’ and optimising it continuously.

    While positive conversations will help in enhancing brand equity, negative ones will accelerate the erosion as bad news travels fast. Finally, brands need to create a seamless strategy for digital with search and social at its core by getting rid of specialist silos within digital or within marketing.

    Mohit Hira
    President, Training.com, NIIT

    If you had searched, on Google for Copenhagen on the morning after the climate talks failed, you’d have first got a Google Map result and then one old item on the Climate Summit followed by a Wikipedia entry. Now, try the same search in real-time using Google’s Experimental Lab. You’d get links posted by the minute on BBC, Twitter, YouTube and a chronological list that grows longer before your eyes.

    The action has been shifting from publishers to user-generated social media content. If you’re smart enough to worm your brand into digital conversations in real-time, you’re likely to get picked up. Not in weeks or months, as is the case with new sites and search engine optimisation (SEO), but in minutes. But this doesn’t mean that life is short for search engine marketing (SEM). It will take a while before everyone switches to real-time search by default. Also, things will be unpredictable in the short term.

    Mahesh Murthy
    Founder and chief executive officer, Pinstorm

    SEO has become a low-value commodity activity, farmed out to individuals. Till a few years ago, all you had to optimise were text results. Today, a smart business will optimise results related to text, videos, images, twitter updates and blog entries – because the search engine results page consists of all of these.

    I hope it will lead advertisers to increase their focus on social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook. Advertisers will find that if they are not on Twitter, their customers and rivals already are – and that the conversation is already going on there. Many brands tend to think of things in the TV paradigm – ‘run me a month-long campaign’. A social media campaign has to be 24 x 7 x 365.

    Gaurav Mishra
    Chief executive officer, 20:20 Social

    I believe that real-time search is indeed a game-changer for search. The real power of Twitter lies in being Able to search for tweets about people, brands, locations and events in real-time. The ability to search real-time status updates is already changing search behaviour for early adopters like me. I use Twitter search to discover what people are saying about a breaking news story or who else is present at the event I am attending.

    As this behaviour is adopted by the mainstream, I expect profound repercussions for both brands and publishers. An important change is that search results will become both more dynamic and personalised – meaning that search engine marketing will begin to look more like social media marketing. Suddenly, the depth, duration and keyword density of your content will begin to matter less and the freshness, relevance and proximity of our conversations will begin to matter more.

    Cross-posted at 2020 Social: Because Business is Social.

     

  • Gaurav Mishra 12:29 am on January 23, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , Social Media   

    Agencyfaqs Cover Story on Indian Newspapers and the Internet 

    I was quoted recently in an Agencyfaqs cover story on whether Indian newspapers are losing out on the web.

    afaqs newspapers internet 1

    afaqs newspapers internet 2

    afaqs newspapers internet 3

    I have earlier written about noteworthy social media initiatives from Indian news and media companies. Here’s my take on why we haven’t seen more such initiatives so far and why I see it changing over the next 2-3 years.

    Newspapers in the US are rushing to build business models for the web because the print business is in trouble. Newspaper readerships and advertising revenues continue to fall and more young people are reading news online than in print.

    In India, the newspaper business is in much better shape. Only one-third of Indians read newspapers, which means that there is a lot room to grow readership. Advertising spend in India is low at half a percent of GDP, compared to two percent in most developed countries, so there’s also room to grow advertising revenues, even after factoring in the increasing influence of TV and digital. Finally, the internet user base in India is only one tenth of the newspaper reader base in India, so the numbers don’t always add up for building an online business model.

    However, even though newspapers aren’t in a do or die situation today, they do need to build a strong digital business for tomorrow.

    Searchable multi-media content, user participating through rating, commenting and sharing, journalist blogs, and presence on social networking platforms like Facebook and Twitter are already standard for several Indian newspapers. I won’t be surprised if Indian newspapers also adopt consumer generated content, two way conversations between journalists and readers, customizable home pages, and even social networks and APIs over the next two years.

    If they don’t stay ahead of the wave, it will be a do or die situation for them before they realize it.

    Cross-posted at 2020 Social: Because Business is Social.

