Saturday, October 4th, 2008
In 1999, Christopher Locke, Doc Searls and David Weinberger published The Cluetrain Manifesto website –
People of earth… A powerful global conversation has begun. Through the Internet, people are discovering and inventing new ways to share relevant knowledge with blinding speed. As a direct result, markets are getting smarter—and getting smarter faster than most companies.
These markets are conversations. Their members communicate in language that is natural, open, honest, direct, funny and often shocking. Whether explaining or complaining, joking or serious, the human voice is unmistakably genuine. It can’t be faked.
Most corporations, on the other hand, only know how to talk in the soothing, humorless monotone of the mission statement, marketing brochure, and your-call-is-important-to-us busy signal. Same old tone, same old lies. No wonder networked markets have no respect for companies unable or unwilling to speak as they do.
But learning to speak in a human voice is not some trick, nor will corporations convince us they are human with lip service about “listening to customers.” They will only sound human when they empower real human beings to speak on their behalf.
Saturday, September 27th, 2008
(Cross-posted on my fellowship blog: How International Values Shape Communications Technologies)
Before I became the marketer who went off consumption, I was the marketer who understood social media.
Over the last two years, I have been fortunate to be included in conversations around social media thought and practice in India in multiple roles — as a traditional marketer who understood social media, as a blogger who wrote about social media, as an early adopter of new social media platforms, and as a connector of social media thinkers and practitioners. I think that I was able to play the last three roles primarily because of my first role. Much of my legitimacy as a thinker/ blogger and most of the connections I was able to make were rooted in my role as the custodian of a big brand that was engaging with the social media space in a meaningful way.
Over the last few months, my focus has moved away from social media marketing to other use cases of social media in developing countries, especially the use of social media for social change. As I explained in the introductory episode of my fellowship podcast, my research really lies at the intersection of three worlds that (surprisingly) don’t really understand each other — the web 2.0 world, the technology policy world, and the ICT4D world — and also borrows heavily from cultural studies.
Friday, September 26th, 2008
(Cross-posted on my fellowship blog: How International Values Shape Communications Technologies)
I was part of the audience at the Web 2.0 Expo in New York last week when Tim O’ Reilly gave an inspiring keynote on using technology to solve real world problems –
Since then, I have heard many people talk about using technology for doing good in conferences and meetups (Microsoft’s ICT4D Conference, Social Media Club DC, NetSquared DC).
I find it frustrating that people talk about using technology for doing good without any distinctions regarding either the nature of the technology or the purpose for which it is being used. Therefore, I have developed a framework to think about using technology for doing good. I understand that ‘technology’ is a very broad term, and I’m only talking about communications technology here.
It’s probably clear to even a casual observer of this space that there are two separate groups discussing using technology for doing good. The first set of discussions, primarily amongst large aid organizations, converge around ICT4D (or information and communication technology for development). The second set of discussions, primarily amongst smaller non-profits and web 2.0 geeks, are around SM4SC (social media for social change).
Filed in Social Change 2.0, Social Media
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Also tagged Adoption, Community Telecenters, Disruption, ICT4D, Micro Philanthropy, Microsoft's ICT4D Conference, Mobile Money Transfers, NetSquared DC, Non-Profit Blogs, SM4SC, Social Change, Social Media Club DC, Tim O' Reilly, Web 2.0 Expo New York
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Thursday, September 25th, 2008
(Cross-posted at my fellowship blog — How International Values Shape Communications Technologies)
In the introductory episode of our weekly fellowship podcast, Ben, Pavneet and I explain why our research on social media in BRIC countries is uniquely interdisciplinary, share the personal biases with which we are approaching our research, summarize what we have learned so far, and share our plans for the rest of the year.
The starting point of our research is to understand how differences in culture, access and language in BRIC countries impact the three core values of social media usage — collaboration, community and user generated content — across tools and devices. Pavneet’s focus is on the community and he explores two really important use cases for social media — consumer advocacy and civic engagement. Ben’s focus is on the individual and he explores issues of identity and privacy in the context of social media usage. My role is to pull it all together into a meaningful framework.
So, our research really lies at the intersection of three worlds that (surprisingly) don’t really understand each other — the web 2.0 world, the technology policy world, and the ICT4D world. But, beyond that, it’s really rooted in the tradition of cultural studies and borrows heavily from research related to business, government and development.
Filed in BRIC, GU-ISD Fellowship, podcasts
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Also tagged Ben Turner, BRIC, Communications Technologies, ICT4D, International Values, Pavneet Singh, Podcast, Tech Policy, Web-2.0, Yahoo! Fellowship
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Thursday, September 25th, 2008
A few months back, I had compiled two lists to help define the social media scene in India — a list of marketing, public relations and social media blogs in India and a list of social media agencies in India.
Now, Sampad Swain has taken the idea further by compiling a ranking of social media blogs in India, using a combination of metrics — Google PageRank, Alexa Rank, Number of Feed Subscribers, Technorati Authority and his own qualitative assessment (Sampad’s Rank).
I appreciate the hard work Sampad has put into the list (and it’s flattering to be ranked first), but I personally believe that blog rankings are premature for the India social media scene. Blog rankings are useful as filters when there are hundreds (or thousands) of blogs. As of now, there are only twenty odd social media blogs in India, so, focusing on rankings will make some people defensive and detract from what we need to do — build a community by highlighting each other’s work.