     

  • Gaurav Mishra 2:15 pm on January 9, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , Kaushal Sarda, Social Media   

    Announcement: Kaushal Sarda Joins the 2020 Social Team 

    kaushal-sarda I’m delighted to announce that Kaushal Sarda has joined the 2020 Social team as a consultant.

    Kaushal will head the Bangalore office for 2020 Social and focus on B2B, technology and startup clients. He will also work with Gautam to develop our collaboration/ innovation practice, where we connect employees and partners to help clients achieve their business objectives. Finally, he will work with Upasana to strengthen our “build” practice, where we build online communities using white label or open source platforms.

    Previously, Kaushal has worked as a CRM consultant at Capgemini Consulting and founded SaaS based enterprise collaboration platform Uhuroo. He writes about collaboration and innovation at his Creating Connections blog and is a regular speaker on these topics. Kaushal holds an MS in information systems from George Mason University.

    Do connect with Kaushal on email, Twitter or LinkedIn.

    Cross-posted at 2020 Social: Because Business is Social.

     

  • Gaurav Mishra 12:18 pm on January 9, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Android App Marketplace, , Application Ecosystems, AuthorStream, Cyn.in, , Digital Inspiration, , Facebook API, , Fachak, Friday 2.0, , GizaPage, Global Market, , iPhone App Marketplace, Kwippy, LifeBlob, MediaNama, NASSCOM Emerge, Nokia Ovi App Store, One Forty, OpenSocial API, Pluggd.in, Remindo, Skype, Social Media, SocialTwist, , , , Tell-a-Friend, Toufee, TutorVista, Tweetmeme, Twitter API, , , , ,   

    My NASSCOM Talk: Made in India, Made for the World 

    Yesterday, I gave a talk at the NASSCOM Emerge Friday 2.0 event about how the time is ripe for Indian startups to target the global market: ‘Made in India, Made for the World‘.

    So far, Indian startups have focused on tweaks for the local market, not inventions or tweaks for the global market, partly because Indian VCs have tended to fund me-too startups with a business model focused on enabling transactions for the local market (book a air/ rail/ bus/ movie ticket).

    However, in the last one or two years, several Indian startups have dared to build products for the global market. On my list are enterprise collaboration players Zoho, Deskaway, Uhuroo, Remindo, Cyn.in and YouSuggest, consumer focused web 2.0 startups like LifeBlob, AuthorStream, GizaPage (and the now dead Fachak and Kwippy), widget company Tell-a-Friend/ SocialTwist, flash-maker Toufee and online tutoring company TutorVista. Do let me know if I have missed out startups that should be on this list. With a little luck, several of these startups can become global players, and some already have.

    I think there are five trends that are enabling Indian startups to target the global market –

    1. SaaS/ Cloud Computing: The SaaS based delivery model enables such startups to sign-up users without a significant upfront investment in a sales and distribution channel and the cloud computing infrastructure from players like Amazon allows them to scale seamlessly as more users sign up.

    2. Application Ecosystems: The application ecosystem created by Facebook, OpenSocial, Twitter, iPhone, Android and Nokia Ovi enables startups to build and distribute applications quickly. Over the next two years, as more players set up structured marketplaces like the iPhone marketplace, I expect these applications ecosystems to become the key driver of entrepreneurial innovations around the world, including in India.

    3. Social Connections: The people behind the tech blog ecosystem (TechCrunch, Mashable, GigaOm, ReadWriteWeb, WebWorkerDaily, Scobleizer) that drives initial adoption for tech startups are more accessible than ever, on Twitter, Facebook and their own blogs. The Indian tech blog ecosystem is also evolving with Digital Inspiration, Pluggd.in, WATBlog and MediaNama building a large Indian and international readership and some of us are beginning to build a global reputation as thought leaders in the web 2.0 space. There is increasing interest in finding and highlighting startup success stories from the emerging world, especially India and China. The world is eager to listen to us and we have more means than ever to tell our stories. Not only that, these social connections can even help startups find international employees, partners and investors.

    4. Viral Loops: Social media doesn’t only help startups leverage social connections; startups can also tap into the viral loops created by social platforms to build buzz. Aggregators like Techmeme and Tweetmeme and virality machines and platforms like Facebook Connect enable startups to grow virally by tapping into Facebook’s 350m user base.

    5. Support Ecosystem: Social media and web 2.0 tools can also help startups convert and support customers. Startups can use Twitter to find prospects and track customer complaints and then use Skype to convert or close them. GetSatisfaction is emerging as a strong customer-driven support platform that can enable tech startups to offer support at scale without building a big support team.

    At one level, ‘Made in India, Made for the World‘ is a manifesto to encourage more Indian startups to build web 2.0 offerings for the global market. At another level, it’s also a reminder to myself as I try to build 2020 Social into a global social technology firm, based in India. The journey has just started, for all of us, and I hope that we’ll have the will to go all the way.

    Cross-posted at 2020 Social: Because Business is Social.

     

    • ishwinder 6:35 pm on January 9, 2010 Permalink | Reply

      Hey Gaurav , Fachak is not dead , we are a little slow on development but we are on track for a new feature set by this quarter end.

  • Gaurav Mishra 7:53 pm on January 2, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , Kingfisher Calendar Launch Contest, Kingfisher Good Times, , Naina, Social Media, ,   

    Maya Campaigns for Naina in the Kingfisher Calendar Launch Contest 

    Kingfisher Calendar Launch Contest

    “I can’t believe you lost!” Maya exclaimed as she put down her coffee. “I was sure you’ll win the Kingfisher Calendar Launch contest. You were the only woman in the fray!”

    “I know!” Naina agreed animatedly. “I thought I had pitched it perfectly. ‘A hot woman photographer making pictures of hot women models would be the epitome of Kingfisher’s Good Times.’ I thought every self-respecting man on Twitter would fall for that!”

    “Given that four out of five Twitter users in India are men,” Maya continued, “I would have expected a little more enthusiasm for your campaign. Even the woman should have voted for you because you are a woman!”

    “I know!” Naina became even more animated. “It even seemed to be working, until the last three days when it all fell apart. I have no idea how that happened, especially after I had campaigned like a politician for two weeks, used every trick in the book to ask for votes.”

    “Including emotional blackmail,” Maya smiled.

    “Including emotional blackmal,” Naina laughed. “I think I hit the height of hustle during the last three days…”

    “I remember,” Maya joined in,”‘Come on people! 5000 friends across Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, and noone seems to be voting for me!’ I loved those status messages!”

    “It’s such a shame that it didn’t work,” Naina sighed. “I got two hundred odd votes on the last day, some of them because you started campaigning for me, but the other three guys suddenly seemed unstoppable.”

    “The strange thing is: they didn’t even have too many followers on Twitter,” Maya wondered, “whereas you and I are two of the most connected Indian women on Twitter. Given that you could only vote using your Twitter or Facebook ID, that should have counted for something.”

    “That’s what I thought!” Naina sighed. “And I’m a pretty good photographer too!”

    “That too,” Maya agreed, “except that you didn’t add a link to your portfolio in your contest pitch. Perhaps, that would have made the difference.”

    “Perhaps…” Naina sighed.

    “I guess we’ll only find out when I am campaigning for you in your next contest,” Maya nudged Naina.

    “I’ll hold you to that, you do know that?” Naina teased, chirpy as usual. “Another coffee?”

    “Of course!” Maya replied enthusiastically. “I can always have another cup of coffee at the Green Park Costa!”

     

    • Vikash Barnwal 4:05 pm on January 2, 2010 Permalink | Reply

      Looks like you have a tie-up with Green Park Costa [:P] , and does this voting thing really gets the best man/woman fit for the job ?? And ..yes adding her portfolio would have improved her chances ….but still just the vots should not be the only criteria.

      P.S: I voted for Naina ….just for the sake of Hot Photographer [;)]

  • Gaurav Mishra 10:15 am on December 27, 2009 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Augmented Reality, , , Google OpenSocial, Layar, , Mobilizy, , Sixth Sense, Social Media, , , , , , , Wikitude   

    Mail Today Story on the Biggest Technology Trends of 2010s 

    Mail Today interviewed me recently for a story on the biggest technology trends of 2010s.