Tuesday, September 16th, 2008
The real opportunity in the mobile services business is at the two extremes.
At the top end of the market, mobile phone are really compact, but really powerful, location-aware, always-on computing devices. This model presumes ubiquitous and unlimited data access (including wi-fi access), and a Java-enabled smart phone with GPS and a sophisticated mobile browser. Japan and South Korea have already established the proof of concept for this model and iPhone and other smart phones are creating a mainstream market for it. Most of the oomph and much of the money in the mobile services business is at this end of the market, but the number of users is still small (less than 300 million worldwide).
At the lower end of the market, mobile phones are the only communications device people have access to. The mobile phones themselves sell for as little as $20 and usage is primarily driven by voice and text messaging. This end of the mobile services business has little oomph but there is some serious money to be made here, because of the sheer size of the user base (almost 3.5 billion worldwide).
Tuesday, September 9th, 2008
(Cross-posted on my official fellowship blog — How Global Values Shape Communications Technologies)
I believe that the most powerful application of social media is to help citizens self-organize themselves into virtual communities to work towards social change. In BRIC countries, where mobile penetration is much higher than PC penetration, such communities will need to be designed in an “access agnostic” manner, which means that the content/ community exists in the “cloud” and can be accessed by multiple mediums including websites, RSS feeds, voice portals and even text messages.
So, when I attend Microsoft’s ICT for Development Conference (see agenda) in Washington DC on September 22-23 2008, I’ll be interested to find out if development agency leaders, private sector practitioners, non-profits and activists share my enthusiasm for the use of social media for social change. The conference is free, but there are limited seats, so you need to register in advance at DevEx, a community for “professionals working in international development, global health, and foreign assistance”.
Incidentally, Microsoft runs some interesting initiatives under its Unlimited Potential program and James Utzschneider runs a cool blog on “Microsoft’s commitment to create sustained social and economic opportunity for the next 5 billion”.
Filed in Events, Mobile, Social Change 2.0, Social Media
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Also tagged Conference, Development, DevEx, ICT, ICT4D, ICT4D 2008, James Utzschneider, Microsoft, Mobile, Social Change, Unlimited Potential
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Tuesday, September 2nd, 2008
At my official fellowship blog — How Global Values Shape Communications Technologies — I use data from Wave 3 of the Power of the People Social Media Tracker by Universal McCann (PDF/ Slideshare) to do a comparative analysis of social media usage in BRIC countries.
Here are the top level highlights –
- The total number of active internet users in BRIC countries (101.2m) is higher than the number of active internet users in US (100m).
- Significantly more users from BRIC countries than US engage with social media tools, both in terms of content consumption and content creation.
- Even as percentage of active internet users, social media usage in BRIC countries is much higher than US across content consumption and content creation.
- At the country level, China leads in blogging and podcasting while Brazil is the leader in social networking and online video.
Do join the conversation at the How Global Values Shape Communications Technologies blog.
Filed in Social Media, Washington DC Diary
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Also tagged Brazil, BRIC, China, Data, India, Report, Research, Russia, Social Media Usage, Study, Universal McCann, US
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Monday, September 1st, 2008
At my official fellowship blog — How Global Values Shape Communications Technologies — I use the Geert Hofstede model to study the cultural differences between the BRIC countries and US and wonder how a collectivist, paternalist, status-oriented and relativist social web will look like —
- What if the social web subjugated individual profiles and activity streams (high individualism) to group affiliations (high collectivism)?
- What if the social web parsed and displayed relationships between two users based on their status relative to each other (high power distance) instead of treating everyone as a “friend” (low power distance)?
- What if the primary relationship on the social web was “becoming a fan” (long term orientation) instead of “becoming a friend” (short terms orientation)?
- What if the complex relationships between users automatically changed over time and across context (low uncertainty avoidance) instead of staying the same until it is proactively changed (high uncertainty avoidance)?
Do you think that such a social web will ever come into existence? Do join the conversation at the How Global Values Shape Communications Technologies blog.
Saturday, August 30th, 2008
Rob Pongsajapan at The Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship (CNDLS) at Georgetown University totally delighted me yesterday by setting up the official “ISD Yahoo! Fellow Blog” within hours of our discussion.
How Global Values Shape Communications Technologies is a group blog co-authored by the 2008-09 Yahoo! Fellows — Ben Turner, Pavneet Singh and myself. We will be writing between 5 to 10 posts every week on how international values apply to the development and use of new communications technologies, especially in BRIC countries. I’ll mostly focus on how social media will be used differently by individuals and institutions in BRIC countries as compared to their first world counterparts, but also riff frequently on the broader theme. Ben and Pavneet will also write mostly about their own research areas (to be announced soon) but also contribute to the bigger conversation on the blog.
From mid-September, we will start a weekly podcast with thinkers and practitioners from the Georgetown University community and beyond on social media in BRIC countries and how to use social media for social change.
In December, we will invite contributions for a crowd-sourced paper (or even a crowd-sourced e-book!) on how global values shape communications technologies.
Filed in Announcements, BRIC, Flat or Not, Social Change 2.0, Social Media
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Also tagged Ben Turner, Communications Technologies, Georgetown University, Global values, Pavneet Singh, Social Change 2.0, Yahoo! Fellow
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