    I think Augmented Reality will be the biggest digital technology trend over the next decade.

    Augmented Reality applications add a data layer to physical objects, and augment our physical reality by making it interactive. Basically, you point your mobile phone camera at any physical object (a building, a book, a person) and get information about it, superimposed on the screen, in real time.

    As an example, you will be able to point your cameraphone at the cute girl in the neighborhood cafe and see that she is single, likes super-achiever type men, and has three friends in common with you, but tends to complain about her ex-boyfriends in public. The app will achieve this feat by identifying her through face recognition technology, then quickly scanning her profile information and status messages on Facebook and Twitter. If you still fancy your chances with her, it will request your common friends to introduce you to her via Facebook Connect driven dating service Thread.

    Layar and Mobilizy/ Wikitude are early examples of AR apps and Pranav Mistry’s talk at TEDIndia is a sign of things to come.

    Augmented reality has the potential to transform how we create and consume content (read blog post that mention the red fort while you are there), how we connect with people (Googling someone before meeting them will be so 2000s in the 2010s), and how we relate to brands (read reviews about a new movie by pointing at the movie poster).

    The step before Augmented Reality (a world that is digital by default) will be a web that is social by default. You will be able to sign into very website with your Facebook/ Google OpenSocial/ Twitter ID, see what your friends are doing on the website and seamlessly publish your activities to your Facebook/ Orkut/ Twitter activity streams. For the rare anachronistic website which still won’t enable these social features, you will be able to use a browser add on like Glue to do the same.

    Here’s the full text of the article.

    WORLD WILL FIT IN YOUR MOBILE

    By Neha Tara Mehta in New Delhi

    Life is going to be about e- xistence, literally. Digital technology will rule us in abigger and better way

    CIRCA 2020: You have a thing for the new girl in office and want to know if she is single and as perky as she appears when she’s around the coffee machine. All you have to do is discreetly point your mobile phone camera towards her. The face-recognition software linked to her social networking site will give you information about her in real time — superimposed on the camera.

    You may not like what you see: the software tells you she is single (yippee!) and likes super- achievers ( do you qualify?). But a quick scan of her blog, Facebook and Twitter status messages may reveal she gets irritated with a boyfriend who smokes and plays games on his mobile phone when he’s out with her. Still interested in her? Perhaps the girl in the next cubicle would have fewer hang- ups? Give your dating the digital edge and whip out the mobile camera again.

    Then again, if you’ve settled into happy domesticity but are engaged in warfare over who’ll do the laundry, go for the Home Management Application on Facebook/ Twitter , which is connected to your washing machine.

    In the middle of your board meeting, you could use your phone to write on your washing machine’s wall that it needs to get down to washing. The washing machine, in turn, will write on your wall (as well as that of your wife and maid, if she is also on a social networking site), that it has achieved its key result area for the day.

    If 2009 ended with news of a website (www.seppukoo.com) that allows you to commit an online ritual suicide on Facebook , the new decade is certainly not going to see the liberation of your digital body.

    If anything, online social networking is set to grow exponentially — and not just between people. In an increasingly wired world, people as well as machines will interact socially — dramatically altering the way we perceive reality and connect with others.

    “Googling someone before meeting him will be so 2000s in the 2010s,” says Gaurav Mishra, CEO, 2020 Social. He predicts that Augmented Reality — which adds a data layer to physical objects, thus making our physical reality interactive — will be the biggest digital technology trend in the next decade. So your mobile camera will be your walking encyclopedia or the ultimate voyeur.

    Online market research company Juxt Consult estimates that as of May 2009, social networking was an activity undertaken by 41 per cent of the regular internet users in the country (around 15.05 million). Internet penetration is still less than 5 per cent. Things will change in the next few years, with an array of devices getting connected to the Net.

    The dominant trend in the next decade, says Nikhil Pahwa, editor of the online telecoms and digital media news website Medianama, will be the availability of media across interactive platforms. “With 3G, LTE and 4G, every connected platform will have the ability to be an access point to a social environment,” Pahwa says.

    What will ensue is a far more intelligent use of social media than now, says Rajiv Dingra, founder and CEO, Watblog. So your level of social interaction will be leagues ahead of just throwing sheep at each other on Facebook .

    As of now, only one in five mobile users log on to the net. In the future, the mobile phone will be the primary mode of connecting to the net, and will emerge as the fulcrum of a connected reality the way we have never known it before. “In the last 10 years, we have primarily used voice-based services on the mobile. In the next decade, the non-voice services will become more important,” says Rajesh Jain, MD, Netcore Solutions.

    The mobile will make social networking a lot more instantaneous. “Once people take to social networking on the phone, the interaction will become a lot more frequent,” Mrutyunjay Mishra, co-founder, Juxt Consult, predicts.

    The potential for social media driven activism is also enormous. “Imagine 50 million mobile cameras connected to 3G,” says Pahwa. “We can have unquestionable truth on a video recording making it to the net in realtime.” You could have a villager filming a politician distributing money to voters, and posting it on the net in real time.

    Jasmine Shah, the brain behind the Jago Re! One Billion Votes campaign, is bullish about using social media to engineer social change. Janagaraha, the NGO he works for, will soon launch Ijanagraha, which will be like Facebook tailored for social change. “We will connect citizens who are unknown to each other, but feel for the same cause,” he says. “We will launch the site in 10 locations and put people in the same polling booth area in touch with each other,” he says.

    Maybe these neighbours will want to check each other out with their mobile phone camera. Reality is set to become a far more augmented experience.

    Update: Old friend Tushar Kanwar also includes augmented reality in his Business world piece on the biggest trends of the next decade.

    Cross-posted at 2020 Social: Because Business is Social.

     

  • Gaurav Mishra 11:31 pm on December 24, 2009 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , Junta42, , Micro-Content, , Social Media, ,   

    2010 Social Media Predictions: Online Brand Communities Will Come of Age 

    I was recently quoted in two compilations of social media predictions for 2010, by TrendsSpotting and Junta42, along with social media influencers like Pete Cashmore, David Armano, Chris Brogan, Peter Kim, John Batelle, Drew McLellan, Jason Falls, Charlene Li, Robert Scoble and Paul Gillin.

    I think the big social media trend in 2010 will be that online brand communities will come of age.

    Brand marketers will create compelling micro-content to seed these communities, then run contests to invite consumers to interpret their brand, create their own content.

    I also see brand marketers investing in communities that are built around a bigger social object: a lifestyle, cause or passion.

    Here is the TrendsSpotting 2010 Social Media Predictions –

    Cross-posted at 2020 Social: Because Business is Social.

     

  • Gaurav Mishra 7:09 am on December 17, 2009 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , Singapore Management University, Social Media,   

    Singapore Management University Social Media in Asia Wiki 

    SMU Digital Media in Asia Wiki

    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?

    I spent the last year researching how users in emerging countries such as Brazil, Russia, China and India use social media. Emerging countries often lag developed countries in terms of penetration and in some cases the absolute numbers of internet users. But there is no lag in terms of actual usage behaviour. In fact, we find that in the emerging countries, especially Brazil, China and India, the percentage of internet users as a proportion to the whole population is small, but the proportion of social media users to the internet users is very high.

    The difference between the most sophisticated internet user in India and the most sophisticated internet user in the U.S. is not much, but the variability in India is very high. There are those who are at the cutting edge of usage and thought leadership while others don’t even know what the internet is.

    This means that a lot of the things you can do in the US market in terms of branded communities, collaborative workspaces and conversational marketing can also be done in India. In fact, research shows that Indians internet users are actually more willing to become members of communities and share their personal information while connecting with strangers than Americans are. This might seem surprising and counter-intuitive because India is a collectivistic society. But it’s true because all the cultural baggage we’ve come with is more than offset by the early adopter bias of Indian internet users.

    What we can’t do in India is use the internet for mass market research because the internet user base in India is not representative of the general population as compared to the U.S.

    :: From a marketing perspective, what do businesses do given that research on the internet is not reliable for the Indian market?

    I said that I would not take the opinions of the 30 million internet users and extrapolate it as a representation of the rest of the population. But if a brand’s target population is these 30 million users only – users from the top cities – then this could work. It depends on who you are talking to. For example, if you are talking to Unilever, and I am talking about soap brand which 80% of its sales are accounted for by small towns, then of course anything you do on the internet is not relevant. But if I’m talking to Dell then most of their laptops, especially the higher end laptops, would sell in the top 8-10 cities. Hence, their entire target population is on the internet. The same goes for Microsoft if they’re targeting small and medium enterprises (SMEs) because their target population (the most profitable portion) is already on the internet already.

    :: Are Indian companies (especially indigenous ones) starting to adopt social technology (such as wikis, blogs etc) within the organization? Or are they still resistant to using these tools?

    Some companies are doing it. You must realize that a lot of Indian companies don’t even have well-run enterprise 1.0 programs (CRM, ERP, project management), so they aren’t quite ready for enterprise 2.0.

    However, these are being widely adopted in the IT industry. Many of these companies utilize internal enterprise 2.0 systems which include blogs, wikis and knowledge management tools. A bunch of Indian start-ups and young companies are building products in the enterprise collaboration space; Zoho, Cynapse, Deskaway, Uhuroo and YouSuggest are good examples. But we still have a long way to go; much more than in the consumer space.

    :: Do you often come across points of resistance to adoption of enterprise 2.0 or is it because internet penetration is not as high in India?

    Here’s the funny thing about enterprise 2.0: it does not depend on internet penetration, as large Indian companies have internet access and several of these applications are hosted on company intranet anyways. Internet penetration is only an issue in terms of the consumer application of these technologies, and like I’ve said previously, for some businesses, 30 million internet users are enough.

    :: What is the current state of blogger relations in India? Are companies taking bloggers seriously in their marketing agendas?

    Companies are beginning to do regular blogger meetups and blogger outreach programs. However, the listening/ response and longer-term blogger relations aspects haven’t yet become ubiquitous. In the end, blogger meets are only effective if they are part of a larger long-term strategy.

    :: Is India becoming more sensitive to social media?

    There certainly is a lot of enthusiasm amongst everybody. People are open to listen, experiment and invest time and money behind this new technology. We’ve had a very good experience so far in terms of openness. There are also 40-50 social media agencies of all types in India now. The ecosystem is evolving and awareness is increasing about this space.

    Cross-posted at 2020 Social: Because Business is Social.

     

  • Gaurav Mishra 1:25 pm on December 15, 2009 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: citizen action, , , , jaagte raho, , Social Media, ,   

    Janaagraha Launches Its Citizen Action Community iJanaagraha 

    ijanaagraha-jaagte-raho

    Bangalore-based civil society group Janaagraha, which had earlier tied up with Tata Tea to launch the Jaago Re (wake up) campaign during the 2009 Indian Lok Sabha elections, has launched its citizen action community iJanaagraha today.

    In its finished avatar, the iJanaagraha online platform will have strong location, community and activation layers and connect citizens with activists and politicians around civic issues at the polling booth level.

    In the first phase, the iJanaagraha platform asks citizens to stay awake (Jaagte Raho) and register online to vote and also volunteer to become an Area Voter Mitra. Area Voter Mitra will run get-out-the-vote drives in their neighbourhoods, with support from Janaagraha and the Election Commission of India. The activities in the first phase will be focused on the long overdue Bangalore local elections (see iJanaagraha Blog).

    On his own blog, my friend and co-conspirator Jasmine Shah shares his experiences in running the very successful Jaago Re campaign and looks ahead to Jaagte Raho.

    I have been associated with Jaagte Raho/ iJanaagraha initiatives over the last six months as a member of the Janaagraha Technology Advisory Group. Members of the 2020 Social team have also been working with Jasmine on strategy and project management aspects. It’s exciting to see the project in public after months of work. It’s even more exciting to know that only a fraction of the project is in public view as of now, and some of the most powerful pieces are still in the pipeline. Stay tuned.

    Cross-posted at 2020 Social: Because Business is Social.

     

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